Quick look: 175 Orange County students will be recognized for their creative inventions alongside presentations featuring special guests at the OcMaker Challenge Awards Ceremony livestream hosted by OC Pathways on Tuesday, May 19.
Orange County students have spent months brainstorming, prototyping and testing inventions designed to solve real-world challenges — and now the public is invited to celebrate their ingenuity during the annual OcMaker Challenge Awards Ceremony livestream May 19.
Hosted by OCDE’s OC Pathways career education consortium, the virtual awards ceremony will highlight the creative innovations of students from prekindergarten through 12th grade who participated in this year’s OcMaker Challenge. Families, educators, students and community members can tune in Tuesday at 6 p.m. to watch special award announcements, hear from guest speakers and view videos showcasing winning student projects from 20 schools representing 13 school districts plus one regional occupational program. Attendees can tune into the livestream with this link.
The virtual celebration marks the culmination of collaborative projects by hundreds of young learners who turned classroom ideas into hands-on innovations designed to support their campuses, peers and communities. Altogether, students submitted 206 inventions featuring everything from dynamic prototypes and smart interactive designs like a rotating belt visor to static models and app-augmented inventions like a virtual study helper for AP physics.
In total, 463 student participants competed in this year’s challenge across four divisions based on grade level: prekindergarten through second grade, third through fifth grade, sixth through eighth grade, and ninth through 12th grade.
Approximately 110 industry professionals and university educators provided feedback virtually and in person during Meet the Maker events, where students showcased their prototypes and explained their design process. Judges represented major companies and academic institutions including Deloitte, IBM, the City University of New York School of Medicine and the Yale School of Public Health.
The livestream ceremony will recognize 37 winning teams across all grade divisions, while also unveiling 16 special award recipients selected from among the finalists.
Honors include the most innovative award presented by the Discovery Cube, the tooling and fabrication award presented by Maker Faire OC, and the community focused award presented by the Municipal Water District of Orange County.
Attendees can also view the complete list of first- through third-place teams through the OcMaker Challenge webpage and tune into the livestream celebration on May 19 to see the special award winners revealed live.