TeenTech Festival

Just before the Easter half term holiday, some of our Year 9 girls attended the Arsenal football stadium in North London to take part in this year’s TeenTech Festival. The TeenTech Festival is a national STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths) event which provides pupils with the opportunity to participate in a range of workshops, to handle leading edge technology and most importantly to spend time with technologists and scientists. With over twenty five schools and forty exhibitors in attendance there was a sense of real excitement throughout the day.

In the Innovation Zone, the girls worked in teams to invent a product that would make life better, simpler and safer. The teams identified a real world problem, designed a solution and considered how they would take their product to market. The girls then pitched their ideas to an audience of industry experts and teams from other schools. I am delighted to report that Croydon High won two of the main awards.

Congratulations to Titilayo, Inaya, Holly, Eloise, Krisha, Suvini, Abigail, Aaravi and Jessica for winning the TeenTech Tinkerer Award for Best Invention. The team’s “Emergency Stab Pack” invention would provide medical assistance including automated emergency calls with GPS location information in the event of a knife crime.

The TeenTech Award for Best Presentation went to Erna, Amy, Eleanor, Maddy, Rianna, Nyla, Darshali, Shriya, Delicia and Ashwini for their confident and well considered marketing pitch for their “Watch Out” product, a personal security watch with a discreet messaging service.

The Insight and Challenge Zones enabled the girls to experience technology, science and engineering in action and to participate in a range of activities.

Croydon High won three inter-school competitions; Darshali Patel won the Middlesex University Prize for building an Aspirin molecule in the fastest time, Delicia Jawahir won the JVC Kenwood Technology Quiz and the Bristol University Prize was awarded to Titilayo, Inaya, Holly, Eloise, Krisha, Suvini, Abigail, Aaravi and Jessica for their design of a multisensory globe for visually impaired children.

Mr Brady