Design a Challenge:

Your task is to design a challenge for youth grades 5 through 12 that introduces and reinforces the scientific process with a hands-on project geared to solve a real-world problem.  Your entry should suggest a real-world problem and its likely solutions that could be built as prototypes by students as their entry into the Tech Challenge competition.

About the Tech Challenge:

Tech Challenge is an annual team design challenge for youth in grades 5 through 12. A signature program of The Tech Museum of  Innovation, Tech Challenge introduces and reinforces the scientific process with a hands-on project geared to solve a real-world problem.  The project-based nature of this program makes it unique from any other science-based program or competition for youth.

Open and  accessible to anyone in the 5th to 12th grade age range, Tech Challenge provides its participants with the chance to know what it's  like to be a Silicon Valley innovator!   Teams document every step of their process including testing, brainstorming, and most importantly what they learn through experimentation and failure.  The Challenge culminates in Event Day, when the teams present their project to the judges.  Their criteria will be 1. Device performance 2. documentation of the design process  3. style and presentation.  Teams should be able to assemble their solution with readily accessible materials on a budget of approximately $50 USD or less. 
The Tech Challenge website is at: http://techchallenge.thetech.org


Important Dates:                                                    
Start:                                             Nov. 15, 2008
Progress review 1:                        tba.
Progress review 2:                        tba.
Progress review 3:                        tba.
Last day for new entries:              Jan.   15, 2009
End:                                               Jan.   15, 2009
Judging begins:                             Jan.   16, 2009

Dates subject to change per participation.


Prizes for winning entries:           
USD $200 for submissions chosen for use as a Tech Challenge.  Up to 5 entries will be selected.
 
Basic Criteria
Your suggested Tech Challenge suggestion should be focused on  design solutions to a real world need or challenge. Youth grades 5 - 12 (ages 8-17) will form teams of about 2-6 students each to produce solutions to the challenge you suggest.  There should be a variety of possible solutions to the challenge.  

For example, past challenges have included:
* Create a device to deliver water to a tank located in a village on a hill above the river. With no electricity in the village; only the flow of the river can be used to generate power.
* Design, build and operate an unmanned device that can survive a 12 -foot drop into a Martian crater and then successfully exit the crater by ascending a 6-foot crater wall.
* Design a device that simulates an inspection mechanism that can traverse the bridge cable supports. The device must be completely suspended from the cable, travel from on bridge support to the other, and touch a sensor at each end.
* Design a device that retrieves a canister from the bottom of an ice-covered lake simulated by a platform of thick plastic.. Challenge models retrieval of a canister of nuclear waste.

A list of all previous challenges is available at: http://techchallenge.thetech.org/tc_archive.cfm

 
How to submit your entry: 

   

 

 


You will be able to create an interactive depiction of your challenge suggestion using The Tech Virtual's Second Life worshop located at http://tinyurl.com/TheTech2   or on the Second Life Teen Grid at "The TechTG" sim.   Contact rketner@thetech.org to request a space. to build.  Entries must have sufficient viability and progress through the 3 progress reviews or may be subject to deletion from the workshop.  Entries may be submitted through Jan. 10, 2009.  This is a required part of your entry.

How to describe your  entry:                                 
Successful entrants into this competition will describe their challenge by completing the following information fields at:
http://thetechvirtual.org/projects/tech-challenge/design-a-challenge

1. Title of the challenge:
(A catchy memorable name that generates interest):     

2. Real world challenge, need, or situation that it models: (the Big Idea section)
(What real world situation is being modeled?)  

3. Description of the challenge:
(In your description field please include the following)
Description of the challenge: What is the  basic challenge in 1 sentence?
Description of successful completion of the challenge: What will a mechanism do to successfully complete the challenge?
Limitations on solutions: what must the device have or not have to qualify? What limitations are there?
Possible solutions:  (Briefly describe solutions that would complete the challenge)


Basic criteria for entry progress:
1. The challenge should fit within the themes of The Tech Challenge.
2. The challenge should be inspiring.  It should inspire the innovator in the student to want to get involved in inventing to improve their own communities and in the world.
3. The challenge must be interactive, in which the students must build a structure or device or solve an engineering problem which can then be tested.
4. It should be educational. The challenge should lead to an understanding of a) the real problem being addressed  b)  how the technology actually works,  and c) how it provides a solution.
5. If there is a connection that can be made with Silicon Valley (companies, local uses for the technology, individuals involved, etc.), that is a plus.
6. It must be feasible for a student team to accomplish the challenge in the form of a prototype simulation on a modest budget (under $50 USD per team)
7. The challenge concept must be licensed under Creative Commons (you agreed to this when you joined the Website).
8. The challenge concept must pass through the qualifying stages of progress in section 2, or contain acceptable content by final entry deadline of Jan. 10, 2009.


Judging criteria:
Topic selection:  20%
Educational:       20%
Relevance:         20%
Feasibility:         20%
Creativity:          20%

Judging panel:
The judging panel will  be assembled by the Tech Museum.

Resources
You are encouraged to use The Tech Virtual's  http://tinyurl.com/TheTech2-Office (main grid) and "The TechTG" on the Teen Grid.
Entrants who are unable to use the Second Life program please contact rketner@thetech.org