This year, Nord Anglia International School Manila hosted the second Nord Anglia Education Southeast Asia Virtual STEAM Festival. We had 78 students from 11 schools participate in our event, including Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Yangon.
STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) is a unique approach to education. Its main aims are to help students develop what is commonly known as 21st-century skills. These skills include creativity, critical thinking, curiosity, collaboration, communication, and commitment and are considered critical for careers in the future.
The theme of this festival was Extreme Weather. This was inspired by this year’s STEAM Challenges set by MIT to Nord Anglia students.
[[\media\teaser 15sec generic.mp4]]Every year MIT lecturers challenge our students to find potential solutions to current world issues using the skills that they learn in science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics. Previous challenges have included designing a “smart” city, finding ways to harvest oxygen on Mars, and redesigning medicine.
As well as helping students develop 21st century skills, these challenges are also designed to help students consider their global citizenship and reflect on world sustainability and equality.
During this year’s STEAM festival, students researched and designed solutions to deal with rising sea levels, filtering sea water, growing crops with minimal land and transportation that can withstand all types of weather.
Here at Manila, as well as facilitating the festival for the other schools in Southeast Asia, we also had our own students participate. We chose a team of six of our top STEAM students to represent our school. Our team members included: Adelia, Imran, Norah, Poorvanshi, Shlok, and Joshua. They called their team “The NAIS Guys”. They had a wonderful time working closely with another team from Yangon to design their own underwater habitation city.
Well done team and we look forward to next year’s STEAM festival.
- Mr. McG
Watch the challenge videos from the 2022 NAE SEA STEAM Festival on our YouTube channel.
