Introduction
Before starting about National STEM Awards, 20 I will like to share something about STEM learning. STEM learning is a Corporate Social Responsibility Enterprise or CSR Enterprise and parallelly a Private Limited Company. We try to make a great visible change the education sector (mainly science and tinkering) using the CSR fund and the radar of our effort is Mini Science Centre and Tinkering Lab. Mini Science Centre is a combination of 80 scientific exhibits, 40 colourful backdrops and a handbook manual which help the students from class-5 to class -10 to clear 150 scientific concepts.
Now I will tell you about some of our voluntary engagement. We organise Science Quiz Competition, Science Model Making Competition, Tinkering Competition, Science Exhibition, Scientists lectures etc. National STEM Awards, 20 was also our voluntary engagement where we organised Science Quiz Competition, Science Model Making Competition and Tinkering Competition. More than 1800 schools and more than 16200 students participated from pan India in this competition. To organise that many competitors we divided our competition into three levels. Those are:
⦁ Cluster Level.
⦁ Zonal Level.
⦁ National Level.
- National Stem Awards, 20 Cluster Level: In the cluster level the schools that were situated nearer to each other were compete with each other.
The following topics we had chosen for –
- Science Quiz Competition- Sports, Science and Inventions.
- Science Model Making- Hydraulic Bridge construction with syringe and white card-board.
- Tinkering Competition- Construction of Hexagon Robots with the help of Arduino Board.
The winners of every of the competitions were invited to National STEM Awards Zonal Level.
- National Stem Awards, 20 Zonal Level: PAN-India there were 5 zonal level competition were organised. The zonal level competition for the states West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha and Assam were held in Kolkata, West Bengal. The winning teams from around 20 schools from the mentioned states had participated in the National STEM Awards Zonal Level, Kolkata. There were more participants in the other zonal levels.
The following topics we had chosen for –
- Science Quiz Competition- Sports, Science and Inventions, Scientists, Heritage etc.
- Science Model Making- Construction of vacuum cleaner and bubble making machine
- Tinkering Competition- Construction of security buzzing sound and light system with the help of Arduino Board.
The winners from the zonal level were invited to the National STEM Awards National Level held in Bangalore and awarded with cash prizes. Also, the runner ups were awarded with cash prizes.
- National Stem Awards, 20 National Level Bangalore: National STEM Awards, 20 National Level Bangalore was held in 20th February 2020 at Bangalore. The competition was a huge platform for the underprivileged students to explore themselves. The managing persons of Brillio and Rotary and many of the clients of STEM were present at that competition. The students unveiled their talent in front of that personalities and motivated them to invest their CSR fund more and in the Education Sector.
The topics in National STEM Awards for the different competition was –
- Science Quiz Competition: Scientists and their inventions, Heritage, Chemistry, Logical questions, pictorials etc.
- Science Model Making: Construction of Secure house.
- Tinkering Competition: Construction of diagram drawer robot.
The winners were awarded with a large amount of money to motivate them culturing their knowledge and future participation.
- Impact of National STEM Award, 20 on the students, teachers, schools and lastly on the society: We called only those schools to participate in National STEM Awards in which Mini Science Centre is installed. For this reason, the maximum percentage of the participants in this competition was from government schools and underprivileged. From the very past we have a negative outlook on the government schools and the in reality the students from the government schools can’t afford to reach the modern way of learning.
But with the help of many of our renowned clients we are able to reach those students from more than 2000 schools all over India and gift them a very impactful project named Mini Science Centre and Competition platform like National STEM Awards. All the travelling, lodging and food expenses was provided by us to every teacher and student those who travelled for the competition in each levels, Cluster to National Levels. The all materials required for the Model Making Competition and Tinkering Competition was provided by us.
Thus no student had to worried about the expenses required to compete in this competition. The most valuable impact of impact of National STEM Awards is that this platform gave opportunity to the students to increase competitiveness as they can compare themselves watching the students from various parts of India. Also, this platform gave them an opportunity to explore their book based learning. This competition motivates the teachers to prepare their students and increase their skills and that automatically upgrades the status of a school.
If this type of competition is held every year then there will be a great changes in our society where there will be no boundaries while learning science. I am very obliged to my organisation STEM learning and very grateful to Rotary and Brillio for making the dream of underprivileged students true.
About Author: Sajid Mostaque has total work experience of 3 years in corporate world. He is a Program Implementation Associate. He is working with STEM Learning from last 9 months.
