STEM Education

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, are essential all to all. Developing a creative and exciting curriculum that excited and engaged our students was a primary objective. Students need to understand how to apply their knowledge to develop their own ideas. We also need the Arts, to jump start creativity, I always included this in design work and the development of ideas and product design teaching - STEAM.

Over the years we created immersive learning pathways for students, opening as many opportunities as possible for our students. Allowing students to experience, develop and more importantly apply their skills in STEM.

At first finding funding was an important priority, but developing the faculty was only the very first step in a journey that meant constant learning, detailed curriculum planning, implementing new practices that took many years, ultimately leading to the faculty becoming a centre of excellence for STEM education.

Building on this we then opened the faculty to other schools in the community, and our students became ambassadors and mentors for STEM education. As time went on our students became increasingly successful at everything they worked at.   

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STEM EDUCATION 

Building Success

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GCA wasn't my first school, I had experience developing technology departments, and with experience in industry, I was looking for a challenge. Planning and building a modern, business-like faculty area was my first task at Greig City Academy, after putting in bids to the Department for Education to secure funding, we got down to making the faculty state of the art, redesigning the layout, and then bringing in the very latest in equipment, especially computer aided design and manufacture.

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F24 Greenpower racing became a popular extracurricular club, with a constant stream of modifications, designing and re-engineering, to perfect the electric endurance racers.

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Our STEM clubs encompassed everything, here are our Rocket Club teams at the UK Rocketry Challenge. Our students loved this club, and it was one of the most popular we ran.

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Robotics club grew out of curriculum projects and our electronics club.

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Electronics, Systems and Control Technology, 3D printing, true computer-controlled manufacture. Making sure that each student had the skills to design and realise their own original designs.

As Head of a Design and Technology Faculty, in an inner-city school we needed to teach our students the skills they would need to compete for university places. Our students needed to be the best, highly skilled and able to stand out. I led my team in developing a forward looking Design and Technology curriculum. This meant a lot of work and constant learning, we built a coherent view of how we would teach design, with state-of-the-art equipment and a digital base. 

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STEM Learning Magazine 2015 - New Design and Technology Requirements. A new national curriculum meant re-writing and re-organising our teaching, it meant also that we modernised our provision and made sure that we provided our students with a real STEM curriculum that would serve them well at university and in the future.

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Greenpower Racing - Our Engineering Club races 148 on the Top Gear race track at Dunsfold park

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Through STEM pathways we developed links with partner primary schools, and working with LEGO Mindstorms we offered a variety of outreach in Systems and Control to our partner schools.

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Building on this we then opened the faculty to other schools in the community, and our students became ambassadors and mentors for STEM education.

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Robotics quickly evolved into an oversubscribed club, from basic electronics, through First Lego League, Vex robotics and First Tech Challenge.

Our aim was to teach students to develop their own designs, from sketched ideas to finished working prototype, we designed the workspaces in the faculty so that our students could develop just about anything they wanted to. The only limit being imagination.

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Greig City Academy – Named STEM Centre of Excellence 2018.  A reward for over a decade of hard work, for my core team and as faculty head, it was a justification of our vision and or tireless work in curriculum development, and my work in the academies governance.

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Complex engineering problems being solved on a daily basis, our students became experts at planning, working through ideas and testing out the solutions.

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93 racing at the Greenpower UK National Finals at Rockingham race track

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Our students continued to push the limits, reducing weight through engineering a lighter chassis for the F24+ car

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F24 electric endurance racing, farthest distance, highest speed one set of batteries and 90 minutes continuous racing. 148 at Dunsfold Park

We developed a clear vision of what we needed to teach and skills that our students needed to for their futures, using this we built forward looking and truly relevant set of courses. Our students learnt industry standard skills, using state of the art machines and current technology, which was instep with new developments in design and manufacture. 

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GCA Magazine - STEM Pathways 2018 -  The magazine charted the development of the STEM pathways and the success of our clubs and of course our students

Making sure students enjoy learning was paramount, using practical design and build projects, in which student could apply their skills in Computing, Physics, Maths and using design and rapid prototyping to manufacture the final outcomes underpinned our strategy.

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GCA Magazine - VEX Robotics Teacher of the Year 2019

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GCA Roboteers work on the robot at National Finals, they went on to win Robot Skills that year. Successive redesigns, and multiple competitions refined the designs, leading to more tournament wins.

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CAD for Robotics became a large part of the design process, led to consistent mechanisms and tested designs even before the actual build.

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3D printing was used to build and test out components quickly, with students developing and testing then re-designing them.

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Many of our STEM students mentored the younger years and outreach to partner schools developed accordingly.

We built up both the in-class curriculum and our extra-curricular clubs, students were very welcome to design and develop their own projects, the only rule was that they had to have designed them themselves.

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GCA Magazine - STEM Pathways 2018 -  The magazine charted the development of the STEM pathways and the success of our clubs and of course our students.

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Making sure my students loved learning was fundamental to our success and the STEM program I taught seemed to do just that.

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I have written hundreds STEM projects to keep my students interested and learning, all of which involved them applying their learning and testing out their ideas.

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Over the years we have had some excellent work produced and the attention to detail some students employ is always amazing.

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Our older students on their way to university worked to develop working prototypes.

We ran so many STEM based clubs and projects, these included; Rocket club, Green power F24 Electric endurance racing, Electronics, Drone club, Arduino and 'the internet of things' club, Engineering, and of course our very successful Robotics club.

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GCA Magazine - First Tech Challenge, and Raytheon Quadcopter Challenge 2021

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Students could develop their ideas in any direction and teaching industry standard skills like architectural model making was essential.

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CAD and simulation software was essential in testing project work, making sure students understood that they could test their design work before building was an important learning goal.

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Teaching true computer aided design and manufacture put our students ahead of their peers, and gave them the advantage at university.

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Our students continue to compete, they are amongst the best in the world.

For over a decade we built the faculty up to be one of the very best in terms of STEM learning and student engagement, making it a centre of excellence for STEM and an extremely exciting place to work.

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GCA Magazine - The Robotics Journey - From beginners to world championship qualifiers 2022

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GCA Magazine - 2023 Our scholarship program was consistently successful, and we encouraged our students to apply. The robotics club continued to build on their success with even more teams competing at world championships.

STEM education is a vital component of today’s education, making sure that it is relevant, that students have had the chance to apply their skills and knowledge, that we make sure that we give today’s students the knowledge and skills they will need in the future. As educators it is our responsibility to open up as many opportunities for our student as we can.

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GCA Magazine - 2024 Engineering students their achievements and our World Championship Robotics Teams, my STEM teaching speaks for itself

I have spent the last 25 years developing the teaching of STEM, making sure what is taught is relevant, up to date and industry standard. I have proven skills in curricular development, STEM education and educational management.

I have spent the last 25 years developing the teaching of STEM, making sure what is taught is relevant, up to date and industry standard. I have put in place not only the curriculum but the facilities and spaces where this can be taught. I have proven skills in curricular planning and development, leadership in STEM education and faculty management.