It’s great to see how excited students, schools, universities and companies are about our new Awards! They’re open to young people aged 11-16.

There are some great prizes – £1000 to winning schools in each of the categories and the overall winning team will have tea with our patron HRH Duke of York .

We’ve asked schools to complete the the Stage One Entry form by December 14th but we have been asked if we can extend the deadline . So you have until the beginning of the Spring Term !

Our TeenTech Awards Flyer was designed by eighteen year old Harry Ortmans who described the Awards as ‘awesome’. Download it and put it up in your classroom or STEM club.

Details about the Awards – What’s your big idea?

Are you an innovator? Do you have an idea which could make life easier, simpler or better? It could take you to Buckingham Palace and it could win £1000 for your school.

 

We want you to use your imagination, to think creatively. This is a chance to ask “What if?”

The TeenTech Awards are for young people in Year Groups 7-11. Working in teams of up to three you will take a look at problems large and small to see if you can find a better way of doing things.

And you don’t have to do this on your own. We’re very happy for you to invite companies – global or start-up – and universities or further education colleges to collaborate – to spend time with your group, helping you to develop or refine your idea or methods. Or why not link with a school in another part of the world? We’ve partnered with some schools in Australia who are waiting for you to get in touch! Who you approach will depend very much on your idea. We just need you to let us know what they did and how it changed your thinking.

We need you to clearly identify an opportunity or problem, suggest a solution and research the market. Think about who will benefit from your idea – will it appeal to a particular age or socio- economic group, will it be affordable or a luxury product, will it be used worldwide?  If you can build a model for us to look at that’s great. You might want to design posters or advertisements to explain your idea, conduct a survey to show why it’s needed or research existing solutions. It’s entirely up to you.

There are 10 categories within the Awards programme. Each school can submit one team entry per category. We’ll be adding more and more resources to these category pages over the coming months:

  1. Sport
  2. Transport
  3. Healthcare
  4. Education
  5. Wearable Technology
  6. Environment and Sustainability
  7. Entertainment
  8. Communication
  9. Construction
  10. Future of Food
There’s also an award for journalism and you can enter this category as well as one of the above.   Use any media to report on a STEM story. It could be a world issue, regional issue, business issue or indeed the talents of your teacher or group.
So here are the important dates:

Stage 1 Register to enter 

The Awards programme will open in Global Entrepreneurship Week (12-18 November 2012, http://www.gew.org.uk/). This is the time to get thinking about ideas. (schools may enter one idea in each of our categories).

Your school might want to run brainstorming sessions and set up an Ideas Wall. Then choose the best ideas – you might want to run a “Dragons Den” to decide. If you want to partner with a school in another country, this may a good opportunity to find a group of students. We can help you do this if you don’t already have links with a school. Our sponsors have links all over the world. Just tell us where you’d like to find a partner.

Your teacher or youth group leader then needs to complete the entry form on our website so we know you want to enter by the beginning of the Spring Term. Don’t worry if you need to do more work, this is just the beginning and we expect your idea to change and develop.

Stage 2

Work on your idea. This is the time to invite a STEM ambassador, a local company, a university or expert to come into your school to help. They can support you with expertise or with marketing or design advice. They might even help you with experiments. Just keep a record of what happens.

If you are collaborating with another school or company, your idea may change. This is fine by us.

It’s a good idea to keep a record of all your decisions, drawings and research along the way. This can be interesting later on to see how your idea has developed.

Then work as a team to create a TeenTech Innovation Log that summarises why your idea is innovative, what makes it work, what the market is, how would people use it, buy it. The log can contain up to a maximum of 15 A4 pages and it must be no more than 3 Mb in size. Ask your teacher or youth leader to upload it to the TeenTech website by 12 noon on 22nd March 2013.

We will then choose finalists in each category to come and show their project on a stand at the TeenTech Awards Ceremony in Summer 2013

Prizes

In kind prizes and experiences for students and one thousand pounds in each category to go to the school of the winning team.

Overall winning team to be invited to have tea with our Patron, HRH The Duke of York.

So start brainstorming now! We’re really looking forward to seeing your ideas.