Back in the old days when I was in primary school, I didn't have any chance
to do experiments, to even make a thing.
What I learned was all from
teachers, from textbooks, so I couldn't really relate to what I have
learned to daily life.
What is the most important is that from doing experiments, they
can really connect what they have learned, what they did, what they made,
to their real life.
One of the programmes is about making a parachute, so we gave the
children 10 different materials to let them choose what they like, so they have
to choose the materials which are more durable, which are more suitable to make
a parachute.
We did a lot of research before we started Solar Bee.
There's actually a tonne of
education centres that says ... that said they offer STEM programmes, but 99% of
these centres, they only focus on technology; so they offer coding, robotics
3D printing; I think it's because it's easy to set up, all you have to do is buy
a few machines, 3D printers, computers and micro:bit arduino and there's actually
a lot of IT talents out there in the market so it's easy to set up, but for us
we think that STEM should focus on all four areas, so we came up with the idea
to come with this programme that focuses on all four, so now we do activities like
physics, chemistry, biology experiments, engineering, we believe that kids should
have the freedom to explore scientific or natural phenomena
in their daily lives; what is sad is that they actually don't have the time to do
it; they're too busy and parents focus a lot of ... a lot on academic, but
with the STEM trend coming up we think it's a good opportunity to now actually
let them explore a bit more about their lives.
One of the experiments that was
very popular among the kids was actually our acid -alkaline. To us, it's
actually a very basic knowledge that things aren't acidic or alkaline or neutral.
But to the kids they actually have no idea what it means; so we came with the
idea to make their own pH indicators and they see liquids' colour change and that
was very interesting for them; we had a lot of materials, that they were
basically just daily life materials, that they can get anywhere, like lemon, coffee,
milk; then they can basically just test out with their own indicators and then
they can tell whether it's acidic or alkaline, according to the colour change.
We have quite a good pipeline coming up, and so first of all we're trying to
expand our presence; one thing we're doing, we're not actually renting or
starting up another centre from scratch, we're cooperating with other
education centres who have classrooms that are underutilised, so during
weekends if they have 10 classrooms, then they're probably not filling up all their
classes, they're inviting us to their centre so they can have another programme
that they can let kids choose; most of these centres are language centres,
English centres, so there's no contradiction, it's basically a very
complimentary thing, and second we're trying to introduce this to schools, for
primary schools, and that's in the pipeline we're still working out the logistics.
you