Volunteering Experience (Mini Makerthon For Newbies)

After some introduction for new students in my school, we had organize a mini makerthon for students who are interested to join STEM club. Before the day of camp, we had a meeting at school discussing about what activities we should carry out and the materials we need to prepare. The camp was arranged into two slot. Standard one students were slotted in morning session while the standard two students were slotted in afternoon session.

To make the activity more organize, we had manage them into 6 groups and each groups have 5 students. First activity was the ice-breaking session to let students more familiar with each others. We had set some words for them like "pyramid" and "owl" . So, one student from each group need to draw a word and discuss it then draw on a piece of paper in the limited time. The time given was 1 minute. After that, each group's draw will be pasted on the wall and the other groups will take turn to have a look and guess what is that. The most happiest thing was all the students join this part very actively and play fun with each others.

After that, one of the members shared his project - an automatic following trolley called "TROLL-E" to the students. He explained about how he noticed this problem and how he came out with this idea. Then, he introduced the step of design thinking to the students by using his project as an example.

After learning the design thinking part, there was a task for the students which was "Future City". The students need to build a future city by using the materials given in one hour. But, there was a challenge for them, the theme of the city they built was the tallest building. Therefore, they need to build a building over 75 cm and can stand firmly under strong wind. The purpose of this challenge was to help them to think from different perspective in a same time such as the safety problem and the appearance of the building.

In order to ensure that they they fulfill the criteria, the students can test their building from time to time. Now, it was the most exciting time - the testing part. Most of the groups had successfully make the tallest building.

The next session was the sharing session. Our juniors had set up some mini booth to introduce new things for the students such as 3D printing, mobile app and they projects we make like CHUMBACAR (one of the group project we make to participate in competition in 2017).