SATRO COMPANY CHALLENGE - SIEMENS "NEXT BIG THING"

Today was the final judging for the KS4 Siemens Company Challenge. Taking place at Siemens headquarters in Frimley, the judging comes after 4 months of very hard work! Teams from ACS Cobham School, Charterhouse School, The Connaught School, Gordon's School, LVS Ascot, Reading Girls School and Tomlinscote School attended the Kick-off event back in January, when they were given briefs for their projects. The teams were given the opportunity to choose from a list of 5 categories, on which they would base their project and 'invent' a product. The categories were:

• Improving a patients experience when being scanned to identify potential health problems.
• A way of improving healthcare for elderly patients.
• The use of technology, internet and mobile devices to ensure that people living in a remote part of the world have access to the same level of healthcare as those who live in cities and major towns.
• Using products and technology that is available for us, improving the immediate follow up and response to save more lives after a possible natural disaster (tsunamis, floods).
• Thinking of patients, doctors and engineers, a way to control an infectious disease (e.g. Ebola) and reducing it's impact. 

Over the past 4 months, each group of students has been working with a staff member from Siemens who has been acting as a mentor to help guide the students in their project. The students will have learnt about marketing and product development, and what it is like to work in the technology/engineering industry - directly from those who do. This experience will have provided the students with a great item to include in university applications or interviews. 

Today the students have been presenting their projects to a team of judges. The teams were working towards 3 winning categories, "Best Presentation", "Innovative Research & Development", and "Overall Winner". Each team lead a very strong presentation and had worked very hard in the months running up to today's judging. The winners of each category were as follows; Overall Winners - Reading Girls School, Best Presentation - Tomlinscote School and Innovative Research & Development -  Gordon's School.

Siemens ‘Next Big Thing’ Challenge 2015

How would you use technology to improve access to healthcare in remote parts of the world or response following natural disasters? A couple of the challenges thrown down by Siemens to schools taking part in this year’s Next Big Thing Challenge. The students were at Siemens offices in Frimley this morning to hear about these and the other challenges and meet their Siemens mentors.  Following first sessions with their mentors they have already started developing their ideas which will be judged by the dragons in May.