This year, all 4th year’s participated in the Scifest science festival. Scifest is the largest second – level STEM fair programme in Ireland. This festival encourages students to develop an interest in science through an inquiry-based approach and hands-on activities. It also helps students to grow in confidence and develop their communication skills by exhibiting their work in a small, local, student-friendly environment!

Usually, external judges would come into the school and judge us based on a physical poster in a science fair that is open to the whole school to visit. Unfortunately due to Covid, we were unable to host external judges this year. However, we were given the opportunity to present our slideshows to each of the 4th year classes in Loreto on the Green with judges from the school science department. After comparing projects, the judges announced the winner and they now have the opportunity to be entered into more regional and then national competitions.

Our idea this year was to create an Elderly Heart Monitoring Wristwatch that was purely focused towards the elderly. We discovered that many elderly are dying due to the lack of contact with their community. For example, George Harrington, aged 79, was dead for over 6 months before Gardaí found him. Based on this evidence, we decided to create an Elderly Wristwatch that would monitor the heart rates of the elderly. If their heart rates became abnormal in any way (i.e. too high/ too low), our app (connected to our watch) would send out a notification to family/ friends/ local hospitals notifying them of their danger!

We were elated when we found out this idea won us first place.  We had a great time participating in Scifest, along with the rest of our classmates. It took a lot of hard work and effort, but the end result was definitely worth it. It was a great experience to stand up and present in front of so many people and showcase our ideas.

Overall, we were very lucky to have had the opportunity to compete in SciFest!