Goodbye Blogger... Hello Facebook!

Unfortunately this will be the last H-STEM post on Blogger. Whilst the site itself is fantastic the user base isn't vast enough to warrant the time taken to post on here.

However... whilst the Blog is no more the Facebook page has just begun! Please take a look at the H-STEM company page and join in with the discussions if you are a facebook user. http://www.facebook.com/pages/H-STEM/110697875608828?v=wall

Kids show their parents how it is done...

Today was Fairhaven Primary schools Family Education Day and I was happy to be involved to help out (not that much help was needed!). Their challenge... to design and build a propeller propelled buggy.

The day was a great success but one thing was clear- the students that take part in the after school engineering club definitely appeared to have more confidence with tools and generally working in a practical way than those who did not attend.

Whilst it is hard to quantify this impact it is interesting to see the clubs influence spreading to other areas of their school work.

Shining lights at Broadland High

The annual Wroxham and Hoveton Rotary Club Technology Tournament took place at Broadland High today.

The challenge was to create a flashing beacon designed to automatically flash every second for 10 seconds. Sounds easy? Well not when you only have a few simple materials from which to create a switching mechanism!

All of the students were very dedicated as they worked in their teams and acting as a judge it is fair to say that the scores were close! On my score chart I had a tie for the lead of the "Basic" category with the runners up only a few points behind.

After the scores were aggregated Broadland High scored a clean sweep picking up Basic, Intermediate and Advanced levels, the latter being by default being the only entry! It was also a chance for the Rotarians to steal back the honours from the teachers after last years defeat.

We are offering the school a chance to bring some of their winners down to the Engineering Centre to get there hands on some of the technology we have at our disposal and plan to continue our support of the competition in a similar manner next year.

ready, SET, go

I was again honoured to be a judge at the Go4SET CAD day held at the EcoTech centre in Swaffham... even if it did mean reading through the 4 reports the night before the event after getting in at 8:00pm!

All 7 of the projects, concentrating on energy use in their school, were of a fantastic standard and as always it was difficult to try and separate the teams out in the scoring.

Most evident was the students ability to implement simple, effective and low cost solutions to real life problems.

I look forward to the OPITO backed Go4SET programme, the CAD day for which will be held at HEC.

HEC is growing!

The steel work for the 11 workshop extension at Hethel is growing at a rapid pace. In fact it has already moved on alot since these pictures were taken just 2 days ago.

What this means for H-STEM is a new bigger student workshop with a student rest area and all of our equipment in a single space.

Keep your eyes on the website and blog for details of the official opening in April.

HEC VLE + FREE Training!

No it isn't attack of the 3 letter acronyms! What it is is the Hethel Engineering Centre page that will soon be appearing on Fronter.

The page will allow you to access the latest tutorials and info on H-STEM and the whole skills area of what we are doing at HEC.

Along with the launch of our VLE page we are also hoping to help support in the use of Fronter by working with Norfolk County Council to offer a free training session for Norfolk High School teachers. The 2 hour session is suitable for all and will run from 15:00 to 17:00 on 23rd March.

Interested? Drop me an email to sign up!

Big Changes at HEC!

The blog has been placed on the back burner for a while (nearly 2 months infact!) and rather than trying to do a big catch up on what has happened in that time I am instead going to say, if you are interested click here and download the last two e-newsletters (Issues 9 and 10). I now aim to post up an update at least once a week and if I don't please feel free to give me a kick!

That isn't to say that we haven't been busy here at HEC, in fact quite the opposite! We are working on a number of things at the moment including the new revised Learning Skills Centre. The latest "version 3.0" of the skills centre will be housed in a new larger 100m square workshop and will include new IT suite with four extra workstations, new Electronics area, student rest area and a whole host of new equipment.

Another new development is a range of portable kit to take more of our activities out in to schools... now can I have that 5 series Estate to put it all in please boss?!

We plan to launch the whole offering in early April so keep an eye on the website, e-newsletter and Twitter (what do you mean you don't have 3 eyes?) for further details.

F1Groups get ready to race!

The Open Opportunities Manufacturing and Product Design students have been down at HEC in their own time making some modifications to their cars ready for the national F1 in Schools finals in January.

Improvements include new more efficient wheel produced on our rapid prototyping equipment, bearings to lower rolling resistances and new liveries to wow the crowds!

