Over the past couple of weeks I have been supporting Primary Engineer with some judging panels of entries to their competition “If You Were An Engineer, What Would You Do?”.

The competition was open to all primary and secondary schools in the UK and this is its 10th year of running.

Judging the entries was a great experience, taking part in three of the panels in the North West. It was interesting to see the unconstrained thinking of the Young People and as the entry levels grew in ages, the more constraints that could be seen and number of entries.

There were some excellent entries looking at innovative solutions to real world problems, but I cant mention any due to the competition rules.

Its great that these types of competitions exist and would encourage schools to get involved with Primary Engineer and their competitions.

Looking forward to seeing their next competitions and activities. Primary Engineer have a Micro:bit set of activities coming and schools can register.

Having just received my STEM Badge for 2018/19, I was very pleased to be awarded a “30 Hours of Engagement” badge.

Over the year I have visited schools, events and other youth organisations such as Scouts to promote STEM, run and take part in activities and show why STEM subjects are important for young people to learn in School, College and University.

Being a STEM Ambassador is an important role and and its not just the young people that gain from sessions but teachers as well learning how businesses are using these skills for students in their possible future careers.

Here are a couple of videos and pictures from some of the events I have helped with.

Stemettes Hack Chorley with DXC and Stemettes

Chorley Hack with Chorley Council

Coding with Scouts for their Digital Badges

Its been a while since I last blogged (apologies for that), but  I have had a lot on recently. So here is a catch up on one of the activities I have been doing.

Recently I have had an opportunity with two colleagues, to attend a school and take 4 classes (1 hour each class) and talk to them about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math’s) and what is happening in business around Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality. I also took some headsets along for the pupils to try (HTC Vive, Hololens, Gear VR and RealWear) as well as a hand held scanner for taking scans of real world objects to put in to the virtual world.

I ran 20-30 mins of discussion followed by the rest of the time with the pupils trying out the items I had taken along for them to look at how they can be used and to inspire them in looking at STEM subjects in their subject choices.

It was a great experience to take 4 classes and effectively being a teacher for them and it was certainly different to be called “Sir” instead of “Max” and took a bit of getting used to.

I used a mobile phone as a basis to explain why STEM subjects are important as all the pupils had one and went through how Science, Technology, Engineering and Math’s subjects/skills are used in the creation of the device and why they are important.

The pupils certainly enjoyed their experience trying the different types of realities and using some voice controls instead of keyboards to invoke applications and tasks. I hope that I have helped inspire some to take the subjects going forward and wish them all well with their choices, exams and future careers.