By Dan McWilliam
SW Junior HIgh Options Teacher and Learning Lead
On December 2, 2025, our SW Junior High Skills Club took part in the annual Skills Exploration Challenge through Skills Alberta. This year’s theme was Future Friendly Transportation. Students were asked to design or redesign a personal or public mode of transportation unique to their community. Each team created a prototype or scale model that addressed four key criteria:
- Sustainable: Uses sustainable building materials, techniques, or design principles
- Eco-friendly: Relies on cleaner or renewable energy that reduces environmental impact
- Innovative: Introduces new features or improves on existing technology
- User-friendly: Easy, safe, and comfortable for the intended user
After brainstorming a wide range of possibilities, the club narrowed the focus to three concepts: an F1-style racer, a Tub Train, and a Folding Suitcase Car.
On the day of the challenge, students split into teams and spread out across the Maker Space to begin building. The day started with a live video check-in shared with 66 other participating schools across Alberta. Build time ran from 9:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. We also welcomed a representative from Skills Alberta, who stopped by to see the teams at work.
During the showcase phase, students recorded a short video presenting their prototypes and shared it with other schools through a Padlet community. We were excited to see our video selected to be featured on the event’s livestream.
We are proud of the effort and creativity students put into their prototypes and are already looking ahead to our next school-based challenge: Underwater ROVs in Term 2.
Thank you to Skills Alberta and the event sponsors for providing tools, materials, and ongoing support for our students’ learning.
This post was enhanced with ChatGPT with the prompt “Clean up this blog post for an audience of junior high parents and students. Improve the flow and grammar, limit the superlatives.”
STEMIA Journal 