Thursday 10 October 2013

Innovation Programme (IvP)

I participated in an Innovation Programme (IvP), organised by Gifted Education Branch, this year. The programme lasted almost the whole year, and during the programme, we learnt about inventions and how to invent things. My group mates were my two good friends, Lauren and Liesel, and we named our group "Clockwork Mice", as it was the first thing that came to our minds when the teacher asked us for a group name.

We were supposed to invent something and the item that we invented have to pass two judging rounds before a few of the teams would be selected to display their inventions at a Science fair for pupils in other schools to admire.

After having a few lessons about different inventions (vacuum cleaner and Velcro etc.), we started working on our invention. After a lot of planning, we decided to make a Dustband. The Dustband is a duster with a band attached to it. As teachers usually don't have a lot of time to erase what they have written on the board when they are teaching, they will just use their hands or wrists to erase what they have written. With the Dustband, teachers don't need to use their hands or wrists to erase what they had written. They only need to use the Dustband, which is just attached to their wrists, to clean the board. It is very efficient and saves a lot of time.

We had to make a poster for our invention, and I think that was one of the best parts of the whole programme! Other than the poster, we also had to make a prototype (of course!). Surprisingly though, making the prototype was much easier than making the poster.

Our first meeting for the project was at my house. Before Lauren and Liesel came, Mummy and I bought loads of scrapbooking materials for the poster. Lauren and Liesel came to my house after school and we started on the prototype first. It was quite easy as we only had to take the Velcro strips and stick them onto a duster. Lauren had already volunteered to sew on the cloth on the Velcro at her house, so that was all we had to do with the prototype.

We took quite a long time writing the report, as well as making and decorating the poster. We played Taylor Swift music while doing all our work, so it was really enjoyable. I wrote the report, Lauren decorated the board and Liesel stuck everything onto the board. In about 2 hours' time, we finally finished making the board and it was so glittery.

When we showed the teacher our board and prototype the next day in school, she told us that it was really nice and that we put in a lot of effort. However, she also said that it was a little too overly decorated, but she still selected our team and another 2 teams to go for the first round of the judging. That following Friday, we were going to NUS for the second round of judging - this time by the organizers of the IvP programme.

None of my friends were able to make it for the second round of the judging so I was to go alone. Thankfully, two other close friends of mine from two other teams were also going for the second round of the judging.

When we were there, the judges came to our table and asked us about our project and we just had to explain what it was all about. It was really quite easy.

Our teacher received the results of the second round of the judging really soon and our team passed through! That meant that our inventions were going to be put up in the Science fair! Sadly, one of the groups did not pass the second round of the test.

The day of the fair came really quickly. Before we went for the actual fair, we had a workshop with 3M. We were supposed to make an eco-friendly, rubber band powered car out of chopsticks, some paper and rubber bands. We made our car really quickly and it was the fastest car in the whole room (where we were in), so we got a little goodie bag from 3M! Yay! :D

We had a very tiny little area to put up our poster and display our invention, but the fair was still a very fun experience. The Science fair lasted for about 2 hours and pupils from many different schools participated in it. Lauren, Liesel and I manned the booth and talked to the students who had any inquiries about our invention. We also met a lot of our other friends from other schools so the fair was really memorable for me.

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