Nord Anglia Education’s international schools across China will take part in a superhero-themed festival designed by the world-class university to inspire educational fun and curiosity
17-19 January 2019, Hong Kong — Nord Anglia International School Hong Kong (NAIS HK) will host the first China region STEAM Festival, a Nord Anglia Education event where pupils explore STEAM subjects using a leading-edge, university-inspired model of learning.
NAE has launched a number of regional festivals and events across the organisation to bring more students closer to the work of its world-class partners. The STEAM festivals follow the success of STEAM Week @ MIT, an annual and extremely popular global event where four students from each NAE school go to the university to experience a week of STEAM-lead activities and challenges.
The Nord Anglia STEAM Festival, China 2019 is a fun yet challenging three-day event that will take place in Hong Kong. Students will have the opportunity to participate in competitions, code superhero games, design and test underwater robots, create a superhero gadget, and experience incredible virtual reality scenarios and much more.
Each activity or challenge has been influenced by superheroes, which follows the same theme as this year’s MIT Challenges. The MIT Challenges are a series of activities designed by the university exclusively for NAE, and all NAE schools take part in the MIT Challenges.
Students in our China schools have been preparing for the event since their launch in September 2018, creating Ironman-style wearable technologies and gadgets, to studying how an animal’s super powers can enhance human performance like Spiderman.
One of the festival’s highlights sees students team up to create a solution to a superhero-themed challenge inspired by the work of Professor David Wallace, who runs MIT’s famous 2.009 Product Engineering Processes class. Students will also group together to create “Superhero Squads”, to present their work in a style similar to Comic-Con, a convention that celebrates comics, art and culture.
Aimee Gillespie, coordinator for the NAE-MIT programme said the event’s agenda embodies MIT’s “mind and hand” philosophy together with the fun and excitement of STEAM learning.
“The STEAM Superheroes idea developed when I noticed the amazing work of MIT professors and students. I am eager to see how students take inspiration from their cutting-edge research as they develop their own superhero powers and inventions.”
Additionally, the aim of the festival is to further expose students to interdisciplinary learning and activities that require critical-thinking, collaboration, creativity and experimentation and designing solutions through trial and error, said Darren Sutton, Computing Teacher, STEAM Coordinator and Regional Lead for the NAE-MIT collaboration.
“Solving the complex problems that we will face in the future will require us to use different disciplines and combine that knowledge to create viable solutions,” said Mr Sutton, who is also a key organiser of the festival.
“It is crucial pupils are exposed to interdisciplinary learning, so they know how to come up with answers to some of the real-world problems we present them with in class.”
Brian Cooklin, Principal of NAIS HK, said:
“We are excited to host the region’s first STEAM Festival and know that our students will be inspired by the activities happening as they build and experiment in workshops and immerse themselves in a culture of hands-on problem-solving. At NAIS HK STEAM education is more of a philosophy than an acronym. Students are encouraged to think creatively and adapt their thinking to a fast-changing world. This helps our students to become lifelong learners, critical thinkers, action-takers and global citizens. We are particularly pleased to welcome Aimee Gillespie, an MIT alum who worked at the MIT Museum into school. I have no doubt that her experience and enthusiasm will have all of our students engaged and enthralled”.
Nord Anglia Education chief executive Andrew Fitzmaurice said our curriculum, enhanced by MIT, brings excellence to the education experience we give our students and positively impacts their overall academic performance.
“We want to enable our students to develop the skills required for the jobs of the future,” said Mr Fitzmaurice, who will attend the opening ceremony of the China STEAM Festival.
“We want them to believe there is no limit to what they can achieve.”
For more information, please visit www.nordangliaeducation.com
ABOUT NORD ANGLIA INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL HONG KONG:
Nord Anglia International School, Hong Kong, (NAIS HK) is a not-for-profit school, registered as a charitable institution in Hong Kong. NAIS HK offers a premium through-train education across three beautiful, well equipped campuses. It is a member of Nord Anglia Education’s global family of 56 premium schools in China, South East Asia, Europe, North America and the Middle East. Our website is www.nais.hk.
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