Will stick-on WIFI Tattoos be launched from this region?

"Just because something works doesn't mean it can't be improved." -  Princess Shuri, Black Panther.

 What do you get when you mix the inspiration of Marvel’s Black Panther and future thinking high school students?   

Well, you get some very futuristic solutions from stick -on WIFI tattoos to keep you connected, to necklaces that pair to charge your mobile phone.

Mackay North State High School Year 10 STEM students are not only building on future skills, but they are also embracing out of -the-box thinking to help solve problems from bad hair cuts to climate change.

Mackay North State Highschool is one of a few MIW regional schools who take part in Future Anything’s Activate: STEM unit, which is possible with collaboration from GW3.

Last term the students took part in a prototypes challenge, developing future soft skills, such as communication, creativity, and collaboration. 

STEM year 10 students Sebastian Rayfield, Tonisha Miller, Max Cain, Bianca Flor and Josie-Anne Ewart said while the inspiration was Black Panther the class wanted to explore technology that could be tangible in the next 20 years.  

The class spent five weeks developing the prototypes before pitching them to the class.

“In STEM we find problems within our community or with the world at large and we come up with weird and wacky solutions for these problems.

“There is definitely out- of -the- box thinking, using our own personal experiences to help find solutions and we are able to use our creativity as well,” Sebastian said.

While many of the prototypes the student’s created were out of this world and might take a few decades to become a reality, the process gave the students a new way of thinking, but also gave them self-confidence.

“My group designed a watch, based on kimoyo beads, where you can use it to buy food or products, where the beads are linked to a bank account,” Josie-Anne Ewart said.

“I created a tattoo, which was a fake stick-on tattoo, which would have some technology in the ink, that would connect to the heat signatures in the skin and then it would omit WIFI, being able to carry your devices and stay connected to it,” Bianca Flor said.

Some of the lessons from this unit not only looked at developing s skills, but it also gave students the opportunity to explore how technology can improve society’s social enterprise footprint and solutions that make the world a better place.

“Social enterprise, helping beyond the product, I don’t think about the product in general, I think of how it will help people and what that product will mean to someone else.

“Ultimately the goal of what I am doing is not about creating something that will just make me money but making someone’s life better,” Sebastian said.

This term the students are taking what they learned from their Black Panther prototypes and applying them to another round of innovations to pitch to Future Anything.

“Last term was a bit of a practice runt to see how it was done. We were a lot less realistic and loose in those pitches so this term we are going to be more realistic and try and get a more down to earth idea to get started,” Sebastian said.

Mackay North State High School STEM teacher Stacey Austin said it has been a surprising term, with students adapting to different ways of learning.

“It is interesting we have been discussing where stem will lead and next year is 11 and 12 and most subjects have a smooth transition but with STEM it is giving them skills that no matter what job they choose, you will  always need to be creative, solve problems and to work as a team to meet deadlines and that is the type of learning we have been focusing on,” she said.