We’ve worked with schools in Scotland for over 10 years with our TeenTech Awards and TeenTech City of Tomorrow programmes. But this week we held our first TeenTech Festival in Scotland with the University of Strathclyde. The planning began many months ago and we’ve all really enjoyed working with the Access, Equality and Inclusion team.
And what an amazing day!
The Festival was hosted by Dallas Campbell and Maggie Philbin .
741 students across the region took part in a virtual event in June and then 20 schools brought students for an exciting day on the campus, where over 25 different companies and university departments ran challenges and interactive stands, bringing the world of digital, science, technology and engineering to life.
Companies taking part included Cyber and Fraud Centre Scotland, BAE Systems, Network Rail, Atkins, AWS, CENSIS, Lenovo, Deloitte, Arup, Army, NHS Glasgow Clinical Research Facility, Edinburgh Climate Change Institute, Scottish AI Alliance, Leidos, Barclays, BE-ST Build, JPMorgan, Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre, ESA, Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre and SaxaVord Spaceport. In addition, several Strathclyde University departments provided inspiring activities such as the Department of Chemical and Process Engineering, Institute of Education, Department of Mathematics & Statistics, Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Student Lifecycle Services and the Fab Lab.
Amanda Baldwin, Head of Access, Equality and Inclusion, at the University of Strathclyde, said: “We are thrilled to be hosting Scotland’s first TeenTech Festival at Strathclyde and helping school pupils from across the country to find out more about the wide and varied opportunities in science, technology and engineering.
“As a socially-progressive University and a ‘place of useful’ learning we are committed to enabling anyone who can benefit from higher education to do so, no matter their background’
Teachers certainly enjoyed the experience rating it on average 9.25 out of 10! 100% said their students had found the event inspiring, that they found the content valuable and wanted to attend the next TeenTech festival. 86% teachers said that they themselves had learned something new.
Their comments included …
‘A brilliant day, there was something for everyone’
‘We enjoyed seeing different parts of the university, having a STEM ambassador to support our group for the day, meeting industry experts and trying out interactive things and making things’
‘We really enjoyed speaking to world leading companies and understanding issues in our world.’
‘The pupils loved the opportunity to talk to and interact with professionals from industry. Using their skills to help develop an idea’
‘The practical workshops that got the young people involved were fantastic.’
‘The innovation section was brilliant and some of the ideas were excellent’
Companies were also impressed by the enthusiasm of the young people.
100% companies said they would ‘definitely’ want to be part of another TeenTech event. They said how much they enjoyed the approach and welcomed ‘the variety of schools participating in the event.’ ‘TeenTech gave me a good opportunity to meet students across Glasgow and talk about software testing to students. It was well organized and the enthusiasm shown by everyone was amazing’.
‘I was surprised by the depth of knowledge of the students and in some cases had to say I didn’t know the answer to their questions. e.g. … where do rogue planets come from? … there are 3.3 billion stars, how can a stellar map be useful?
Thank you once again to the fabulous team at Strathclyde for being so supportive.
View the photos from the day on our Flickr album.