Maritzburg College School Magazine Maritzburg College Magazine 2016 electronic | Page 34

S U B J E C T D E PA R T M E N T S
Engineering Graphics & Design (EGD)
Once again the EGD department has had a really great year full of events
to encourage our young men to realise that there is a busy world out there
just waiting for their talents.
The Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Form groups each had an interesting practical
assessment task assigned by the Education Department. However, we
expanded the Fourth Form project to allow the boys to use their own
initiative and thinking skills. They were tasked with creating a toy with a
specific number of components. These needed to be designed on Solid
Works, saved and then 3D printed. This allowed the boys to experience
a design programme, design method and the 3D printer. The project was
a resounding success and a number of these projects are on show at the
school.
We approached MECAD to run a course for any pupil who was interested
in design. Mr Wessel van Heerden arranged that one of their engineers
would come to College every Wednesday for 13 weeks. The boys had
to sacrifice two hours at a time. The interest was great and 64 boys
attended these classes. Early in 2017, the pupils who did the course will
be able to write an online, internationally recognised examination which
is free of charge. We wish to thank Mr van Heerden and MECAD for this
opportunity. More good news for 2017 is that College will receive 200
free licences of Solid Works from MECAD. This will put us on par with
UKZN, and all examinations will be free of charge.
Two of our pupils, B Roets and M Cornelius, both Fifth Formers, collaborated
with two pupils from Eden Glen in Johannesburg to qualify for the Land Rover
4x4 World Championships in Coventry (UK) during the mid-year break.
Before leaving, they approached a numbe r of businesses for sponsorship.
They needed a very detailed portfolio and a car that would be used in the
event. Special thanks go to Bryan Bullock and Rapid 3D for 3D printing
the cars for us, thus saving the department a considerable amount. Once
again we made use of Solid Works as our design programme. MECAD
also supplied us with enough sunglasses to use as a gift exchange for
each of the team members at the championships. The boys approached
Jacqui Cochran and Paula Hall from Husqvarna, who not only gave us
access to use their showroom to make a video which can now be viewed
on YouTube, but also gave us shirts, caps and bags to use on our trip. In
addition, they donated a substantial amount of money to assist with our
flight costs. Other sponsors were: Land Rover in Pietermaritzburg, who also
gave us a substantial amount of money to cover costs, as well as clothing;
CPW printed our portfolio and business cards; Pastel Printing did all the
embroidery on our clothing; Clifford Engineering built and donated a large
part of the practice track; and Cousins Steel, Investec, Nuvo, BMG and
SAJ all made monetary donations. Our sincere thanks to all our sponsors.
It was a wonderful experience and we came home with the Judges Special
award for combining Technology with the Environment (Team Rhino). The
whole event can be viewed on YouTube under the heading: Land Rover
4x4 in Schools.
Mr Sheldon Bosch demonstrating a part of the School’s Project with a very
excited and intrigued audience.
During the year we were able to send our staff and a group of pupils to
attend the Launch of the 2017 Solid Works Programme at UKZN. College
took part in a lucky draw and won a 3D printer. This enabled us to donate
one of our existing 3D printers to the Biology department at College.
This year also saw a group of our Technical Drawing teachers becoming
involved with the judging of F1 in Schools projects for primary schools.
College has become the hub for primary schools in our area. Mr Sheldon
Bosch will be running a programme to introduce primary schools to
the project in 2017. He will also be teaching them to use the computer
programme and the CNC cutter to produce the car that will be racing
down a 25m track driven by a carbon dioxide gas cylinder. We have
already had Pelham Primary visit College with great success.
The EGD Department has decided that each staff member will drive a
project not normally done at school. One of the new areas for next year
will be the introduction of Robotics. There is great interest in this area
internationally, and we would love to see our boys involved.
Finally, after a very busy year, we were still able to produce reasonable
results in the National Senior Certificate examinations. Of the 75 pupils
who wrote, 27 boys achieved an A-symbol and 23 achieved B-symbols.
We are proud of the results as we were again the top EGD performing
school in KwaZulu-Natal.
Mr B Bosch
English
It was another happy and productive year in the English department with
constant collaboration among teachers to try to find texts and tasks which
would engage and challenge the boys, and to try to spur them on to raising
their level of achievement. The matric results were outstanding with 43
A-symbols achieved in English. K Allopi achieved an exceptional mark of
97%. Other outstanding performers included R Hodgson (93%), J Godfrey
(92%), M Godfrey (92%) and J Tooke (91%). We are thrilled with the
overall performance of all our boys from 2016.
Many of our boys were encouraged to participate in numerous external
writing activities which broadened their audience and encouraged positive
competition. Some boys wrote the English Olympiad which is a national
competition attracting the top scholars in the country. K Allopi achieved
a gold certificate; and R Hodgson and P Pillay both achieved silver
certificates. Some boys also submitted entries to the Douglas Livingston
Creative Writing Competition and we are awaiting results. Apart from our
enriching curriculum-based activities, boys wrote actively for MC Ink and
participated in Speakers’ Circle, and we thank Ms Bernice Borain, Mr Rob
Gutteridge and Mrs Liz Leroy for their efforts in these areas.
B Roets and M Cornelius with their awards from the 4x4 challenge in
which they took part in the United Kingdom.
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Many other talks and presentations were held during the course of the year
to extend our pupils. We were pleased to host Mbongeni Malaba, Professor
of English Studies at UKZN, who offered an insightful presentation to our
Fifth Formers on their prescribed text, Macbeth. Chris Mann, Professor
Emeritus of Poetry at Rhodes University, also presented an interesting and
lively talk on poetry.