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 in any way possible.

At PENANG STEM, we were equally concerned about how we could continue to play an effective role in complementing the mainstream education system to provide interesting and fun STEM-learning to students. The challenge then was to migrate to online learning and still ensure interesting learning opportunities for the students.

As students at secondary level were, and will continue to be, the natural pipeline to meet the future human resource needs of our nation, we took on the challenge to move online and kicked off our 4-month STEM Learning From Home (SLFH) monthly series from August till November. 

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).

To make the series even more interesting, Monthly Challenges were included to allow participating students to excel and scores were accumulated leading to a Grand STEM Challenge which was conducted in December with trophies and prizes thrown in for winners of the individual categories. 

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.

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.

If you are a lower secondary student, why not take the opportunity, whilst you are stuck at home and deprived of learning opportunities, to take part in this year’s Grand STEM Challenge which will be back with monthly Workshops and Challenges in July and August, leading to the finale on Sep 10. 7 categories (Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Robotics, Games Design, Mathematics and English) will again be offered.   

Or, if you are a parent, all the more reasons to encourage your child to indulge in useful STEM online learning which will be specially structured to ensure that this will make up for what they might, or would have, missed out during their lapses in attending school.

However, do take note that the Grand STEM Challenge is an inter-school team event and interested students should register through their respective schools. More information can be obtained through email at enquiry@penangstem.com.