Some news from The High School

Vol 24 No 19 06 Feb 2019

UK and Ireland Lego League

Congratulations to the HSD Lego Club which has qualified for the final of the UK and Ireland Lego League championship. The Club is a fantastic extra-curricular activity where we design, build, and programme Lego robots using a STEM skills set. It is on after school every Tuesday in T1 from 4.00 pm to 5.30 pm and is for pupils in Forms 1 to 4. It is run by Mr O’Sullivan and Mr Deane. Throughout the year we have worked on designing a robot for the First Lego League competition. Our robot named Johnny VI was designed to carry out tasks by using a number of different attachments. On Saturday 26 January the HSD Lego Club went to St Patrick’s Campus at DCU to take part in the First Lego League competition. There was a total of 18 teams – nearly double the number of teams from last year. There were ten of us on the HSD team. The idea behind our project was to utilise facial recognition to improve the emotional state of astronauts going on long, deep-space journeys. Through a process called back-propagation we created a programme to recognise a happy face, neutral face, or sad face. The programme reads the emotion, interprets it, and outputs a task. The task is tailored to the astronaut’s current emotion condition with the aim of improving it. If the astronaut is sad they will be given easier tasks and if the astronaut is happy they will be given more challenging tasks. The judges were impressed by the complexity and ambition of our project especially after seeing a demonstration. The final part of the day was the Lego robot game. This was what we had been preparing for the most. It was a huge success. We came first for the robot game with 97 points and came in second place overall. We were delighted: ‘’One small step for the High School, one giant leap for the Lego Club.’’
Lucci Feng and John Kennedy

East Leinster Cross Country

On 22 January the East Leinster cross country competition was held at Rathdrum, County Wicklow. Numerous pupils from The High School competed and we succeeded in achieving strong results in the races. Patrick Tallon ran in the Senior Boys, Sorcha Murphy ran in the Minor Girls, and Luca Hayes ran in the Minor Boys to name but a few. All managed to get amazing positions even though the track was tough and that there were some very talented athletes racing as well. I would like to thank Mr Irwin, Mrs Hutchinson Edgar, and Ms Fallon for giving us the opportunity to compete at this event and for organising the journey there.
Ian Mayrs

HSD Senior Drama

Charity Donation

Pupils from Form 2 designed and created a limited collection of original Christmas Cards this year to raise money for Our Lady's Hospital Crumlin. They raised €290. So successful was this venture that they plan to do a similar project next year for charity.

Leinster Schoolboys Senior League

Congratulations to The High School Senior 1 hockey team which defeated Wesley College 2-1 to qualify for the semi-final of the Leinster Hockey Association Schoolboys Senior League. We warmly congratulate the team on its achievements and wish all members of the squad every success.
Mr P Fitzpatrick

HSD Basketball Victory

Congratulations to The High School Minor basketball team which defeated Rockford Manor School 22-16. We warmly congratulate the team on its achievements and wish all members of the squad every success in future matches.

Forster Cup Result

The Form 4 and 5 rugby team drew 19-19 with Ballymakenny College in the Forster Cup this week. We wish wish members of the team every success as they progress through the competition.