Industry Days
Back when I was in year 10 (around 1998/99), the buzz around Secondary schools were Industry days. These consisted of Business people from the local area, giving up a day to sit with a pile of 14 and 15 year olds who really, didn't want to be there and to try to coach us in working as a team to develop something out of Boxes and sellotape to revolutionise the world we live in today.

Generally, everything which was designed was stupid, rubbish and came from the idea of 14 and 15 year olds being bored and coming up with stupid ideas. There would always be one team who'd take it seriously (and would win a voucher for £20 for Wickes or Halfords....somewhere which didn't exactly have much relevance for teenager)and there idea would still be crap but they'd just present it well.

Generally, you'd see all sorts of Cardboard Robots, Cardboard, Androids, Cardboard Hoovers.......imagine it, someone probably made it out of cardboard, stuck some more cardboard to it and suddenly it was a Robot which would re-stock toilet paper in 3 seconds while being next door.

The one oustanding memory I have from these days was a team spent the entire day, discussing what their cardboard robot could do. This team was the serious team but had one of the jokers from the year as an assistance and he did come into his own when it came to the presentations at the end of the day.

Teams managed to design, made and present these robots/androids on a regular basis with a small ripple of applause. Looking over to this team on a regular basis, it could be noted that things weren't going well. Apart from the one guy, stressed faces were the common theme.

As it came around to their time to present, nobody wanted to go up to present their idea. It was obvious things hadn't gone to plan.

The joker, who we shall now call Daniel (as that was his name) grabbed their project for the day, confidently stormed up onto the stage and simply stated

"This is our box"

At this point, he held a box, very similar to this (http://bubbalulu.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/boxbin2.jpg)
above his head.

No other words were muttered before he put the box on the stage and walked back to his team.

This is the only time that a standing ovation has been given in an industry day. The students were in adoration. The teachers and local business people....not so much.

Unfortunately, that team lost and the winners developed something along the lines of a robot (as normal) and industry days since then have been far more monitored.
(bakircioglu, Fri 14 Aug 2009, 21:52, Reply)