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For the past nineteen years, Uni's biology teacher, David Stone, has used the Toshiba/NSTA ExploraVision collaboration model to structure the school’s Extracurricular Research and Development Teams. The ExploraVision model encourages students to take knowledge they’ve acquired and collaboratively apply that knowledge, combined with their creativity, to solve real world problems.

The Toshiba/NSTA ExploraVision competition requires groups of two to four students to co-operate in developing a future technology prototype regarding a certain issue. The students research the issue, current technologies associated with that issue and the historical background behind those technologies. In addition, students research background information regarding the current technologies incorporated into the topic and develop a collective vision of how the issue can be addressed within the next twenty years. With their proposed solution, the group discuss technological strides required for their proposed technology to become a reality, assess the potential positive and negative societal impacts of their technology, and develop a set of five storyboards for presentation of that technology.

Over the past twenty-one years, ten teams have placed first in the grade 10-12 division regional competition. Our region consists of nine states and Canada. Of those ten teams, five have gone on to win the Toshiba/NSTA ExploraVision grade 10-12 competition (1996, 1997, 2009, 2010, and 2016) and one placed second in the final round of the competition (1998). Uni High has the best record of any school in this competition with students earning $200,000 over that time.

For more information regarding Exploravision, visit:
https://thingsbiological.wordpress.com/exploravision/
http://www.exploravision.org/