I am delighted to inform you that the MIT Challenges for this year have already been released by the MIT experts for our students.
Nord Anglia Education collaborates with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to provide STEAM-based approaches to learning within our students. MIT is one of the world’s leading research universities for cutting edge science and technology developments.
One aspect of our collaboration is that each year the MIT professors set real-world challenges for our students to tackle. Previous challenges have included developing smart cities, self-driving cars, photographing extreme environments with the aid of robotics, and many more.
For this year’s challenges, we are joining three MIT experts conducting out of this world research “Into the Void”. These experts are working on advancing and enabling human exploration of space, including human travel to Mars (and, equally important, the journey home to Earth). How can our exploration of space, the moon, and other planets be successful, sustainable, and responsible to humanity, Earth and out universe?
We have already seen some outstanding work from our students who have been thinking about ways that they can improve the quality of life for astronauts traveling in space. Ideas included growing plants hydroponically on the International Space Station, football at zero gravity, and a hydrogen surfboard! Students also had a chance to ask questions related to their project ideas with MIT expert Dr. Ariel Ekblaw. Keep your eyes open for her responses which will be released via video sometime in November.
Due to the success of the "MIT Chats" last year, they have been continued this year under the new name "MIT Abstracts". These are one hour live Q and A webinar session between our students and MIT experts about their current research The name comes from scientific publications, where every publication would have an “Abstract”, a short summary of the research that you can read before choosing to read the complete report.
This academic year students have already had sessions with Dr You Wu talking about his water-pipe leak-finding swimming robot and Natalia Guerrero’s search for planets like Earth. The next MIT Abstract is scheduled on the 4th November, where Jordan Harrod will be answering questions on neuroscience and artificial intelligence.
Finally, MIT has also set some lab challenges that students can try at home (MIT Home Labs). Students are shown how they can make their own laboratory experiments using simple household items.
The last home lab showed students how they can disperse white light into a rainbow of colours using jello (jelly in the UK). The next home lab will show students how to measure the speed of light using chocolate! Watch out for this being released on Global Campus on the 21st October.
In all of these STEAM activities and challenges, we focus on developing skills in creativity, curiosity, resilience, and critical thinking within our students to prepare them for a fast adapting and uncertain world. The last 6 months have really shown us the need and importance of allowing our students the opportunity to develop these skills.
We do not know what challenges we will face in the future, but we are certain that NAIS Manila Manila students will have all of the necessary tools in their knowledge bank to be able to overcome anything the future might bring.
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