January
NXplorers 2022 Write-up
The NXplorers 2.0 journey is championed annually by Shell and Science Centre Singapore, to enable students to explore, develop and present ideas that could benefit the local community and school. It is a platform for young people to develop sustainable solutions to food, water and energy challenges. Through the process, students learn systems thinking, scenario planning, and develop change management skills – all highly relevant skills sets that inspire and equip students to be positive agents of change.
In January last year, 5 students from 3E5 comprising Mundru Tejas, Vaith Ng Rong, Isaiah Kelvin Tan and Reuben Yeo En Ci participated in this challenge and proposed a problem statement targeting two nexus elements, water and energy. The team was one of twenty schools shortlisted based on the submissions of the problem statement framework.
Over the course of nine months, our students were involved in workshops, camps and project sharing day where they used various NX tools to evaluate different solutions, exchanged ideas with students from other school and constructed a working prototype to solve their proposed problem. Their prototype, RainPower, aimed to harness kinetic energy from rainwater droplets using piezoelectric plates and convert it to electrical energy. They concluded the journey by showcasing their prototype to representatives of Shell and Science Centre.
This process helped them broaden their views, including changing the way they see themselves and the community, established meaningful connections, discussed and researched their identified energy problems and explored ways to solve them. This journey has also helped our students to understand the complexity of problem solving in the community and they have learnt to become better learners who are active, collaborative, and confident to make a difference.