Monday, 14 October 2024Beyond borders with the International Clean Energy Challenge
Matthew Wong 6J
From 17 to 19th September, twenty eight S3 to S6 students from our school participated in the International Clean Energy Challenge (ICEC) with students from the Gippsland Technical School in Australia. The three-day activity held remotely was a fun, engaging and educational learning experience. We went through a series of training to equip ourselves with advanced skills, highlighted by the masterclasses we took on the first day, which ranged from 3D designs and app designs to machine learning and generative AI. After getting to know our Australian teammates and undergoing all the training, we engaged in a challenge to pitch our solutions to solve the worldwide energy crisis and its socioeconomic impacts.
That was when our creativity poured in—our solution prototypes spanned across a wide variety, from motion sensors and underground transmission lines to noise-proof wind turbines and power stations. All our ideas were highly recognized by the Australian industry representatives, who also kindly shared their vision of the energy industry and gave career advice for students who want to be a part of this industry. This meaningful challenge has greatly elevated our all-rounded development through its ideologies and activities, and what stands out the most is its approach to problem-solving. Contrary to our usual way of only writing down the most seemingly feasible solutions, this activity encourages us to write down as many solutions as possible before screening each of them according to their cost, possible impacts, and expected response. (It even encouraged each of us to write down 100 solutions!) Besides, this challenge introduced the idea of a “problem statement”, which serves as the backbone of our solution prototypes by addressing the most important challenge to bring positive outcomes.
By applying this to our presentations, it ensured that our proposed solutions were consistently linked with the challenge we identified and our target groups that could benefit the most. This challenge also teaches us the difference between typical presentations and pitching presentations—as pitching is asking for funding from the investors, we have to stress on the advantages of our projects over the other ones rather than merely presenting our vision and action plans. All these skills not only help in this competition, but they could also be applied in the workplace! This activity would not have come together successfully without the contacts, the willingness to go beyond the classroom, and the effort of all students and teachers. Special thanks again to all the people involved. This activity would surely be a highlight in our days at secondary school.