Year 8 Innovate at TeenTech Event

On Thursday 20^th June a group of ten students from Year 8 attended TeenTech at the Hampshire Court Hotel. The annual event aims to highlight careers and opportunities in STEM by bringing together industry, charities and young people.

In the morning the students were split into two teams and were given the challenge of creating an infrastructure for delivering gas to three different customers. There were two ways in which the gas could be delivered – by hand with balloons in containers or by a pipe network consisting of many tubes, connectors and stoppers. The challenge involved a scoring system of points gained for the delivery of units of gas which were monitored electronically. The challenge required leadership, strategy and lots of active participation. It was wonderful to see our students devise individual roles, create partnerships and most of all, reflect on their performance and the decisions they made throughout the challenge.

The second part of the day involved a combined group challenge in the innovation zone. Students were given the challenge to brainstorm, plan and devise a design and marketing strategy for new technology with the aim to make life better, more fun or more connected by making use of IoT technologies. The Fryers’ presentation, delivered energetically and clearly by Jocelyn, Harriet, Nick and Arun included a description of futuristic glasses that would make driving using GPS safer. Clearly, this idea impressed the judges as they were awarded a certificate for their innovative idea.

In the afternoon, the students were able to browse many different stalls with fascinating STEM experiments, led by experts in their field. They visited many leading organisations in STEM including JVC, the BCS and De La Rue. At each of these stands they were able to question members working at these organisations about roles in STEM and find out about the emerging technologies that they make use of in the workplace.