Calling for participants for the Grand STEM Challenge 2021.
This year, the Grand STEM Challenge will again be conducted with monthly Workshops and Challenges (similarly only open to lower secondary students) in July and August, leading to the finale on Sep 10.
Seven (7) categories will again be offered namely Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Robotics, Games Design, Mathematics and English. However, as the Grand STEM Challenge is an inter-school team event, registration can also be made through the respective schools.
Well, it’s almost 15 months since the first onslaught of the Covid-19 epidemic on our shores and, with the latest data, it would appear that the problem will linger for a while.
Back in 2020 when Covid-19 hit our shores and the first MCO had to be imposed to ensure the safety of every one of us, many parents were very much concerned about how it would impact their children’s education.
Being a first in our lifetime, it was undeniable that the government and the various authorities were truly groping in the dark on how to face the harrowing situation and to cushion the negative impact.
Out of similar concerns about how to continue playing an effective role in complementing the mainstream education system to provide interesting and fun STEM-learning to students, Penang STEM together with Tech Dome Penang and Penang Math Platform decided to kick off a 4-month STEM Learning From Home (SLFH) monthly series from August till November, leading up to Grand STEM Challenge (GSC) in December.
This offered students at lower secondary level the opportunity to participate in online STEM workshops covering 7 categories (namely Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Robotics, IT, Mathematics and English). Monthly Workshops and Challenges were included to allow participating students to excel and scores were accumulated for qualification to the GSC.
As it was meant to be an annual inter-school competition, a Challenge Trophy was donated by Intel to the school (which happened to be Chung Ling Private) with the highest accumulated scores from all the 7 categories.
With the endorsement of the Jabatan Pendidikan Negeri Pulau Pinang, Participation and Merit Certificates were issued to participants in the Monthly Challenges and qualifiers for the Grand Challenge which carried co-curricular points and this helped to draw tremendous response with almost 2,000 students from 39 schools taking part in the 4-month series and the Grand Challenge.
Those interested to participate can register (as a team of 3) through the Penang STEM website at www.penangstem.com/gsc. More information can be obtained through email at [email protected] or via Whatsapp at 016- 4584920/014-6020796.