Young Innovators Australia is an organisation for the youth to take charge of their learning and future careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). They build up their leadership and entrepreneurship skills in STEM, building their capability to introduce innovations into the future.
During the school holidays, parents want their children to be productive in their holidays. Young Innovators Australia runs STEM learning and leadership workshops for students to learn about STEM subjects and to also develop their leadership skills to help them in their schools and the future. These workshops enable students to become independent learners, become more productive in their studies and be creative in their assessments, projects and activities. In this way, they build up their leadership and entrepreneurship skills towards careers in STEM and innovative areas.
The best aspect of these workshops is that they are run by the youth themselves developing deeper connections suitable to the younger audiences.
Young Innovators Australia recently ran two workshops: Computer Coding and Robotics
Computer Coding Workshop
In the Computer Coding workshop, participants from 7 to 12 years old learned about the basics of computer coding through Google’s CS-First program, using the programming language Scratch. Every student was given the project based on their interest and capability. The younger students were working on storytelling, where they were learning how to animate different objects and how to animate dialogue between different characters, whereas the older students were working on game programming, where they were designing different games, and learning about concepts relating to game development and design.
This two-day workshop was expanded over two weeks. On the second day afternoon, they were rewarded with certificates. Mr Shayyan Ali who is the club Coordinator of Young Innovators Australia and also mentoring the Computer Coding Workshop gave Completion Certificates to the students.
The programmes ended with group photos of all participants and parents, and the game programming students are right now engaged in a competition to decide on the code master for their workshop.
Robotics Workshop
Robotics is one of the learning areas where students apply all of the STEM subjects learning and it is usually followed by the coding learning experience. The Robotics workshop kick starts with information on what robotics are and where are their real-life application for participants aged 10+.
This two-day workshop was spread over two weeks on the same day. Students were introduced to the lego EV3 robots. They had a great hands-on experience that way, learning how to program and try their code in the workshop and working collaboratively in pairs with other participants. On the Young Innovators Facebook page, you can see great videos of participants as young as nine years old testing their code and overcoming different challenges. https://www.facebook.com/1327405367373492/posts/5802111153236202/?sfnsn=scwspwa&mibextid=RUbZ1f
The workshop concluded with the completion certificates award ceremony. The program was mentored by a young high school student Mr Usman Dayyan and Mr Shayyan Ali.
This holiday the Robo master award was given to Abdelrahman Ahmed Essa and Fatima Kamil who worked very diligently and made the best progress throughout the workshop.
The award ceremony as usual concluded with thanks to the parents and participants and a group photo.
