Photos from the Snow Ball

This year, in addition to the traditional end-of-year ball, saw the introduction of a similar event at the end of the Winter term – entitled the Snow Ball. Here's a slideshow of photos from the evening, featuring students and the band South Parade.



View the photos on Flickr

Videos from the Winter Concert 2009

Here are the first pair of videos (more to come) from last week's Winter Concert.

First up, the d'Overbroeck's Vocal Group, performing an arrangement by upper sixth student Gidon Fineman. The song is a traditional Zambian melody which was taught to Gidon and others during the College trip to Zambia this summer.



... and second, a cover version of 'Hey Julie' by Fountains of Wayne – performed by Zanni Cohen and Dulith Wanigasekera.



Alternatively, view the videos on Vimeo or YouTube

d'Overbroeck's business students Make Their Mark

On Monday 16th November, L6th Business Studies students at d'Overbroeck's joined 73,000 students across the UK taking part in the Make Your Mark Challenge as part of this year's Global Enterprise Week involving 88 countries. The theme of the day is only released the morning of the competition and then time is tight for the team's of four to get their idea ready to pitch to our Dragons at 3pm. This year the title was 'Don't Be A Carbon Copy' and the teams had to come up with an idea that had a low carbon credential as well as a local link.

The students had just over an hour to complete sections such as competition research, full costings analysis and developing the products USP – unique selling point. Ideas based around the needs of Oxford included Saddle Saw for ricksaw tours and taxis, Cycle repair stations at the station and to your door and electric Mini-car GPS tours. The runners up decided one of the main theme's in Oxford is the rain and so they designed bio-degradeable phonchos and umbrellas for vending machines to help visitors caught out with the weather. This year's winners chosen by the Dragons based their idea on Nicola Creamer's ureka moment whilst travelling in dreadful weather recently – CLEAR WINDSCREEN WIPERS. The team consisting of Nicola, Charlie Noble, Emily Leach and Samuel Unwin used recycled plastic for the wipers and had some excellent ideas for their production and future development with BMW Mini.

Infact the idea was so good that the team made it through to the final ten in the whole of the South East Region. Only a week after their initial idea the team headed into the Picture Gallery at Royal Holloway University to pitch their idea and face new Dragons from the British Council, Royal Holloway Univeristy and a successful local entrepreneur. The other teams came from areas including Kent, London and Southampton but d'Overbroeck's were the only selected Oxfordshire team. It was a daunting experience for all the students but everyone did exceptionally well and the Royal Holloway professor was clearly very impressed with Clear View's concept.

The winners were 19 year old Foundation Year students from a London Art and Design College with their fun concept of fashion accessories that turn into shopping bags and therefore continue to reduce the problem of plastic bags. With experience in this area, they had their prototypes already made so it was easy for the judges to see how the concept could be moved onto the next step and become viable in the near future. For the rest of the teams it was a great insight into the next stage of design development.

(Writeup by Clare Cameron)

The Winter Concert 2009

The evening of Tuesday 24 November was the occasion of the annual Sixth Form Winter Concert, held at the Jacqueline du Pre Music Building at St Hilda's College.

A jamboree of music, drama and dance, the evening showed off diverse student talents – and spanned the centuries, from Mozart to Radiohead.

Below is a gallery of photos from the concert, with more to follow next week – along with video footage of some of the performances.



See a full-size slideshow

Two teachers are Oxfordshire Rowing Champions

We've written previously about the rowing prowess of two d'Overbroeck's teachers, Melanie Ward (Music) and Clare Cameron (Business Studies). Further congratulations are now in order: earlier this month, their rowing squad (the City of Oxford Rowing Club Women’s Tier 1) won Sports Team of the Year at the Oxfordshire Sports Awards 2009.

The awards ceremony was hosted by Jo Thoenes and Brennan Nicholls from BBC Oxford, and attended by 330 guests, including 34 finalists.

The squad, including Melanie (left) and Clare (3rd from right) is pictured above, at the ceremony (photo courtesy of Tudor Photography).

Biology Field Trip: timetravelling in the dunes and surveying invertebrates...

Every year our Upper Sixth Biologists go on an Autumn field trip to Nettlecombe Court – a beautiful old mansion nestling on the edge of Exmoor. On their return, Head of Biology Jaimie Tarrell wrote a short account of their time there…

Field work is an integral part of A level Biology and, over the years, we have developed a very productive way of exploiting the opportunities of quantitative field work with the help of expert ecologists. The secret is to prepare the theory before donning our wellies. This way, the students know what to look for when they are identifying and counting wild organisms in the rich ecosystems that we study.

We began with a quantitative survey of a rocky shore. To many, seaweeds may just be slippery slimy ‘plants’ that cover the rocks and hide the crabs – but when you really look at the ‘zonation’ of red through brown to green seaweeds, as you progress up the shore, they take on a new meaning in relation to photosynthesis and the availability of light under water. Guess what? The red seaweeds don’t look red when the tide is in.

We also visited Braunton Burrows – the largest sand dune complex in Europe. Here, students had the chance to study ‘succession’ from pioneer to climax communities. As we walked back from the hide tide mark (sampling all the while), we were effectively walking back in time.

One activity that everyone really enjoys is the freshwater stream survey. Students have the chance actually to handle the myriad invertebrates that inhabit this cryptic ecosystem and provide the basis of complex food webs – and to use their knowledge to assess the purity of the water.

For many, the Biology Field Trip is a rare opportunity to see some of England’s beautiful countryside – in a wonderful array of different Wellington boots – whilst learning that special level of knowledge unique to an A level Biologist.

View a full-screen slideshow of the Biology Field Trip photos on Flickr

This year's Lower Sixth scholars

We thought we'd do a quick post to introduce this year's new scholars – photographed in typically scholarly pose, above (although the eagle-eyed will notice that two of our Upper Sixth scholars, Danielle Greenspan and Gidon Fineman, also make an appearance).

So – here are the d'Overbroeck's Sixth Form scholars who joined us this year:

Academic Scholars
Louisa Emms (joining us from Rye St Antony School)
Madeleine Hurry (Warriner School)
Bella Maine (Headington School)

Performing Arts Scholar
Matthew Thorns (Leckford Place)

Environmental Awareness Scholars
Louisa Goodfellow (Leckford Place)
Flora Griffiths (Chipping Norton School)

Academic Exhibitioners
Gary Paterson (Leckford Place)
Rhys Tong-Jones (The Athenian School)

Art Exhibitioner
Daisy Bernard (Headington School)

All Rounder Academic Exhibitioner
Edward Hornsby (Radley College)



Next year's scholars ...

We're rapidly approaching the application deadline for next year's scholarships – for those joining the Sixth Form in 2010-11. The deadline is Monday 9 November – so there's still time to apply. Further details are on our Sixth Form Scholarships page.