2009 EVENT
March 11th 2009, at the John Charles Sports Centre, South Leeds.
A new record 42 teams took part, from 18 schools and 2 colleges.
The Taskask: to design a weather capsule delivered via a space rocket!!
The winning teams were:
Foundation : Garforth School Intermediate : West Leeds School Advanced : Guiseley School
Each of these received a trophy to keep and a winner's certificate for the team members.
The "Innovation Trophy" for the team that came up with the most creative, innovative idea, was won by:
The Farnley Park Intermediate team.
The event was also used as part of CPD in Enterprise for teachers for the first time.
The task was to launch a weather capsule -
The Foundation Task involved making a launcher, complete with a trigger mechanism that could be fired remotely after a 10 second countdown - so that a space capsule containing weather instruments reached over 3m and landed as close to the launch site as possible.
The Intermediate Task required the capsule to land softly: most entrants made a parachute that opened above 3m.
With the Advanced Task, the capsule was despatched in a carrier vehicle that had to separate at over 3m and land softly, again by parachute.
News events leading up to Competition Day:
January 12th 2009: City councillors show their support. Allocations are being made from the budgets of a number of city councillors in support of community projects in their area.
December 15th 2008: A new initiative has been agreed - all teachers involved in the Technology Challenge event are now able to undertake Continuing Professional Development, overseen by the Education Leeds Education Business Partnership. This will look at how enterprise fits into the technology curriculum. This is a Governmental requirement for all teaching staff. As part of this event, it is hoped to encourage the use of the services of one or more teachers to produce, at a later date, an in-school resource for all schools. This would then be used to enable a wider group of young people to experience a similar challenge in the future.
The Rotarian Organisers are pleased that this event has been selected for a CPD event, using an integrated approach. This is the first time that such an arrangement has been undertaken with a Rotary Technology event and we regard it as a compliment that we have been selected and the confidence that Education Leeds has placed in the running of the event over the past two years which they have supported.
