On Thursday April 25, The University of Roehampton welcomed school students from 20 schools across London to take part in challenges and experiments with leading companies and university departments in the TeenTech Roehampton Festival.
We’ve worked with the University of Roehampton since 2015 and the partnership has gone from strength to strength. The festival was sponsored by AWS and Softwire, who ran activities and provided volunteers for the day. They were joined by BBC R&D, NHS England, JP Morgan, Arup, Boeing Global Services, Atkinsréalis, Met Police Cyber Choices, National Physical Laboratory and the Alex Lewis Trust. A powerful cross-section of industry sectors which really brought future career opportunities to life.
Ruth Seabrook, Head of Secondary ITE & Partnership, University of Roehampton said: “TeenTech allows our student teachers and their pupils and teachers in school to participate in a wonderful enrichment event. It is an aspirational day filled with really engaging and new STEM activities and it can empower pupils from a young age to think about technology in new ways and inspire them to think – I could do this – I want to do this in the future.”
Three weeks before the festival, over 1000 students participated in a virtual TeenTech Innovation day to design their own ideas for the ‘kinder, safer, smarter’ TeenTech City of Tomorrow. With a focus on the way technology could improve the Home of The Future, Teams brought their model buildings and fresh thinking to the event and shared their ideas with industry experts.
On the festival day school students explored departments across the university site. They experimented with tools such as adding sound effects to a movie and experimenting with lights, cameras and green screen technology in the Film and TV Department, understanding computational thinking, the science of slime and were able to compete in the latest E-Sports using VR headsets.
Regional Sponsor Softwire said: “We were delighted to be a TeenTech Roehampton Festival regional sponsor this year. It was wonderful to see so many students engaged in problem solving and enjoying learning about technology. We hope it has a lasting impact and are excited to see what future innovations the next generation help shape.”
We also asked students to share their thinking on the issues they wished the Mayor of London to tackle. Homelessness, mental health, better provision for young people , protecting the environment and improving personal safety emerged as the leading themes.
Maggie Philbin, CEO TeenTech said “We’ve worked with the University of Roehampton for over eight years and the Schools of Education, Computing Education, Science, E-Sports, Film & TV provide really creative and immersive experiences. We’re immensely grateful to the University, to our event partners Amazon Web Services and Softwire and all the participating companies for the time and energy which makes this such a very special experience for so many young people.”
School of Education, Computing Education, Science, E-Sports, Film & TV.