Select a region
An 11-year-old Jersey pupil's vision for e-goggles aimed at helping people with sight impairment with audio description of their surroundings and alerts has won an engineering award.
St. George Prep pupil Ollie Campbell's winning design was part of a record number of entries submitted to the Leaders Award competition by the school with 21 pupils getting involved.
Seven achieved a Distinction and 14 received Merit awards.
Entitled ‘If you were an engineer what would you do?’, the competition aimed to inspire primary school pupils about the possibilities of engineering, the competitions invites children tasked to think of a real-life problem and come up with their own suggested engineering solution.
Ollie's entry was selected from more than 600 to win a regional engineering award as part of the UK and Channel Island-wide competition. He received a pair of Virtual Reality goggles along with a medal and badge to mark his achievement.
Pictured: Ollie and St. George’s Head of Science, Andrea Lathwell.
"We take part in the competition every year, and this year we’ve had the best results so far with a really fantastic set of designs," said Head of Science and passionate STEM promoter Andrea Lathwell.
"Making science accessible and relatable is the best way to engage pupils. We base a lot of our learning on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, designed to inspire a better and more sustainable future for all, addressing the global challenges we face.
"Engineering in many ways can provide solutions to some of the biggest problems we face, including climate change, environmental degradation, and inequality. Many of the pupil’s designs, such as Ollie’s, suggested products that would help promote equality of access for everyone. I am very proud of them all."
Pictured: Cormac Timothy, the Headmaster of St. George’s, said he was delighted with Ollie's achievement.
Headmaster Cormac Timothy, who is also a science teacher, said he was delighted not only with Ollie's achievement but also with the Science 'Department's " fantastic, inspirational work".
"I am particularly pleased to note that our entries and awards were fairly distributed between our boys and girls," he said.
"We are kindly supported with the project each year by a visit from local engineering company, Geomarine, who this year sent two female engineers to help inspire and guide our pupils.
"With the need to encourage more girls to study STEM subjects in higher education, learning from role models who have paved the way is so important. They’ve all achieved so much and I’m confident that amongst our current pupils and alumni are the engineering stars of the future."
Comments
Comments on this story express the views of the commentator only, not Bailiwick Publishing. We are unable to guarantee the accuracy of any of those comments.