Southeast Asia STEAM Festival
Jack Cooper
Makerspace and Library Coordinator
Northbridge International School Cambodia
Northbridge International School of Cambodia proudly hosted Nord Anglia’s inaugural Southeast Asia STEAM Festival - the first event of its kind for the region and for the wider NAE family. The festival brought together over 100 students and 15 teachers from 10 schools, as well as esteemed guests from MIT, for 3 days of collaboration and creative problem solving.
The festival is the latest element to our NAE-MIT STEAM programme and provided students and teachers alike with the chance to delve further into this year’s Supernatural Superheroes challenges through unique learning opportunities.
The underpinning focus for the NAE-MIT partnership is to equip students with the skills and habits of mind to best prepare them for the future world. The STEAM festival provided a fantastic environment to build upon this through specialist workshops including Digital Animation, CNC Laser cutting, wheelchair designing, animal-inspired design and so much more.
Students researched remarkable abilities of animals and designed functional superhero suits based on those abilities. The final products were showcased in an assembly with Northbridge’s secondary school, parents and other guests. Crowd favourites included the Immortal Jellyfish with its flailing electrical tentacles and the Invincible Cockroach with laser eyes and the power to withstand gas attacks and nuclear blasts!
Whilst an exciting student learning experience, the festival also provided a valuable opportunity for teachers to collaborate; discussing ideas on approaches to the NAE-MIT programme and STEAM more broadly. Diego Mahecha, Head of Science at NISC, facilitated a ‘successes and challenges’ session related to STEAM and PBL, which generated thoroughly engaging discussions and left us all with ideas to take away.
To sum it up, the STEAM festival was an exciting experience for all involved and we look forward to continuing to develop our NAE-MIT programme to offer exceptional STEAM educational opportunities for our students. Find out more in our STEAM Community on NAU or join in the discussion to ask us anything about the festival.