03 October 2017
STEM Open Day is a good occasion for educators, parents and students to experience STEM activities fun and challenges together. Among our four major STEM pillars Robotics & Coding, Technology & Coding, Power & Energy and Building Smart City, educators select the modules they want to integrate with their existing STEM programs or formal classroom activities, parents observe their children interests in different STEM areas while students experience directly the fun and challenges from different STEM activities.
From North Point to Islands to the upcoming Shatin STEM Open Days, we open up the opportunity for educators to ask our approach of inquiry-based learning in STEM, for parents to understand more how STEM stimulates creativity in different aspects and for students to explore different subject areas and levels of learning STEM.
STEM activities in Open Day is only a start. Trial STEM lesson from our regular workshop on every first week of the month in our North Point and Shatin Centre could be the next step if you are not firm on the choice of STEM focus.
Parent-child STEM activity could be another type of followup, typically for kindergarten or junior primary school. It’s not easy for parents to understand how STEM promote creativity and cultivate motivation for learning. Allowing parents to taste STEM together with their children can deepen their understanding on problem based learning and knowledge base behind. Plant the seed and let STEM and creativity grow in the community.
Integrating STEM to school activities is always a desirable choice for boosting creativity. The inclusion of creative opportunities can be a key objective across the curriculum. Creativity in schools isn’t limited to traditional arts subjects, but the ability to play with ideas in History, experiment in Science and apply knowledge taught to solve problems in novel ways in Maths and Geography. Students should be able to express themselves in ways which aren’t rigorously structured and which have no pre-determined outcome to be defined as correct or incorrect, but which in themselves contribute hugely to an individual student’s academic and personal development.
We can see why schools timetable the day so aggressive. We can’t waste any time. As teachers, we want to make the most of every opportunity we have with our students. Young people do have to sit exams and we must ensure we give them every chance to be successful in them. A secure knowledge base is essential, but without a willingness to engage in creative pursuits, we run the risk of preventing students from reaching their full potential.
The opportunity to engage in creativity doesn’t come at the expense of acquiring knowledge, rather it is a complement to it. So parents, school partners and people in the community can jointly enable our next generation to reach their full potential through various STEM engagement.
