What an amazing relationship Rode Heath is developing with Siemens in Congleton.
Earlier this year Marc Fouldes and Joanne Mellor spent the day with Years 5 & 6 teaching them about the Lean principles of manufacturing. And, on Wednesday 22nd March, the Year 6 class visited the Congleton site to learn which pupil was the successful winner of the Desk Design competition.
The children had been tasked in February with creating their ideal desk for the classroom. They had to think about the positive aspects of their existing desks and how they could be improved. Questions such as ideal height, shape, adjustability and comfort were considered.
Having planned their designs, the children then drew them in their Engineering Log Books and a number were put forward to Siemens for judging. The winning desk was then drawn on a Siemens CAD system and put into the VR Cave for the children to view in 3D on their arrival.
Here are a few of the shortlisted designs:-
The winning desk was designed by Charlotte Hibberd, who impressed the judges with her attention to detail and the excellent range of gadgets that she had included.
Charlotte has written about the day:-
Visit to Siemens
We were asked by Siemens to design our own desk as part of our Engineering Project. My design had a pop-up Google screen, a drinks container and a spell check button on it. Siemens created the winning desk in their virtual reality room and I was lucky enough to win the ‘create a desk’ competition. We visited Siemens so that all the class could see my design come to life.
When we arrived at Siemens we had a presentation about all the work that they company does around the world.
Afterwards, we were taken to the virtual reality room, which had a computer with a 3D screen and a controller to move the 3D image around. I saw my own desk come to life on the 3D screen. I could move the desk about, walk around it and pretend to site on the chair; it looked exactly like my design. It was so cool!
For the next activity, we split into groups of 5 to play a team building game called ‘Sneak a Peek’. Each team took it in turns to send a spy to look at a Lego model of a building. They had to return to the team to tell them what to build with their Lego pieces to recreate the building. They were not allowed to touch the Lego themselves. Each person had a turn at being the spy. I found it tricky not to touch the Lego myself and trying to tell the others which pieces to move was not easy either.
It was a really interesting day out – the best bit was seeing my own design for real!
By Charlotte Hibberd
And here are the CAD drawings of her desk.
What an amazing experience! I can’t wait to see what are next joint venture will be!
Thank you so much Siemens.
Think Like An Engineer 