A pizza box to harness the power of the sun?

28 February 2018

A pizza box to harness the power of the sun?

Genesis is energising young minds via STEM

Genesis Energy believes that its Energising Young Minds competition will help school students when it comes to learning about science, tech, energy and maths (STEM) in New Zealand’s classrooms – and even show how an old pizza box can be turned into a solar oven.

The competition will give away $50,000 in prizes, enabling the winning schools to purchase edu-tech gear including 3D printers, virtual reality goggles and robotics kits.

The competition re-launches the School-gen programme, which has brought solar energy, energy efficiency and related topics to life at schools up and down New Zealand for the past eleven years.

“We wanted School-gen to better reflect our company mission – to reimagine energy”, says CEO Marc England.

Marc says the Energising Young Minds competition will help to do this by giving a real kick to STEM learning.

“This stuff matters – to Genesis, to our kids and to NZ as a whole.

“As an energy management company, Genesis draws on a huge amount of combined know-how from the worlds of science, technology, engineering and maths.

“We also know that New Zealand’s progress will be influenced by the ability of our children to learn about and harness these same important skills.

“That’s why we think STEM learning needs a helping hand, and it’s what the Energising Young Minds competition is all about.

“The kids at Wesley Intermediate in Auckland’s Mt Roskill already get this. They’re using 3D printers to learn about the science and physics behind electricity generation. They’re having fun, too.”

The competition opened earlier this month, and to make the shortlist schools need to campaign for votes from their local community. Primary, Intermediate and Secondary schools are invited to enter, with parents or teachers able to put their school forward.

The lucky winners will be announced on 30 April.

“Not every school can win the big prize, but every school can use the free resources we’ve built into our revamped School-gen website at schoolgen.co.nz”, says Marc.

Click here to watch how Holly (14) and Sam (10) turn an old pizza box into a solar oven.

Click here to see what’s happening at Wesley Intermediate.

Click here to see the nominated schools, voting closes at midnight Monday 2 April.

ENDS

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