Brigham Young University’s Technology and Engineering Education program recently placed within the top three in five student competitions at the 2011 International Technology and Engineering Educators Association (ITEEA) Conference, held last month in Minneapolis.
BYU’s student-driven, faculty-led technology and engineering education team received accolades in five of the conference’s seven student competition venues, more than any other school.
Rankings and awards for BYU’s team include:
- Teaching: First Place. BYU’s Technology and Engineering Education program has placed within the top three in this event for the past 15 years. This year was no exception as the team came out on top when students prepared and taught a lesson to a panel of judges about “the advances in traditional fossil fuel amidst the green technology revolution.”
- Video Production/Communications: First Place. Students were asked to make a commercial highlighting an engineering problem, filmed and produced entirely during their stay in Minneapolis. BYU’s team received first place for its “Water into Ideas” video, a 30-second short that features Minneapolis’ St. Anthony Falls. Watch the award-winning video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0Lmip3_7BU.
- Robotics: Second Place. Teams were asked to build a robot that could pick up tennis balls from one area and place them, in a particular order, in another area.
- Quiz Bowl: Second Place. The first competition of the conference, the Quiz Bowl pitted teams against each other in a war of wit concerning recent technology and engineering education topics.
- Problem Solving: Third Place. Competitors had to build a device that could launch and sort various pingpong balls.
Each year, the Technology and Engineering Education program at BYU sends 10 students to compete in the annual ITEEA Conference. Judges for this year’s competitions included employees from National Geographic, among other firms.
“Our success shows that we are very diversified in our skill set,” said Geoffrey Wright, a technology and engineering education professor at BYU who accompanied the team at the conference. “Our program is very diverse — our students are strong in multimedia, robotics, engineering and technological literacy.”
The primary purpose of the Technology and Engineering Education program at BYU is to prepare students to teach technology and engineering to grades 6 through 12.
For more information about the competition or BYU’s Technology and Engineering Education program, contact Beverly Harmon at (801) 422-1818 or Beverly_harmon@byu.edu, or visit 230 Snell Building. Learn more about the program at tee.byu.edu.
Writer: Philip Volmar
