Electronics Everywhere
Published: 19 November 2020
This year, The Ogden Trust has been supporting ‘Electronic Everywhere’ – a project by the UK Electronics Skills Foundation (UKESF) to help build the engineers of tomorrow. In 2018, the project received formal endorsement from the Royal Academy of Engineering and with support from the Trust, the programme is now being delivered to eight schools in Yorkshire, the North West and the North East of England.
The UKESF still has a limited number of free resource sets available for state-sector secondary schools. Find out more and sign up below.
The project has been working with schools to increase teacher knowledge and understanding of electronics so they can raise awareness about engineering careers at their schools. Schools receive a re-useable set of resources to support A-level physics or computer science classes, along with online teacher CPD and video tutorials to facilitate the use of these resources in lessons.
“Technology is at the heart of our world; it is the future,” says Stewart Edmondson, CEO of UKESF who has been leading this initiative. “Recent technological advances in communication, transportation, healthcare provision and entertainment have already transformed our society but there are continued challenges too, of course.
“Technology offers hope and expectation, and electronics is a vital part of all these technologies. The UK has a long heritage of technological innovation and a world-class electronics sector,” continues Stewart. “However, there is now a shortage of electronics engineers (especially graduates), which means that there are too few engineers and designers to develop the next generation of products and help produce the creative technological solutions needed by society.
“We want to encourage more young people to consider engineering as a career and to be aware of the opportunities available in the electronics sector for the benefit of the UK and wider society,” concludes Stewart.
Electronics Everywhere shows young people how engaging electronics can be, and the exciting career opportunities that are available within the sector. Around 37,000 pupils study A-level physics each year and although electronics is part of the curriculum, there are few hands-on teaching resources available to schools.
Electronics Everywhere is a collaboration between UKESF and the University of Southampton, with support from the Institute of Physics and Computing at Schools; it has provided practical resources for teachers to deliver the electronics parts of the curricula. The project has included areas such as music mixing, which has been linked to other parts of the curriculum (eg wave theory) and included experiments that provide a very visual accompaniment to theory (eg Planks’ Constant).
Each school supported by Electronics Everywhere received a classroom set of 10 circuit board kits, which are fully packaged and re-usable; online teacher CPD and tutorials to familiarise them with all aspects of the teaching resource; and access to online teaching resources, lesson plans, guides and additional information.
Electronics Everywhere
- Re-usable classroom resources. These are manufactured in the UK and loaned, free of charge, to state schools.
- Aligned with A-Level curriculum for both physics and computing.
- Connecting physics and computing curricula, through real world contemporary contexts, to future engineering careers.
- Investing in teachers. Enabling teachers to deliver the computer science and physics A-level curriculum in a more engaging and hands-on way.
- Supporting materials for teachers, such as ‘real-world’ engineering problems, for example, Logic and Arithmetic Electronic Engineering.
- Explainer videos available online, along with extension work.
Register your interest by emailing: electronics.everywhere@ukesf.org
