STEM Week
Wong Yifeng Gavin (S3M)
STEM Week is an annual event at SISHK which aims to promote and involve the school community in the world of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.
Throughout this week, we held various activities exploring different fields within STEM: from experiments showing the effectiveness of masks, to simple coding activities and learning about the mechanism and applications of 3D printers. With the overarching theme of pandemic this year, we decided to tie in aspects of the current COVID-19 situations into our posters and activities as well. It allowed me to discover many more ways where STEM can be integrated into real-world scenarios.
Amidst the global pandemic, we can see the importance of STEM: Mathematics to generate models and analyze statistics to predict the spread and severity of the virus; Technology to facilitate online working and learning environments in order to keep us connected to the rest of the world even though we are physically at home; Science and Engineering to create various forms of virus tests and develop a vaccine. COVID-19 has really shown us the essential role STEM plays in our society – and perhaps, it is more vital than ever.
Organizing and participating in STEM week was definitely a rewarding experience, and I thoroughly enjoyed the week. I hope everyone had as much fun as I did!
Zhao Daiyang Peter (DP1B)
NOVID is an application that tracks the spread of the novel coronavirus, using your phone to track the distance between people. This app helps raise awareness of how effective the social distancing measures are in your community with in-app graphs, as well as providing total data to the administrator. We tried out using the app inside the school to conduct a social experiment to measure how effective are the social distancing measures implemented in the school by simulating a COVID-19 environment where a few students are infected. My role in this activity was to provide technical support, and encourage the students to turn on the NOVID app for the entirety of the experiment. Apps like this will be very beneficial to the society as a whole, as long as a large percentage of the population uses the app. The app informs the user if he or she has come into contact with an infected case, and warns if he or she should go for a testing. This activity has allowed me to realize the importance of STEM during a global pandemic like this, such as the automatic testing of COVID-19, and modeling the trend and outcomes of this pandemic.
