North East schoolgirl hopes to inspire more girls into STEM as she wins prestigious national award
A North East school girl - who's won a prestigious design and technology award - says she wants to inspire other young girls to get involved in STEM and Robotics
A North East school girl - who's won a prestigious design and technology award - says she wants to inspire other young girls to get involved in STEM and Robotics.
Iona Nicholson, who goes to Wardley Primary School in Newcastle, was awarded the "Local Supply Chain Excellence Award for the Bernard Brown Outstanding Pupil; Age 5-11" Prize, by the Design and Technology Association.
Iona, who is part of the schools VEX Robotics team, says she hopes it leads other young women and girls to follow a path into subjects like this:
"I want to be an architect when I'm older, and I think this has boosted me more than I did before, and it's made me want to do it more.
"When I won this award - I've been trying to inspire girls to do Robots and some of the girls have wanted to do robots in some of the classes."
As a member of the VEX team she helped win regional, national and even international awards, with roles including Coding and even driving the team's robot under competitive pressure.
Iona was a member of the team from Wardley who were invited to Texas earlier this year, to take part in the VEX Robotics World Championships, where they won a judges award.
Her teacher, Mr Burfield, tells us why they wanted to nominate her:
"I think she's really passionate about it - you can tell she loves to solve problems!
"One of the things that is nice though, is that she's really resilient as well,
"And I think her resilience has grown over the years."
Meanwhile mum, Pamela Nicholson, says it was an exciting moment when she received a phone call to say Iona had won - and got to share the news with her herself.
Pamela tells us she knows Iona has worked really hard to get here:
"Oh we're really proud of her, she has put a lot of work in!
"She absolutely loves anything to do with DT - she's always been very into arts and crafts.
"We're so proud."
Iona and her teammates' previous awards include:
County Durham VEX Competition: Teamwork Champions, Design Award and Robot Skills award
North East Regional Award (Newcastle University): Team Champions and Impact award
VEX Robotics UK National Championships: National Teamwork Champions, Impact Award and Robot Skills Runners-up award
VEX Robotics World Championships, Dallas; Judges award for overall accomplishments