Salford City Academy Students Engineer A Victory At TeenTech Comp

Chris Prince / 09 November 2017 / Categories: News

A group of our Year 9 students spent the day at the University of Manchester learning about what it takes to carve out a career in the STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Maths) sector.

The students participated in a number of exciting activities throughout the day-long event, before eventually winning a design competition that saw them come up with an original idea for a product that would ‘make life better, easier or simpler’.

Pitted against over 100 of their peers, the group developed a prototype for an product called the ‘Friendly Bot’, which talks to people suffering from dementia with the aim of improving their quality of life. Judges decided this deserved the ‘Best Design’ award – much to the delight of the nine students who came up with the concept!

Earlier in the day, they attended a presentation from former ‘Tomorrow’s World’ presenter Maggie Philbin and took part in workshops with Manchester Airport Group and Cadent Gas. The sessions saw them work together as a team to come up with solutions for real-life scenarios such as keeping Manchester Airport running on emergency generators and ensuring the planning of a new gas line remains within regulation and on-budget.

Science Teacher Ms Vickers, who attended with the group, said: “I couldn’t be prouder of our students – they were absolute legends and totally deserved their prize.

“The TeenTech event was absolutely amazing – we had some great discussions on how to get into STEM professions along with the real life implications of the type of scenarios you could find yourself in if you choose this career pathway – it was so interesting!”

Year 9 student Natalia Robak said: “I found out so many ways how engineering can be useful and how our community can benefit from it. Also, meeting engineers in person made me consider becoming one - helping the community by creating new inventions.”

The students are now hoping to take their Friendly Bot idea to the next round of the Teen Tech competition – so watch this space for more news on how they get on!