On Friday 23 April 2010, during World Book Festival as part of Teen Day, the launch of the second Cork City Library Graphic Novel Project took place. After the overwhelming success of last year’s graphic novel “Red Shift” the library decided to support another project again in 2010. This project was led by John Sexton who facilitated the creative writing aspect, as well as Alan Barrett, graphic artist. The project was undertaken by fifteen secondary school students from Cork, seven supplying the writing for the graphic novel and eight who drew the pictures.

This year’s graphic novel, entitled “SYZYGY”, was undertaken by one of our own students, Nikesh Chopra of Fifth Year. He attended several workshops in the Cork City Library over the months of January and February and produced a story called “Twice At Once”, about a teenage epileptic girl who traverses through two parallel universes through her epileptic fits. Nikesh attended the launch in Cork City Library and was awarded with an award for his participation and was invited to a special master workshop with acclaimed graphic artist Marti Saiz the following day. According the Evening Echo reporter Kieran Dineen, his story was “thought-provoking.”

John O’Leary

In February Cork City Libraries announced its third annual short story competition. Writers had to be between the ages of 13 and 18 and the stories could be between 1000-4000 words. First and second prize was on offer, along with 5 other prizes for shortlisted winners. Those shortlisted would also receive a written critique by local writer Kevin Doyle. This was my first time entering into a creative writing competition and I didn’t expect to get anywhere with it, in fact this was my first proper short story. I was taken by complete surprise when I was notified a week before world teen day that I had received a prize.

23 April was World Teen Day, and to celebrate, various events were held at the Cork City Library. Among these events was the announcement of the winners of the third annual short story competition. I was delighted when Kevin Doyle announced I was one of five who was shortlisted. I received a written critique of my story along with a €25 voucher for Waterstones. (If I could boast here!) Kevin Doyle admired my ability of creating a complex story with characters that have their own “personal entanglements”.

Robert Bolton, Fifth Year

A number of second year students participated in the National Spring Clean Day and cleaned up around the Douglas area. The day was organised by Jordan Smith and Eoghan O’ Brien. Overall the students collected over 25 bags of rubbish; 11 of these are going to be recycled.

Jordan Smith, Second Year

On 20 April 2010, Douglas Community School second years went on a field trip to the Irish Aid Development Centre on O’Connell Street, the Book of Kells exhibition and Trinity College Campus.

This year Douglas Community School travelled to Jasna in Slovakia for a week of skiing during the February mid term break. Forty students were accompanied by Mr O Leary, Mr Fahy, Mr O Cuanachain and Mr Hickey.  The skiing was enjoyed by all.  Most of the first-time skiers came down a black slope by the end of the week, which was a remarkable achievement for those students. The 2011 school tour will return to the same resort and this is testiment to the positive feedback regarding Jasna as a destination.

John O’Leary

Six fifth year students have recently opened a school bank.  The bank will be run by Jack Newton (Manager), Nikesh Chopra (assistant Manager), Conor Dowling (Auditor), Aidan Heffernan (Marketing), Gary Black (Teller) and Aaron Hurley (Teller) and is co-ordinated by Mr Alan White. The bank will be open every Friday from 1.00 – 1.30pm.  Since opening, the bank has been gaining momentum and we now have over 60 members after our first two weeks. This is a very positive response from the students. The service will be available to all students in the school and there are various incentives to opening an account such as €10 free call credit for every account opened. The bank will also be running competitions over the course of the year for students who regularly use the bank so watch this space!  Conor Dowling (pictured above) recently won a competition for a Nintendo wii. The competition was open to all students who interviewed for a position in the bank. The presentation of the prize was made before the Christmas break.

On 10 March the school bank regional finals will take place in the Sheraton Hotel in Fota.  Many schools around the county will be present and we will face some stiff opposition from more established banks.  However, we have a good team of students running our bank and we are hopeful that we will do well in this competition.  There are some great prizes on offer for successful teams such as iPods for students and vouchers for school supplies, so I know you will all join me in wishing the lads the best of luck in the competition.

Remember it is always a good idea to save a little each week – now more so than ever! So students, don’t forget to use the school bank regularly.

The NT1 class present a cheque for €1717 to Medecins Sans Frontiers’ Haiti Appeal. The money was raised by NT1, who organised a raffle in the school, and by the staff of the school who held a table quiz for staff and friends.

Cian O’Mahony

The past pupils of Douglas Community School who are running these classes are Eoin Coakley, Niall Browne, Aaron Sammon and Conor Hodnett, who are all thoroughly enjoying their return to their alma mater. They feel that they would have greatly appreciated the opportunity to participate in a class like this when they were in Transition Year, and hope that the module may spark an interest in programming for some of the students involved. They hope to see some of our present Transition Years studying Business Information Systems (BIS) or Computer Science in UCC in the years to come!

For those interested in web design, a very useful website is: www.w3schools.com.

C Ó Conaill

On 11 February four second year Douglas Community School students will attempt to defend the title of Lego Mindstorms Robotics Champions won last year.  The team of Jordan Smith, Daniel Mason, Michael McLaughlin and Eoghan O’Brien have been hard at work learning the new skills involved in robotics and model construction.  They then had to build a completely new robot from scratch to complete the task.  With minimal help from myself, they have the task well on the way to completion.  Jordan even developed a new program that the team of helpers from UCC had never seen before.  The task is to drop a ball picked up from a mount into a basket some distance away.  ‘Repeating it is to be the hard task,’ reckons Jordan the programmer. ‘We get points fro each time you do it so once is not enough.’

With the construction falling on the group as a whole, Michael and Eoghan are learning to solder to make the scoreboard.  ‘Really a different skill to what I’m used to but I’m getting there,’ says Eoghan.  It is clear they have already learned so much they feel the competition is only a small part of the challenge.

Good luck to the lads against more than twenty other schools!

N Bronks