Congratulations to Year 9 students Charlotte C, Imogen P, Ellie A and Sophie J for dominating the Search for the Next Tech Girl Superhero! The competition invites girls from all over Australia to solve real-world problems through technology.

On Sunday at Brisbane’s Queensland University of Technology, the students in ‘Fünf Team’ were crowned national winners in the secondary schools’ division. They devised a mobile app that connects retirees with volunteering jobs.

They now have the chance to go to Silicon Valley on an educational tour, with the possibility of attending the Technovation meet-up to pitch their app to Google’s CEO.

Monique Green

Digital Technologies Teacher

We caught up with one of the winning team members, Charlotte, and asked her to tell us about her experience.

“We decided to create an app called V Link that aims to bring retired people back into the community through volunteering their professional services to not-for-profit charities/organisations. It was a very long and, at times, frustrating process.

We started by designing the interface of our app whilst beginning work on our business plan; we then had to code our app using MIT app inventor for android devices. After 12 weeks, we had completed our business plan and base code. Around three weeks later, we submitted our video pitch and business plan alongside our app.

We then found out that we were lucky enough to be chosen as State finalists to be flown out for a day trip to Brisbane. At the presentation, we discovered we were the the National Secondary School winners. This means that we will have the amazing opportunity to fly over to San Francisco to participate in the international tech competition called Technovation. I can say on behalf of our group, that this was extremely exciting news. We put our heart and soul into this app, and to find out that our hard work had paid off made it all worthwhile.”

Charlotte C
Year 9 student