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.