Showcasing Our Learning: IDEA Summit 2019

May 17, 2019

Bigger and better! If you attended this year’s IDEA Summit, you were one of thousands of people to check out the entrepreneurial showcases run by students from all over the Langley School District. The IDEA Summit, which is an initiative, designed to celebrate Innovation, Design, Entrepreneurship and Altruism in the Langley School District. Students spent months creating a product or service to share with their school and wider community at the event which has been held at the Langley Events Centre.

“This year’s event was even bigger than our inaugural year. We had 20 more student booths this year for a total of about 90 projects. We saw roughly 3,000 thousand visitors walk through the marketplace. The IDEA Summit is truly an example of how our District is an innovative, inspiring, and unified, learning community,” explains Jo Abshire, Communications Manager for the District.

“It was such a wonderful showcase of learning! We are extremely proud of our students’ innovation, designs, entrepreneurship and altruism – not to mention their hard work! We are also reminded about what an amazing group of educators we get to work with every day to support learning in Langley schools. Thank you to the families, the generous community donors, and the Langley community for supporting this unique initiative,” says Dawne Tomlinson, Director of Instruction for the District.

A new addition was included to this year’s event with the IDEA X Challenge. As part of the challenge, Langley high school students spent months researching, inventing, and innovating solutions to the global problem of single use plastics for a chance to win a $20,000 scholarship. Students presented their proposals to the community, before a judging panel of environmental experts.

Here is a list of the winners of the IDEA X Challenge and the IDEA Summit:

IDEAX Challenge

First Place – $20,000 scholarship

The Eco Tech team from Walnut Grove Secondary developed Edible Spoons made up of natural ingredients including flour, water, salt, sugar and spices for flavour. The utensils come with a booklet containing the recipe, instructions, as well as education around the problem of single-use plastics in our world.

Team Eco Tech from Walnut Grove (L-R)
Adrian Midwood (Plastic Ocean – Judge)
Richelle Ng
Matthew Kim
Annie Kang

Second Place – $10,000

The STOP team from Walnut Grove Secondary developed lesson plans for school-age children, educating them about the problem of single-use plastics and the negative impact plastics have on our oceans. As part of their lessons, the team uses a bin filled with sand, microplastics, and a sifter to demonstration pollution on our coasts.

Team STOP from Walnut Grove (L-R)
Alexandra Munday
Chloe Arneson
Prabhasha Wickramaarachchi
Joshua Park
Alex Johansen (Science World – Judge)

IDEA Summit
Secondary School

Team Sensamon developed a dental sensor that detects your nutritional intake. The product comes with an app that tracks your health and well-being.

Casey, Emma, Olivia, and Tianjiu from Langley Education Centre

Middle School
Mac developed a product called Safer Chick-ments. She designed a new shipping container for chicks with the goal to improve shipping conditions, by decreasing injury and mortality rates.

Mac from Langley Fine Arts School

Elementary School
Joey developed eco-friendly, reusable handwarmers to keep you comfortable in cold temperatures.

Joey from Langley Fundamental Elementary