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Keith Arkins Photography – Pictured with Ruth Freeman, Director of Strategy and Communications at Science Foundation Ireland
A SECOND year student from Killorglin Community College competed among the top young scientific minds at SciFest 2016 and was awarded an Excellence in STEM award, for her project “Does playing board games help people with dyslexia?”
Natasha Myers was one of 58 students who went on to exhibit their 31 STEM projects at the national final held in the Marino Conference Centre in Dublin last Friday.
The inspiration for Natasha’s project was her sister, who has dyslexia. In order to help her overcome the educational difficulties she faces, Natasha studied how board games make the learning process easier.
She discovered that the skills involved in playing board games, including visual actions, hand gestures, problem solving, writing and repeating answers help young people to process information faster and for longer periods.
SciFest is an all-island STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) initiative which fosters active, collaborative and inquiry-based learning among second level students. This year saw a record number of over 8,000 students exhibiting their projects in local and regional science fairs across the country.
SciFest is funded primarily by Science Foundation Ireland, Intel Ireland and Boston Scientific.
