It was a very exciting day on Monday for the winners of the TeenTech Awards 2014 who were invited to Buckingham Palace for a special presentation ceremony by our wonderful patron HRH Duke of York KG. For everyone involved it was a day to be remembered forever!
While the students teams waited for Duke to arrive there was a chance to see a film of the judging day in June which had led to to their invitation to present their ideas to an enthusiastic audience at Buckingham Palace.
httpv://youtu.be/8koB_9Cz-pM
It was an inspiring experience to hear young people discuss their ambitious ideas for making life better, simpler or easier. Each winning team brought their prototypes and updated HRH Duke of York on their progress since June.
As BBC journalist Seann Couglan pointed out in his report on the BBC Education website the modernity of the technology under discussion was in contrast to the the gilt and grandeur of the palace. The room where the awards were presented , The Bow Room, was redesigned in 1853. In that year, cutting-edge designs meant the opening of the first pillar box and Isambard Kingdom Brunel accepted the commission to build the biggest ship in the world, the SS Great Eastern.
Deputy Head Teacher who accompanied the overall winners, Birkdale School said he not only felt proud of his own students but had come away inspired by the the extraordinary ideas that the teenagers had been able to come up with and develop. ‘One can only begin to imagine what kind of impact they might have in the future. There is clearly so much potential within young minds that is often being untapped and TeenTech has found a way of addressing that issue’
You can see all of the photos from the event with pictures of all the prize winners on the TeenTech Flickr pages but here is a very small selection: