Learning to predict the future by inventing it – TeenTech Awards

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

It is proving to be an unexpectedly busy end to our academic year.

Jenny and I assisted our Director of Studies with setting up a Scholars’ Society for students in Years 7-10 (Grades 6-9). Based on my positive experience of running the TeenTech Awards at Oakham School from 2016-2019 (see below), Jenny and I ended up offering TeenTech as a track for Scholars, which I am primarily responsible for, with the option for students of also applying for a CREST Silver Award, which Jenny is primarily responsible for. The reason for offering CREST Silver, rather than Bronze, is that all of our Year 7-8 (Grade 6-7) Scholars have already achieved a Bronze Award as part of their Year 6 (Grade 5) Signature Work Inquiry, which Jenny coordinates.

I am pleased that one of our seven teams has progressed to the Final, which will be held at the Institution of Engineering and Technology in London on 27 June 2025. I am equally pleased that Blanchelande College has been recognized as a TeenTech Silver Centre of Innovation and Creativity for enabling the “innovators of tomorrow.”

I include below the Library Blog post about this development, which again demonstrates the importance and value of a sound model of the inquiry process, and which a number of judges noted.

I also include below a brief article I wrote for the CILIP School Libraries Group about my experience of the TeenTech Awards while at Oakham, which is also available here at the CILIP School Libraries Group Website.

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Year 9 Scholars Progress to National Final in London

Pioneering computer scientist Alan Kay said that the surest way to predict the future was to invent it. This is precisely what Scholars who entered the prestigious TeenTech Awards set out to do. Seven teams submitted innovative proposals for making the world a better place to live in. All teams achieved Bronze or Silver in the qualifying round, with one team —  rEcycle and Co — progressing through to the final round. Isabella, Tiffany and Finn (who is now at school in England) will take their idea for a smart, solar-powered recycling bin — which one judge described as “one of the most comprehensive, well thought out ideas I have come across” — to the Institution for Engineering and Technology in London on 27 June. In addition, Blanchelande has been recognised as a Silver TeenTech Centre of Innovation & Creativity for enabling “the innovators of tomorrow.” The seven teams who submitted entries are:

• JMI Lipstick in the Ethical Innovation category — Isaac, Jodi and Maria in Year 7 — for their homemade eco-friendly and organic lipstick range that is as good for the planet as it is for you (and your pocket)! Judged “a fantastic project with a strong ethical focus and a great mix of creativity, science and care for the environment.”
• projector4 in the Education category — Gethin in Year 8 and Owen in Year 9 — for their 4-way projector for educational and entertainment use. Judged “a fantastic project!”
• rEcycle and Co in the Environment and Energy category — Isabella, Tiffany and Finn in Year 9 — for their solar-powered and AI-enabled public litter bin that sorts, compacts and distributes litter for minimal waste and maximal recycling. Judged “one of the most comprehensive, well thought out ideas I have come across.”
• RentaTools in the Environment and Energy category — Alexander in Year 7 — for his app/website that facilitates hiring/renting of tools instead of buying them. Judged “an innovative and environmentally conscious solution to a common problem in the Guernsey community.”
• Shoplicity in the Food and Retail category — Gabriel and Jude in Year 7 — for their pathfinding app/website that facilitates shopping, especially for people who are anxious or experiencing difficulty with their memory. Judged “a brilliant idea that has been very well researched.”
• Sight-to-Sound in the Wearable Technology category — Edouard and Theo in Year 7 — for their glasses that convert sound to sight in the form of words projected onto the lenses as an aid for those who are hard of hearing, or simply for some karaoke fun. Judged “a creative and thoughtful project that shows real heart and bold thinking.”
• WeTube in the Education category — Reuben in Year 7 — for his video guide to making videos to help aspiring YouTubers create their own YouTube channel. Judged a “a fantastic project that tackles a real problem with creativity and determination.”

TeenTech is “an award winning charity, founded in 2008 by Maggie Philbin and Chris Dodson to help students see the wide range of career possibilities within science, technology and engineering.”

The TeenTech Awards were established in 2012/3 to help students “see how they might apply science and technology to real world problems [and encourage them] to develop their own ideas for making life better, simpler, safer or more fun.”

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Learning to predict the future by inventing it – TeenTech Awards

{Note: This article outlines my thoughts on running the TeenTech Awards at Oakham School from 2016-2018. We also entered in 2019, with three teams progressing to the Final. Shortly after, Covid-19 brought pretty much everything to a standstill, followed in 2021 by our move to Blanchelande College in Guernsey.}

The surest way to predict the future is to invent it, a maxim attributed to Alan Kay while at Xerox PARC, who did as much as any to invent the future of computing.

So how does one go about inventing the future?

Somewhat paradoxically, the answer is rooted in the past.

Jacques Ellul said that history is the consequence of ideas, which means that the future, which will become the past, is also the consequence of ideas.

Now, not all ideas are good ideas, and even good ideas are not equally so, so we need to begin as we mean to go on, and the TeenTech Awards has proven to be a good vehicle for developing good ideas, and then making them better.

It starts with a question: Do you have an idea for making the world a better place? Because TeenTech aims to help young people understand their true potential and the real opportunities available in the contemporary STEM workplace, the idea must involve some combination of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. How this STEM requirement is dealt with is, for me, the first strength of the Awards – as the cyberpunk authors so forcefully heralded in the 80s, we live in a science fictional world, although it is not yet evenly distributed, so some combination of STEM in its broadest sense touches everything, and so anything is potentially an entry-point to the Awards.

The need to test if the idea is good, and then to develop good ideas to make them better is the second strength of the Awards, and  the point at which librarians have a real contribution to make to both the process of inquiry and the resources to support inquiry.  At Oakham School, where I run the Awards as an activity, this is also a rare opportunity for students from Year 7 to Year 13 to experience an open inquiry, in which neither the direction of the inquiry nor its outcome are predetermined.

The third strength of the Awards is that students are only required to develop their idea as far as they can, which for some will be into a fully functioning prototype, while for others it might simply be more or less sketched out on paper. This presents a very low barrier to entry with a high ceiling, and minimal running costs beyond my time.

The fourth strength of the Awards is the need to submit the entry in the form of  formal report, which is similar to an Extended Essay or EPQ, and provides students with a substantial opportunity to develop their academic writing.

I entered the Awards for the first time in 2016, for two main reasons: firstly, as an opportunity for students to stretch themselves through open inquiry; secondly, as an opportunity to test the robustness of our approach to learning through inquiry (FOSIL), specifically in the Research and Information Literacy Award for Years 7-11. Not only have we achieved remarkable success in the Research and Information Literacy Award (winning in 2016 and 2017, and being a finalist in 2018), and recently also the Best Research Project Award for Years 12-13 (wining in 2018), but we have achieved remarkable successes within other Awards as well. Further to this, I have been nominated for the Teacher of the Year Award for three years in a row, which is a significant opportunity, both at the Final and the Awards Ceremony, to highlight the integral role of information literacy and the librarian within an inquiry-based approach to learning, and, as a direct consequence of extraordinary success in the Awards, to challenge unhelpful stereotypes of the librarian.

As HRH The Duke of York is the Patron of the Awards, category winners receive their Awards during a ceremony at Buckingham Palace.

This year I travelled down with Holly, who won the Best Research Project award in 2018 for her inquiry into the causes of the underrepresentation of women in computer science.

This is a very special and memorable occasion for all involved, but unfortunately the link to the official photographs from the Ceremony has not yet been released.

However, the short video clip (5m09s) of the 2018 Awards Final at the Royal Society in London gives a flavour of what the TeenTech Awards is all about. If you would like to know more about the TeenTech Awards, or how I run the Awards at Oakham, please do contact me ([email protected]).

Darryl Toerien. Librarian, Oakham School

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