Friwo : Investment in tomorrow's engineers

13. March 2017

FRIWO, a global manufacturer of power supplies and charging technology in Ostbevern/Germany, has equipped two local schools with several LEGO Mindstorms kits. The local Senior High school Johanneum and the Copernikus High school in Neubeckum/Germany gladly accepted the donation.

With these kits, solar-powered vehicles and computer-controlled robots can be educationally planned, designed, built and programmed. The corresponding ideas and plans as well as their implementation will be developed and realized among the students and their teachers. By means of experimental setups and practical tasks, the students' abilities in the so-called MINT area (Mathematics, IT, Natural sciences and Technology) are to be promoted.

'The electronics industry is still struggling with a lack of engineers. As strongly engineering-driven company, however, these employees are a very important cornerstone for our company's success. With the robotic kits we hope to raise the interest of young people in technology at an early stage, and to lay the foundations for well-trained junior staff' says Michael Brinkmeier, Head of Marketing at FRIWO.
Ute Bienengräber-Killmann, Head of the Copernicus Senior High in Neubeckum, emphasizes that alternative teaching methods are well received by the students: 'Especially object lessons and experimental teaching in the MINT area are particularly appealing to our students and encourage them to become interested in technics and possibly in technical careers. This interest of both school and enterprise ensures that our school can come up with another high-quality MINT program, and that companies like FRIWO can look forward to better trained employees.

The Johanneum Senior High is also very happy about the new robotics kits which were accepted by headmaster Michael Bertels and teacher Dirk Folker together with the school's robotics study group. 'These new robots with extended capabilities are great' states Dirk Folker, teacher of mathematics and computer science. Under his leadership, the students of the study group also attend robotics competitions. Last year, they came in fourth of 16 schools - perhaps FRIWO's future engineers?