Callum at the Innovation Challenge Finals

Callum didn't win the Australian Innovation Challenge. But given the quality of the entrants it was really an honour for him just to be there.

He did get to chat with Nobel laureate Brian Shwartz for most of an hour - which made the trip down to Canberra completely worthwhile.

Callum and I house sharing

While Evan and Declan have been swanning off to Sri Lanka, Callum and I have had a very nice time together. Callum has been quite happy to leave after me and come home before me, although I've managed to get home a bit earlier than normal most days.

We've cooked together, cleaned together, and even done the washing together! I'd like to think he will make a pretty good flatmate one day.

We've played quite a few board games together, with Callum introducing me to Stratego, and me introducing him to Cathedral.

Yesterday we went to see the new James Bond movie Spectre together, and made rhubarb pie to celebrate our week.

Luckily it is getting towards the end of term, and Callum doesn't have much homework; there have been a lot of  computer games to keep him in a good mood.

His good mood doesn't extend to photos; he wouldn't let me take a picture of him making me a cup of tea.

Vote for Callum

Hopefully everybody who reads this blog already knows this, but you can vote for Callum in the People's Choice awards for the Australian Innovation Challenge.

Vote early and often!

Maths Enrichment

Both Callum and Declan did some maths enrichment this year - a formal program of problems that they worked through to train them in mathematical concepts.

For Callum it was part of his Beyond Visible elective, and he had a great time with each problem, playing with it on his whiteboard, and occasionally talking it through with this grandparents (he did the Gauss problems).

For Declan it was extra - once a fortnight he got to school early on a Friday to work through his set of problems (which were the Euler ones).

It turns out they both did very well, with Callum getting a high distinction and Declan getting a distinction! They were the only distinctions in the whole school, so the Predavec boys were at the top of the list.

Declan didn't enjoy it as much as Callum, which in some ways makes his achievement almost more impressive.

Declan in Sri Lanka

BinIT team on the ramparts at Galle

After winning a merit award at the Nationals, Declan's BinIT! team were eligible to go to Sri Lanka for the Asia Pacific iAwards.  After some refining of their presentation, and their website, this week they've been in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where they had to present BinIT to a team of judges, have high tea at the Australian High Commission, and spend a fair bit of time lounging around the pool. Declan was hugely excited to go, which has been lovely to see.

No doubt there will be further reports of their trip when they get back.

Young ICT Nationals

On Saturday Callum (by virtue of having won the NSW Young ICT challenge), got to compete in the National competition. It was in North Sydney, at the SAS headquarters (they are the sponsors) and had a bunch of kids from around Australia who had won their state or local (in the case of North Queensland) competition.

Sadly Callum didn't take home a prize, but he acquitted himself well and got to meet a bunch of other pretty cool kids.

Acceleration

At the end of last week, the Mosman High principal asked me to have a chat about Callum.

She started off talking about extension maths, what we used to call 4 unit, and checking that he and we were still happy for him to do it. Which of course I confirmed. I wondered at first where she was coming from, but she explained the school was keen to ensure he remains happy and has time to do other things like his programming.

She moved on to offering to accelerate Cal into Year 11 Software Design next year.

So next year Cal will do only the core year 10 subjects, no Year 10 electives, and year 12 maths and year 11 software design. He won't have to do Wednesday afternoon sport, both because of the timetable and so he has some additional time available - we figure Tae Kwon Do twice a week should cover him anyway on that front.

We think it's a great position to be in. Not only will he be engaged, but he will spread the HSC over three years which should remove some of the stress.

Mosman has continued to validate that it was the right choice to send the boys there.

Callum Young Innovator Finalist

The boys are having quite a month and year.

This weekend Callum was announced as one of five finalists in The Australian Innovation Challenge, Young Innovators category. The category is open to people under 21 and the winner gets $5000.

Pax oz

Callum and especially Declan were pretty enamoured of pax Australia. They got a great game of laser tag, free steam codes for a couple of indie games, plus the chance to meet the developers and play alpha versions. 

They got to see lots and lots of really cool costumes, with people cosplaying their favourite game characters. And they got to marvel at the retro games in the retro section. 

Another award!

We've known about this for a couple of weeks now but had to keep it a secret. Declan's Mosman high school programming team won the stem video game challenge. They had the best video game teaching about science technology engineering and maths written by anyone from years 5-8. The competition was Australia wide so they were pretty thrilled.

To collect their prize (a new HP laptop each) they had to go down to Pax Australia, which is one of the world's biggest gaming conventions. 

We all went down to Melbourne yesterday to clap and cheer.