Date: 28th – 29th May 2022 (Saturday – Sunday)
Venue: Computer Lab 3, UTS
Young Innovators Challenge (YIC) is an annual program that consists of YIC TTT and YIC competition, aims at catalysing the maker movement in secondary schools. In this program, students are supported by teachers, mentors, and the organiser, to solve real-life problems using open-source embedded system and software.
Before the YIC competition, the secondary school teachers and UTS students were trained during YIC Train-The-Trainer (TTT) to equip them with the mentoring and technical skills in order to facilitate the students. This collaboration of UTS-Chumbaka was coordinated by Ms. Eileen Ong with Dr. Xavier Chee. We had 20 secondary school teachers and 3 UTS students joined this face-to-face YIC TTT while another 17 UTS students to join online TTT, tentatively during June 2022. The learning journey in YIC programme develops their life skills and STEM skills.
During the 2-day YIC TTT, the online learning materials in the learning management account were given to enable the teachers and mentors to learn about mobile apps, Arduino, project planning and building. This year the theme for YIC TTT was to build a silly machine project. A numerous creative and fun prototypes were created and presented. For example, a silly turtle, a feeding chicken, a monster bank, a fantastic spoon, a magic carpet, a birthday cake, a tea maker and so on. The trainees evaluated all the projects and voted for the two silliest projects. The fun gifts were presented by Ms. Eileen to the winners teams who build for a silly turtle and a fantastic spoon. A special thanks to Dr. Tiong Meng Chung, who volunteered his time to be the technical advisor to offer help throughout the YIC TTT.
