Hannover Fair by video conference

I was one of thousands whose plans for the Hannover Fair were disrupted by the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano. I didn't make it to Germany, but I did get to keep my most important fair appointment, with a group of US high school students, by video conference on the 40th anniversary of Earth Day.

As my regular readers know, I support and comment on technology education and youth programs. Hannover Fair is to be commended for their youth initiative which includes exhibits aimed at secondary school students, allows students to exhibit their own automation projects, and attracts 5000 students and their teachers to the fair. This is in stark contrast to most US trade fairs that I have attended where students are greeted with signs declaring that absolutely no one under the age of 16 may be admitted.

As I reported in OnTheEdgeBlog last month, a group of vocational education students from Cumberland-Perry VoTech School in Pennsylvania earned the opportunity to travel to Hannover Fair to exhibit their winning project from Phoenix Contact's 2010 Nanoline competition. Traveling in two groups of five students with their chaperones, all were turned back at JFK airport due to flight cancellations as the result of volcanic ash.

Not to be deterred, the students' project, a chopped and narrowed Dodge on a golf cart chassis with a bio-diesel battery charger, was set up in the Harrisburg, PA headquarters of Phoenix. One of the students produced a video overnight that was played in the Hannover Fair TecToYou booth. Video cameras in Harrisburg caught various angles of the project while visitors in the Hannover booth controlled the functions of the car by sending it text messages via cell phone.

On Earth Day, when the student booths were to be featured in Hannover, the student's met in Harrisburg and answered questions from the floor of the fair in Germany. They also got to meet the German winning team via video-conference. The German team had their project integrated into their school curriculum, spending every afternoon class for several months working on their project. The US team completed much of their project on their own time after school and on weekends during a three month period. Just as in real life, they reported working on the software right up to the night before the competition and then continuing to work on it in preparation for the fair. Sounds like every startup I was ever on!

Although the volcano created some great disappointment for the team, during the video conference, Phoenix officials in Germany announced that the students were being invited to visit Germany during the summer school recess when they will get to tour Phoenix headquarters and an automated German auto plant. The Nanoline competition was also announced for 2011. Schools wishing to learn more about the 2011 US competition may contact Molly McGowan, Public Relations Specialist.

Lest anyone doubts the value of student technical competitions and science fairs or the value of expanding technology education in our vocational school programs, I urge you to view the following videos. Then share with all us your ideas or experiences in exciting young people about science, technology, engineering and math.

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Comments Science fairs for kids from Grade 7 to Grade 12 are a key to fulfilling the needs of our society in the future. There is more to a rich life than Wall Street and valueless jobs. I have been judging our Regional Science Fair for about 27 years and I can tell you the enthusiasm and energy of our youth should be an encouragement and hope to us all. Overlooking their spelling, grammar and speaking skills as well as proper confidence that the schools and parents fail in giving to our youth, I look forward every year to meet, talk and encourage them. We all need to encourage them to look to practical and scienfic endeavors, especially if they have those talents and enjoy being creative in the proper sense. One more thing, the best projects always came from those that used the computer as a tool and spent the least time on the computer as a toy. Posted by: Paul Zepf on April 30, 2010 It is a great tragedy that our American public schools lack the funding and will to let students do technology projects like this - textbooks and theory are one thing but the real learning occurs in the application. Perhaps with more positive PR like this more people will take notice and help make it happen. Posted by: Glenn Whiteside on April 30, 2010 This is a wonderful bit of coverage that makes everyone who reads it proud and hopeful. Warren Posted by: Warren Schirado on April 30, 2010 These kids are so incredibly excited to have earned this recognition, but the excitement has been on-going since late fall when they first started on the project. It has done more to encourage, motivate, inspire creativity and innovation, and an interest in school more than any other incentive or activity a school could create. A huge thank you to Phoenix Contact for making this contest possible for our students to participate. Thanks so much! Posted by: Mary Rodman on May 3, 2010 I think when enable sharing through video like this it really opens up what others in the country are doing. The problem is that teachers don't know it and can't tell there students "go home and look here". I tell my kids everyday to learn science and math.. Posted by: Chuck on May 6, 2010 Post a comment (If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.) Name: Email Address: URL: Remember personal info? Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style) Type the word 'packaging' (required):