SEE SHANE LI

Executive Summary

Through our 4-week attachment here at Science Centre Singapore, we embarked on 2 projects; the Young Scientists User Guide videos, and the Young Sustainability Champion question.

Science Centre Singapore

SCIENCE CENTRE SINGAPORE was created to achieve the objectives of promoting interest, learning and creativity in science and technology, through imaginative and enjoyable experiences, to contribute to the development of Singapore's human resource. It has thus far focused on making science accessible and engaging, creating an environment where Singaporeans are empowered to advance their own learning and, hopefully, are inspired to do something incredible with their futures. It accomplishes this through setting up exhibitions to illustrate the principles and powers of science and technology in everyday life, conducting school programmes to complement the school science syllabus, producing scientific magazines and natural history guide books, and organising promotional activities to bring science closer to the people of Singapore.

Young Scientists badge user guides

We worked on the Young Scientists Badge project, which aims to stimulate interest in science activities among students, enable students to carry out self-directed activities in various disciplines of science and provide opportunities for students to develop initiative and creativity.
Since this scheme has moved online, we had to create different user guide videos for students and teachers on how to edit, upload and grade their work online. The value of this project is that now, instead of students submitting their work to their teacher where it could get lost, they can submit pictures of their work online which would save time and effort as the teachers can mark it online and give students their grades almost instantly. It also saves the hassle of bringing the project to school. There were not many resources used to create these videos; we used a website called Powtoon to create them.
Another project we worked on was the creation of 60 new questions for the Young Sustainable Champion programme, another Young Scientist module for students to participate in. These 60 questions were split into 3 groups of 20; one group for children aged 9 and below (Junior category), one group for children aged 10-13 (Pre-junior category) and the last group for students aged 14-17 (Senior category). The aim of this programme was to promote the UN Sustainable Development Goals, especially Goals 7 & 12. The links to these goals can be found here.

Goal 7: https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development-goals/goal-7-affordable-and-clean-energy.html

Goal 12: https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development-goals/goal-12-responsible-consumption-and-production.html

The UNSDGs focuses on teaching the next generation to save the earth, and how to ensure that we can remain sustainable. By doing these questions, students will learn more about the goals and how we can achieve them.

young sustainable champion

Another project we worked on was the creation of 60 new questions for the Young Sustainable Champion programme, another Young Scientist module for students to participate in. These 60 questions were split into 3 groups of 20; one group for children aged 9 and below (Junior category), one group for children aged 10-13 (Pre-junior category) and the last group for students aged 14-17 (Senior category). The aim of this programme was to promote the UN Sustainable Development Goals, especially Goals 7 & 12. The links to these goals can be found here.

Goal 7: https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development-goals/goal-7-affordable-and-clean-energy.html

Goal 12: https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development-goals/goal-12-responsible-consumption-and-production.html

The UNSDGs focuses on teaching the next generation to save the earth, and how to ensure that we can remain sustainable. By doing these questions, students will learn more about the goals and how we can achieve them.

creation of user guide videos

For the user guide videos, we had to make sure that we were familiar with how the Young Scientist platform works before creating the videos ourselves. We also had to figure out what would be the most common problems and questions that students and teachers would face while using this site. After that, we could start creating our videos.
Below is an example of our video.

Benefits of creating these videos:

It taught us more computer skills, such as how to insert a gif into a scene of our video to demonstrate where certain assignments could be placed and so on. A few other computer skills included taking screenshots and screen recordings on a PC.
It taught us to think outside the box and put ourselves in other people’s shoes to see this website from a different perspective. Once we were able to do this, we could figure out what teachers and students required from a user guide video.

Challenges of creating these videos:

There were not many challenges involved but we couldn't figure out how to insert a gif into the video.

The outcomes of the videos were quite good as we managed to cover most questions that teachers and students would have and we also kept the videos short and sweet so that they were easy to understand
Another project we worked on was the creation of 60 new questions for the Young Sustainable Champion programme, another Young Scientist module for students to participate in. These 60 questions were split into 3 groups of 20; one group for children aged 9 and below (Junior category), one group for children aged 10-13 (Pre-junior category) and the last group for students aged 14-17 (Senior category). The aim of this programme was to promote the UN Sustainable Development Goals, especially Goals 7 & 12. The links to these goals can be found here.

Goal 7: https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development-goals/goal-7-affordable-and-clean-energy.html

Goal 12: https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development-goals/goal-12-responsible-consumption-and-production.html

The UNSDGs focuses on teaching the next generation to save the earth, and how to ensure that we can remain sustainable. By doing these questions, students will learn more about the goals and how we can achieve them.

Creation of young sustainability champion questions

For the Young Sustainability Champion Scheme, we had to think in the shoes of a student in each respective category and figure out what questions would be suitable for them; not too hard for them to accomplish, and allows them to learn about the UNSDGs.
Above is an example of a question we created.

Benefits of creating the questions:

It taught me to think outside the box from others perspectives, for example a teacher's and student's view on questions.

Challenges of creating the questions:

It was hard to think of so many questions that were not repetitive, allowed students to learn about the UNSDGs and fun to complete. Hence, we had to undergo many drafts until we were finally able to select and modify 60 questions that we and our mentors thought were good enough for students to complete.

The outcomes of the questions were good as all the questions would allow the students to benefit from them by learning how to save the earth and more about the UNSDGs.

An example of a user guide video we produced

3 skills that I gained from this experience

1. I learnt to think out of the box from other people's perspectives while creating the questions for the Young Sustainability Champion scheme. In order to think of suitable questions for students of different age groups, I had to think like them and what questions would benefit them.

2. I learnt new computer skills such as creating videos, taking screen recordings and screen shots on a PC. Learning how to create a video was very enriching as now I can create a video for any presentation in the future.

3. I learnt how to us open-sourced platforms, which allows one to create a platform that is accessible to everyone. People can create websites like Young Scientists on open-sourced platforms that are beneficial to people.

2 interesting aspects of my learning experience

1. I was surprised that although our mentors helped us whenever we needed them, we had to figure out many things by ourselves; they would only come in to check on us once in a while to ensure that everything is well. For example, we had to figure out the Moodle platform ourselves (an open-sourced platform) and learn everything about it. The process of creating the videos and questions were done only by us, and there was no spoon-feeding by the mentors.

2. I also realised that in order for so many Young Scientists modules to be created, the people who came up with these questions would have to spend a lot of time and effort to think of good and fun questions for students to complete. This made me appreciate the site and questions more than before, as they also have contributed to the fun in my primary school life.

1 takeaway for life

I realised that we should not panic if things go wrong and might affect others. Instead, we should work around the problem and do whatever we can to solve it until someone is able to fix the problem.

This is a picture of all the groups that interned at Science Centre with our mentors.

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