Northbridge students attend 2019 STEAM week at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Northbridge students attend 2019 STEAM week at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Four carefully selected students from Northbridge International School Cambodia Grades 5 and 6 were invited to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston for the 2019 STEAM Week. Bella and Raina in Grade 5 and Nita and Jemma in Grade 6 travelled with Ms Miri for over 24 hours to attend this event.

Four carefully selected students from Northbridge International School Cambodia Grades 5 and 6 were invited to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston for the 2019 STEAM Week. Bella and Raina in Grade 5 and Nita and Jemma in Grade 6 travelled with Ms Miri for over 24 hours to attend this event.

Every two years Nord Anglia Education runs a STEAM week at MIT for students to experience how STEAM plays a huge role in the way we can make improvements in the world and to allow students to experience life as a student at MIT.

The STEAM week this year began with a puzzle hunt which took the students all across the MIT campus and challenged their teamwork and problem solving skills.

Throughout the week the students had a number of sessions with PhD students and professional researchers who talked through their research on developing biohybrid materials, designing wearable technology to help with medical issues and modifying DNA inside a virus to change its function.

The students attended workshops where they learnt about the importance of light when capturing a photograph and how we can manipulate the image by changing the amount of light captured.

The students had a go at taking still photographs of moving objects. They also spent a morning taking apart noisy children’s toys and explored how they could modify the circuits to change the sound they made.

Everyone was impressed to see how skilled the students of MIT were and the many different interests and hobbies they had, one of these included being part of an ‘Improv’ group, who performed on one of the evenings

A real highlight of the week was the session on Wednesday. This was a snapshot of the MIT course 2.009 Project Engineering Processes.

The theme was SENSATIONAL and the students were tasked with following the design process to create a product to help people that was inclusive and connected to the senses.

The students had to IDEATE: generate ideas, MODEL: make models and drawings, and TEST: try out their models and then repeat the process until they had a finished product.

Jemma’s group created a mechanical thumb, Nita’s group made a recycling box that sorted the recycling out, Bella’s group made a sensory game for people with limited sight and Raina’s group created an extendable basketball hoop that could be raised or lowered.