A group of enthusiastic young scientists and engineers are in the running to win funding and resources for their school in a nationwide competition for secondary schools.
The Malet Lambert School STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) Club have worked together to produce an application video, to persuade the Elite Engineering Programme for Schools that they should be one of only 25 deserving recipients of £3000 worth of LEGO Mindstorms resources.
Their video entry uses stop-motion technology with LEGO models and characters to explain why they should be chosen as one of the winning schools, and was created solely by the STEM Club which encompasses students from different year groups across the school – all with an interest in STEM subjects.
Science teacher Daniel Johansson runs STEM Club and is imploring students, parents and the local community to get behind their entry.
He said, “The entries are judged on the quality of their video, the amount of views it has on YouTube, the amount of likes it has on the EEP Schools website and the surrounding interest generated by the school on social media and in the press.
“It would be incredibly beneficial for our school to win such valuable resources that would be key for furthering our STEM provision.
“The students in our club, which started at the beginning of the year, tackle a variety of projects, including forensic science activities and entrepreneurship tasks with a scientific spin, but those have been put on hold for now while we promote this funding application.
“STEM Club students have shown exceptional dedication and enthusiasm towards all the projects they have so far undertaken and have shown a real aptitude for problem solving and coming up with creative solutions. I think they have all enjoyed working together on a range of projects and hope that this will continue after Christmas.”
STEM Club member and Year 9 pupil Callum Bratton spent three evenings after school with his fellow club members in the run up to the entry deadline creating their application video.
He said, “We thought creating something memorable with LEGO would be the right thing to do, especially with them being involved in the prize for this competition.
“We spent over five hours producing our entry after school, using stop-motion technology and some LEGO figures that someone had donated for our project.
“If we win, we’ll be given lots of LEGO Mindstorms resources which mean you can make and program your own mini robots.
“The extra equipment would be great to use in class and in STEM club and would help with our ICT and engineering skills. We can also take it a step further and enter our robots in inter-school engineering competitions.
“STEM Club is great fun. We learn and explore things that we might not have time to cover in normal lessons, so if you’ve got a particular interest, you have time and opportunity to research it and learn more.”
STEM subjects are widely promoted in schools, to increase interest amongst young people in the key subject and career areas of Science, Maths, Engineering and Technology.
The Elite Engineering Programme for Schools (EEP) is scheduled to run once a year for five years, involving more than 350 secondary schools and 80,000 students.
The 25 schools who are chosen will receive exciting resources from LEGO Mindstorms and be entered into a national competition to win a LEGO Education Innovation Studio worth £20,000.
The winners will be announced on 16th December.
Links
To view Malet Lambert’s video, go to - http://www.eep-schools.org.uk/entries/page/7/
Social Media
Share our links to our video on @maletlambert and use the hashtags #EEPschools #STEM #Resources to raise awareness