From May 16 to 19, a group of students from Hsinchu County Dong Xing Junior High School attended this year's 3D Tronics Digital Making National Infocomm Competition in Singapore and won 3rd prize among 60 teams in the open category.
The students were excited about the outcome of their first participation.
On June 7, 2018, Director of Hsinchu County Education Dept. Liu Ming-chao signed an MOU with President of Tsinghua University Hocheng Hong and Founder of Acer Stan Shih to launch the NTHU STEAM School Program. Since then, there has been a total of 77 teachers from 27 schools in Hsinchu County attending 24 hours of training courses on holidays. Through design thinking, inquiry-based learning, and maker education, the trained teachers lead students to show concern about the problems in daily life and at school and to solve them in class.
With the support of the principal and the teachers of Dong Xing Junior High School, Mr. Huang Xi-yu instructed seven students who joined hands with Singapore's Anglican High School to attend the competition. Before the competition, participants of both schools had close communication and negotiation over their ideas through Google Classroom. During the event, the students explained and answered questions about the prototype of their "intelligent safety assistance system" for the elderly and the disabled all in English. This accorded with the objective of 12-year Basic Education: to solve problems in real life through three core competencies—"spontaneity," "communication and interaction," and "social participation." Besides, their performance also showed the effectiveness of the STEAM Program. In the future, Hsinchu County will keep promoting innovative education and keep up with the global educational development.