King's hosts Dragon's Nest competition

The Joanne and Peter Kenny Theatre in the Darryl J. King Student Life Centre recently played host to 107 international students visiting King’s from Brazil participating in a Dragon’s Nest program.

The students were visiting as part of the Canadian Summer Experience, a two-week program run by King’s International. As part of the program, the students, aged 11 – 17, participated in English classes, conversation groups and workshops in yoga, dance, self-defence, and leadership. King’s also organized several social outings for the students, including visits to Toronto, Niagara Falls, Grand Bend and Canada’s Wonderland.

The final presentation for the students’ English class run by the Thames Valley District School Board was based on the television show Shark Tank.

“We wanted to inspire the students on what makes being in business a great thing,” Emily Mousseau of Westminster Secondary School says. “We had the students come up with one business product or service that they would like to create and bring to market.”

As part of the program, the students created a business from start to finish, including outlining the business, creating a product and designing marketing plans. The final step was to make a presentation before a panel. The presentation was judged on innovation, marketing, product potential, overall presentation and responses to questions from the judges (or “Dragons”).

Judges included community members and representatives from the Thames Valley District School Board (TVDSB) and King’s including Dr. Sauro Camiletti, Vice-Principal and Academic Dean and Laura Elliot, Director of Education at TVDSB.

The pitch with the highest score based on the Dragons’ score cards was awarded a first place medal. The most creative pitch or that which reflected a new idea or application of a better solution to an existing marketing need was presented the Innovation award. The pitch deemed to have the best vision for how to promote their product to the target audience received the Marketing award.

To view videos of the Dragon’s Nest competition, visit https://youtu.be/l1L7zjDTmVs or https://youtu.be/p1novnb0JjE.