The national finals will be held at the Autosport Show on 16th & 17th January at the NEC, Birmingham.

Enthusiastic students always welcome... especially on Mondays!

We recently had a phone call saying that a 15 year old student was a) very interested in engineering and b) had built his own RapMan RP kit. Needless to say we invited him straight down for a chat!

Whilst the kits contain everything you need the early versions weren't exactly like building a Tamiya RC car, the instructions were vague and full of errors and it requires the builder to have some amount of knowledge of such equipment. At 15 obviously Oliver had a limited knowledge bank to fall back on but instead of being put off and relegating the kit to the back of a cupboard (probably my chosen course of action at 15) he went digging around the internet for help and got the kit up and running... and even brought us a sample part to prove it!

Oliver is now coming to HEC after school on Monday afternoons and has resurrected the thought that we need to run an open session for students to use the centres facilities whether it be for coursework needs or simply their own interest.

On that note we now run the catchily titled "Student Access" sessions which run from 16:00 to 18:00 every Monday. All are welcome and we only ask that students pre register via email either before hand or on the day.

F1 in Schools Regional Final Results

Considering the timescale that the students had to work to it was amazing that all three teams managed to get their cars finished as well as all of the presentation work that went with it. Even more amazing was that one of the teams has made it through to the national finals!

Team Pluto who were showing their pace during the in house testing at HEC have made it through to the national finals in January.

The team will now have the next couple of months to make any adjustments to their cars. I will of course be reporting back with how they get on but in the mean time here is a video slideshow of the last week of the build, testing and the regional heats. Click here!

F1 in Schools MPD Diploma group

Whilst I was wearing out the A14 on the way to the D+T Show the MPD Diploma group working on the F1 in schools project were in the corridors of HEC testing out their cars. A nice press article on this can be seen here http://ow.ly/Fcwy

Good luck to the teams who are competing today!

D&T Show

On Friday I made the trip to Birmingham for the D&T Show and was pleased to see that in between the companies exhibiting that there was some showcased work from schools. The work from the various universities was very impressive and I wonder if it would be possible to create a collection of projects to showcase what we are doing at secondary level in the East of England? Does this sound like it is something that would be of interest? If so get in touch. I think that whilst the show obviously has to have a commercial nature the showcasing of work plays a very important part of it. At the end of the day schools can have all the latest kit available but if there are no exciting projects being created then the goal has been missed.

That said the equipment on display was very impressive and I now have a rather large wish list. Well... christmas is coming...

Solidworks Twilight

Thanks to all of those that attended the Solidworks twilight session last night. Everyone seemed to make great progress in the small amount of time that we had. Hopefully even those that had a few frustrations have picked up a few tips to help get you started with the software.

We want to make these a regular occurance and we are happy to tailor future sessions to your needs (they are for your use at the end of the day!) so if there are any topics that you would like covered please feel free to fire off a request either via email to the usual address or via the blog (just comment on this post if you like). If we get a few different ideas I will try and work out how to put a poll up!

The next one is scheduled in for February but we can look at slipping in another date if the demand exists, again request via either email or comment.

Primary students pushing expectations

Today saw the third session of the Primary CAD CAM project, for those of you that don't know about it here is the summary- Students are working in teams of 4 or 5 to create a range of keyrings for a specific target market. This starts with an introductory session with each school (which I am doing now), the students will then proceed through the various stages of Brainstorming (I think its ok to use that term this week...), market research, development sketches, final design and then finally a 4:1 scale drawing of the finished keyring. Then at HEC we will go through getting the designs onto CAD and production using our laser cutter.

I must admit to having underestimated the ability of the year 5 and 6 students that I have been working with. From the first session I've had to deviate away from my planned delivery (planned is a very loose term for me!) and thrown in a few curve balls and what I would have previously considered year 7, 8 and 9 concepts in order to keep the students stretched.

This is a real credit to these students as well as the schools involved in the project and the ability to have a flexible approach to learning for the youngsters will I'm sure pay dividends when it comes to the critical development time between now and their return to HEC with the schools already saying that they can free up some more time for the students to carry this on.

It is now our job to ensure that we repay this enthusiasm with an exciting visit to HEC and I'm sure the students won't leave disappointed!

Here it is!

Welcome to the H-STEM blog, an informal place to keep up to date with our latest activities, have your say on H-STEM and STEM in general and... well... as this is the first post lets wait and see shall we!