Making a difference—feet first

A spark of imagination has led to a well-thought out plan involving shoes, energy, health and even a way to help the environment.

For five enterprising year seven OranaSteiner School students, being part of the two-day Teen Start-Up Camp has already led to great things.

Dana, Emellia, Ruby, Viktoria and Lucy won third prize for their idea, were featured in a story in The Chronicle and are now looking at ways to progress their idea to reality.

The students developed their ideas at the Teen Start-Up Camp.

Their concept is a way of making shoes generate energy to power small appliances.

And one of the reasons the concept did so well was because it uses existing technology—floor tiles which harvest energy.

The idea of using ‘kinetic’ energy flashed into their minds after the first day’s introduction.

‘After all it’s the energy that you get when you’re walking and moving. Its being generated everywhere,’ they said.

The group thought through and dismissed a raft of ideas before they decided on their prize-winning concept because it was the most efficient.

Their ideas included wearing nailpolish to generate energy typing, wearing a watch to create heat and wearing clothes that would create energy from friction.

They also thought about coating car tyres in the energy-harvesting tiles, but dismissed this because it wouldn’t encourage people to walk.

The students said the Teen Start-Up Camp taught them a lot about thinking quickly, thinking under pressure and working in a group.

And next on the agenda is finding ways to advertise and progress their idea.

‘We think there could be a bunch of people working in energy who could work out ways to improve the project and make it a reality,’ they said.

And the environment is also set to benefit from this idea.

The students said that it would stop people wasting energy, once they knew how much effort went into charging things we take for granted.