Feeling technologically challenged? - these kids aren’t…
Posted by Colin Hensley on April 02, 2009 in Uncategorized
I grew up as science loving son of a science teacher & electrical engineer. Unsurprisingly, I am always happy to see projects or activities that help to instil enthusiasm for science into school kids. A really nice example of this is the Toyota Technology Challenge which is aimed at 11-16 year olds in the UK. It is funded by Toyota Fund for Europe, and run by TMUK in collaboration with Rapid.
There are two categories in the challenge. One is building a solar powered car, the other a car with a microcontroller enabling it to detect and avoid obstacles. You can see all of the details in the link above, but the basic idea is this:
• The team registers to participate
• A kit with everything they need to make the vehicle is sent to them
• They produce a folder all about their planned vehicle and submit it (Feb)
• Folder judging – best entries invited to one of 7 regional finals (April)
• At the regionals the folders are presented and vehicles race
• Winners are invited to national final at TMUK (16 May)
• More presentations and racing to find the champions!
This is the 5th year this has been run as a national challenge. Each year they receive about 400 registrations and typically about a quarter will actually submit their entry folder. The first of the regional finals will be held next week in Scotland, so good luck to all of the teams, and watch this space to find out who is successful.
These will be the engineers and scientists of the next decades, developing the technologies and products that we will need to ensure we have a sustainable future. So it’s really important that we get as many students as possible involved in this type of activity, and celebrate their enthusiasm.
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Comments(0)Welcome to our new blog!
Posted by Colin Hensley on January 12, 2009 in 360° approach
Dear Reader,
Welcome to our new blog. My name is Colin Hensley and I am responsible for Corporate Affairs and Planning at Toyota Motor Europe. I’ll be posting here regularly from now. I’ve been a great believer in the internet for a long time, and I am very excited that we’ll finally be able to share our thoughts with you here and keep you up to date with what’s happening at Toyota in Europe. I’m especially keen to share with you our environmental initiatives, and our commitment to local society.
It will take a bit of time to get this ‘right’, but please bear with me. Based on your feedback I’ll try to apply kaizen (or continuous improvement) and write about the things you would like to know about.
In time, I plan to invite other colleagues to become involved, so that this will be a real team effort on our part, giving you some things to think about, some to talk about and some, well, some that I hope will inspire you.
So, here’s my first post, after reading it please take a minute and let me know what you think.
Best regards,
Colin
