Operating a successful PowerTech creativity contest

Abstract

Abstract To help cultivate future talent for creating technology, the PowerTech Youth Creativity Contest was first held in 2000 by the Taiwan Creativity Development Association (TCDA) and the National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). It has since been organized regularly on a yearly basis, with the number of contending teams growing from 78 in the first year to 414 in 2006 (3-4 members each team). The categories have been extended from the elementary school level to include junior high school categories. The activity design adopts the projectbased learning approach and aims to develop important technological creation abilities for students, particularly with respect to knowledge application, psychomotor skills, and creative thinking in which the planning ability, imagination, analytical skill, and implementation ability will be developed, and some affective domains such as persistence, high regard for efficiency, quality improvement ability, and teamwork spirit will be cultivated through project competition and realization. The purpose of this article is to describe the operation principles behind the PowerTech contest from four different dimensions: (1) contest design and its rationale, (2) contest promotion which includes the application of information technology (IT), and the social resource identification and application. It is hoped that the discussion of this article will be valuable as a referential basis to organizers of similar activities.