Manaiakalani Film Festival 2013

For our second year being part of the Manaiakalani Film Festival we wanted our movie to be bigger and better. We also wanted it to be different so we based our film entry on changes of matter. Our plot inspiration came from this article about a group of scientists making meat patties from cow cells. They named their meat patties 'Frankenburger' and we used this as the title of our movie.

The film crew consisted of Aaron, Williefred, Naanise and myself. Before we started filming we had to plan and create a storyboard which took a couple of weeks since we were still deciding on the ending of the film. As part of the film crew we were in charge of making the movie for our class. We wanted this movie to be bigger and better than any other movie at The Manaiakalani Film Festival.

When we created this movie we asked the question... if cow cells could be turned into patties, what would be the outcome if the cells from other animals were used to make food instead of what we normally eat today? If you were to think about eating food created from cow cells, would you? This type of question, as our teacher would say, is 'food for the brain'! What would be the consequences from eating chicken burger made from cells of a chicken? Would you still eat it?

Special thanks to Ms Bullôt for providing the resources and equipment needed to create this movie and we also thank her for her support and encouragement across the journey of this movie. 

Manaiakalani Student Leaders Conference 2013

Last Friday I was lucky enough to attend the first ever Manaiakalani Student Leaders Conference at Tamaki College. I was one out of four people to represent my school at this years student conference.

When we entered the foyer people handed us schwag bags filled with different goodies. Tamaki College’s hall filled up quickly with different leaders from all the schools in the Manaiakalani cluster. After a quick introduction from Mrs Burt we had to mix and mingle with all the other students there at the conference.

Later, Andrew Patterson had a very inspiring talk about technology and our future. He introduced different websites including TED.com and khanacademy.com. Five students from Tamaki College advertised their business, ‘Geek Cafe’. After their talk we had a delicious morning tea  which was provided by Tamaki College’s Year 13 Catering and Hospitality students. Lunch was also catered by them.

We then did a design challenge provided with smartphones from two people from Telecom, Devon Stewart and Dion Keating. We worked with the students sitting with us at the table which were the leaders from Pt England School. The scavenger hunt was difficult because we had to download different aps and we had to text in our answers. We ended up coming in second place to Stonefields who came first.

Our second challenge was to make a video using the ap dropbox. In our little video we involved our highlight of the day which was how we needed three things to get to our dream job. They then showed all the videos on the big projector.

After a long day at the Manaiakalani Student Leaders Conference for 2013 I learnt about how important it is to have a plan B if your plan A doesn’t work out. Overall, the whole day was very inspiring. It made me think that if you have a goal you’ll need to have a strategy or a plan to get there.