On Thursday 3rd November, S1 pupils had the opportunity to take part in a ‘Design and Build a Wind Farm in Virtual Reality’ project at the Shetland UHI.  The session was run in partnership with Developing the Young Workforce (DYW) Shetland and SSE Renewables.

The aim of the project was to provide a fun, interactive workshop that helped pupils find out about the range of STEM related careers available and to build on their own personal and academic skills.

The pupils worked in groups on designing a wind farm.  Activities involved: choosing the turbines used, siting them on a map using computer imaging software; calculating their costs, revenues and profits; and presenting their ideas to the rest of the group and the course organisers.  The winning team, Dizzy Energy (Alice, Carrie, Reuben and Michael) were commended for including information about the wider reasons for building a wind farm and for getting all their calculations right.

In addition to the 3DW project, pupils also heard from Shetland UHI representatives about the Skills4Work programme which they will be able to apply for in Term 3 of S2.

We would like to thank Emily von Tonder (DYW co-ordinator) for organising the activity, Andy Dennison from 3DW who ran the workshop and Julie Graham from SSE Renewables who funded the workshop.