BUDDING scientists in Solihull, Coventry and the rest of the West Midlands are being challenged to explore the metaverse as part of a school’s competition.
Primary and secondary schools across the region are invited to join Mission: Sustainability, a community programme led by Enzen, a Solihull-based global knowledge enterprise focused on making energy and water more accessible, affordable and sustainable for all.
Participating schools receive an innovation fund to invest in creative science teaching, access to the latest Digital Reality industry knowledge to inform their lessons and the opportunity to join talks from Enzen colleagues about careers in engineering.
Such Digital Reality technologies will form the basis of what is known as the metaverse – a single, universal and immersive virtual world that could transform how we create and interact as communities.
This year MX Reality, which specialises in producing Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality and Artificial Intelligence solutions, has joined forces with Enzen.
The free to enter competition will set themed challenges on how Digital Reality and the metaverse can be used to build a more sustainable world.
Entries will be judged by senior Enzen and MX Reality colleagues and the winning pupils announced in July, with their schools earning cash prizes of up to £300 to spend on science teaching.
Dr Sam Rashid, head of science at 2022 participants Langley School, said: “We participated in Mission: Sustainability to give our students the opportunity to think outside the box and come up with solutions to real-world problems.
“Our school benefited tremendously from this experience and I would love to see more young people and their teachers take up the challenge in 2023.”
The sessions begin in March to coincide with British Science Week.
To register for the programme, teachers should email [email protected] with their name, position, school, location and which Key Stage Challenge they would like to take part in by March 3.
