On Tuesday 12th March the club hosted the 2024 Technology Tournament at the Cruise Terminal in Tilbury.
Participating this year was Gable Hall, Thames Park Secondary, The Hathaway Academy and St Clere's School, plus a combined teachers team who produced a masterpiece of crafting. The students whose ages ranged from 12 and a half to 15 had to design, build and test a Flashing Beacon using either an electrical circuit with LED's or bulbs. The levels of ingenuity were a delight to see as a number of designs were imagined, built and presented with one of the teams from Gable Hall winning overall. The team won a trophy, presented by Steven Quigley, to take back to their school and each student was awarded an Amazon voucher for £25.
However next year we may have to add a runner-up category as it was a close run thing and given the effort, imagination and application from the teams its a pity we couldn't have more than one winner. The students were a delight to meet, all were polite, friendly and took the competition seriously as well as having fun. They were all a credit to themselves, their teachers and their schools.
We were also very fortunate to have the Tilbury Radio Club demonstrating their radio equipment and giving the students a quick lesson in Morse Code, more of this in future bulletins.
More pictures of the tournament will be released along with a video as the final edits have been completed by Jay Willoughby from the South Essex College who was our cameraman and videographer for the day, our heartfelt thanks to him for this. Also from The South Essex College was Simon Parker and James (who was one of our judges) along with Rotarians and partners Clive Page & Fiona East, Nicholas Wilkinson, Corrin Whymark, Nick Heath (who PAT tested our equipment) John Collier. Abdul Quddoos, Pam Worrall (our senior Judge) John Smith (our President) Sheena Allsopp from the Cruise Terminal, myself and my wife Lesley Quigley. Without the tireless efforts of all involved including the teachers who not only brought the students to the venue, also entered the competition with gusto, this event would never have happened, so huge THANK YOU to all of them.