e STEM Day
In the light of the COVID-19 pandemic this year, the annual Jurong Pioneer Junior College STEM Day took on a whole new format – e-STEM Day 2020. Leveraging on the online platform, Deck Toys, students had the opportunity to explore various activities in the fields of Biology, Chemistry, Computing, Mathematics and Physics through gamification.
e-STEM Day, which spanned seven days across the National Day period, drew active participation from students and staff alike, bringing a light-hearted start to the National Day long weekend for many. By the end of the week-long event, 20S01, 19S13, 19S20, 19S23 and 20S18 emerged as the classes with the highest participation rates, and were duly rewarded with attractive vouchers. In particular, Beh Wen Jie, Selvaraju Nikethna Sri and Joven Chng Wen Bin won individual prizes for having the fastest and most accurate submissions, along with Ms Isabelle Tan and Ms Tan Su Lynn from the English Department, who participated in the staff category.
Despite the fact that the STEM activities could not be experienced in their traditional hands-on manner, it was indeed heartening that positive feedback was garnered on the event. Students found the online quests interesting and fun as they had the opportunity to pick up intriguing content from various disciplines that they were less familiar with. This was particularly meaningful and encouraging, given how some of the activities, such as the ones for Computing, were conceptualised by their peers who were members of the college’s student-based Computing Interest Group. Furthermore, the use of the virtual platform and its design simplicity provided much food for thought in getting teachers to re-think and expand their repertoire of approaches in preparing online activities to engage students.
Just as knowledge knows no bounds, the exploration of STEM has taken on a whole new refreshing dimension in this year’s e-STEM Day, and will never be the same again!
