Cambodia in the past few years, from my perspective, has developed so much. The economy has gotten better, education has improved, and more Cambodians have access to the online world. What I’ve been seeing a lot of and really like is Cambodia and its education involving more STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). There have been more STEM festivals and events, giving the opportunity to many people and students to not only learn, but also share. It’s basically a chance for people to put up projects related to either any of the STEM categories for other people to see – a fair as I’d call it.
When a STEM fair takes place, schools that are not too far from it sometimes take the opportunity to send their students there when they have available transportation. That’s great, but what about the schools that don’t or can’t afford transportation or schools that are too far? Not a lot of government schools actually send their students to STEM fairs due to multiple reasons like some already mentioned, so their students are missing out on a lot of great opportunities to learn. The majority of Cambodian children go to government schools, but they, especially those in rural areas, don’t get to learn a lot of STEM. Shouldn’t all schools in Cambodia deserve the chance to learn STEM? A step towards solving that problem was taken in the fourth exploration of my second year at Liger. That exploration was STEMgineering.
The goal of this seven-week project was to get students in government schools more involved in STEM, but it was emphasized on engineering in this exploration. The way we decided to work towards that was to create small, fun projects to show to the students. Those projects would have instructions, in both English and Khmer, on how to make something that is engineering-related. There were things we needed to keep in mind however. The main thing was that we needed to make sure the materials needed to make the product of each small project are Cambodian-friendly which means that it should be very easy to find and get anywhere in the country. Our target students were those between 3rd and 7th grade, those who weren’t too young nor old.
The first two weeks of this project, we spent time on learning engineering before we could make small projects about engineering. We learned about the basics, including but not limited to simple machines and the design process. We split into groups for the first time to try out instructions from a website called Instructables, a website made for people to make and share instructions for making different things. Part of our main goal was to upload the instructions we were going to make onto there. Because it’s such a great resource for STEM projects and other things, we wanted Cambodians to use it too, but the only problem was language. There were barely, or even no, Instructables that were in Khmer, thus our instructions were going to be written in both English and Khmer. We then split up into teams, brainstormed on what product to write instructions for, and started making the products. From 15 students into 5 teams of 3.
My team, after a time of thoughtful and fruitful discussion and brainstorming, decided to make a shooter, a simple, little gadget that can shoot things. And the first time we thought about it, safety was one thing we were concerned with, but we still chose it because we prioritized excitement and engagement above all. We wanted the kids to learn while also having fun, so to do that, we needed to make the workshop as exciting as possible, to get engagement, making them want to take part and falling into the trap of learning. After making a few prototypes of our shooter, we started writing instructions and making more shooters. While that was happening, we also came up with new designs for the shooter and that was because we wanted the kids to get creative as well, decide how they wanted their shooter to look while using the ones we made as models. Writing instructions took the longest because we needed to take pictures, translate it into Khmer, upload it onto Instructables, and print them out for workshops. After all of those things, we were ready to present them to kids in government schools.
To present the projects we created, we picked and went to different schools in Phnom Penh. Each workshop took around 2 hours to complete. The first thing we did when we got to a school was split the students into groups according to the number of projects and started the workshop. The five projects our teams had come up with, finally mentioning, were the PVC pipe trash bin, the popsicle bridge, the slingshot car, the shooter and the mini Ferris wheel. Some projects finished earlier than others and some finished way later. During workshops, we answered the students’ questions and taught them little engineering facts, too.
The first trip was to a private school called Bambujaya. Despite it not being a government school, we still did a workshop there because Liger has done many projects with them in the past and we wanted to expose the students there to STEM, too. Our plans ended up differing due to the fact that the students were very young. We did not do the PVC pipe trash bin project because it wasn’t suitable for them and there were times during the workshop when we needed to get them to engage because they got shy. But apart from that, everything went smoothly and was a success. It made me very happy to see them happy, gaining joy from playing with their creations.
The second trip was to a government school. We did the workshop with around 60 fifth-graders and it went almost how we wanted it to. Some teams finished too early and some finished a bit too late with their projects, so that was one of the things we could’ve done better; time-management. The other challenges we faced included managing the whole group of students, communicating with them, and making sure everybody learned. It was my first time leading such many people in an activity and it was quite the task for me. My teammates helped students when they got stuck, answered their questions, and took turns deciding and helping them use tools. We had a lot of fun doing leading the workshop. In spite of all the challenges, the smiles they had when they finished their products made us smile. It was a very rewarding experience to introduce and teach them an almost completely new subject to them. Is this the type of joy teachers get at school? To change peoples’ lives? I’d say this trip was another success.
The STEMgineering exploration was one that was very fun to be a part of and one that was very successful. It helped me understand one of the many problems with the current curriculum of Cambodian government schools and made me think in ways I had never done before. Not only that, but it also created change in the lives of the students of the schools that we went to. To hear laughter and see joy in the faces of the students that took part in the workshops created by us Liger students was an experience that I’ll never forget. I hope that I will get the chance to be part of another exploration like this one again in the future because I immensely enjoyed being a change-maker and temporary teacher.
If you want to make a shooter or any of the things the teams did, you can do so here.