Students between 11 to 16 years old took part in the ultimate techie upcycling exercise – giving electronic and electrical waste (e-waste) new lease of life as app-controlled robots at the Caltex Fuel Your School – Tech Jam 2018.
Organised by Science Centre Singapore in partnership with Caltex Singapore, the Caltex Fuel Your School – Tech Jam involved 888 participants from 17 schools in Singapore.
E-Waste To Robots
Held from 10 to 13 July, the learning journey programme consisted of a series of half-day workshops where participants applied Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) to turn e-waste into robots.
According to the National Environmental Agency, more than 60,000 tonnes of e-waste gets generated in Singapore per year.
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During the Tech Jam, challenges that participants had to undertake included designing a robot to wake up a person, creating a robot that lets plants alert people when it needs to be watered and one that cleans a room. There was also an open category where participants could exercise their own creativity and designed their own fit-for-purpose robot.
Participants at the Caltex Fuel Your School – Tech Jam also made use of a pilot virtual learning portal which allowed them to learn coding skills and computational thinking in an independent manner.
“I liked how the projects in Caltex Fuel Your School were about robotics and coding, and they allowed me to understand more about e-waste and how I can help the environment. I hope more Singaporeans can learn how to repurpose e-waste,” shared Teoh Yu Yun, a Secondary 3 student from Hong Kah Secondary School.
Caltex Fuel Your School – Tech Jam 2018 at Science Centre Singapore
Those who wish to try building their own e-waste robots can participate in public sessions of Caltex Fuel Your School – Tech Jam on 14 and 15 July 2018. There will be condensed challenges for younger children.
The Caltex Fuel Your School programme is part of Chevron Singapore Pte Limited’s overall support for education. It has been locally adapted to support learning-based programs that help students acquire new knowledge, gain new skills and be exposed to diverse ways of thinking.
