Step Inside an Innovation Camp (STEM education)

No kid is ever bored at an Innovation Camp. While kids think they’re playing with friends, they are actually cultivating 21st century skills through a series of real-world, STEM education. Kids come away from Innovation Camps with a newfound hunger for knowledge that extends inside and outside the classroom.

Innovation Camps are modeled after STEM camps in Silicon Valley, the global epicenter of innovation. Kenan worked closely with international education experts in informal education to design an affordable, hands-on, and action-packed day of learning that kids will remember for a lifetime.

Kids develop in-demand soft skills, such as collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking, as they solve challenges grounded in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) shaping the modern world. Kids leave Innovation Camps with newfound skills, inspiration, and the confidence to pursue the careers of the future.

Always a favorite, in the Life with Robots activity, kids work in small groups to code a robot’s movements and send it through a series of mazes, considering the speed, time, and turns needed to navigate it through the maze successfully.

It’s a challenging activity that blends together coding, physics, and geometry. By helping the robot overcome the obstacles in the maze, kids shed fear of our technology-infused future and gain the confidence, knowledge, and inspiration to jump courageously into our rapidly changing world.

Build a catapult that can launch a ping-pong ball accurately at a target five meters away…sounds simple, right? Not so fast. The activity truly epitomizes STEM education, in that it requires kids to reach deep into their toolbox to integrate knowledge from the four disciplines to hit the target. For example, the activity involves math (the release angle), engineering (constructing the catapult), and science (how force affects the launch distance).

Not only do kids learn and apply critical STEM concepts, but they also gain confidence using trial and error and the scientific method to solve a problem. Experimenting, learning from failure, and iterating are all part of the 21st-century skill set, and Hit the Target helps kids cultivate these essential skills.

Can energy from a star 150 million kilometers away really power a little hand-made car here on Earth? Kids discover the answer for themselves at a Kenan Innovation Camp. During Racing with the Sun, kids design and build the vehicle of their dreams, and then learn to attach a solar panel and electric circuit to harness the sun’s energy. When rays from the sun first strike the panel and propel the car forward, kids’ eyes come alight with awe and excitement – and you can see the wheels of fun and learning turning in their minds.

The activity combines engineering design with knowledge about electricity and physics, giving kids hands-on experience applying science concepts to the real world.

If your kids enjoy sudoku, then they will love Designing the City. This activity takes sudoku, the popular logic puzzle, and makes it 3D. Kids work in small groups to solve a series of puzzles that ask them to layout skyscrapers of varying heights on the city’s grid. Success depends on their ability to communicate information about the city’s skyline from different perspectives and to merge the information together to solve the puzzles.

Designing the City is an exceptional learning tool because it makes math hands-on, which is far too rare in the average Thai classroom. Through the activity, kids expand their logical and spatial reasoning skills, and come away knowing that math can be fun and exciting.

An appealing artwork to explore a variety of materials that alter the appearance of light and engineer a light display that mimics the colors and patterns of the Northern Lights. Students will be excited about applying knowledge of electrical circuits (basic, parallel, and series circuits) to create the Northern light, the activity that connects the knowledge of electrical circuits with the natural phenomena that attract millions of tourists a year. Students will experiment and design the Northern light in different colors and patterns such as straight lines, curve shapes, etc. They will also practice creative skills in designing the “northern light display”, video recording, and presenting the display to attract visiting tourists. This activity will also allow them to share and exchange knowledge with their peers in an engaging and fun manner.

Students will learn that a pandemic is an occurrence in which a contagious disease quickly spreads worldwide. Viruses infect cells to make copies of themselves and attach to cells using specialized attachment areas called receptors. Students will engineer an antiviral that will block the model virus from attaching to the cell model, taking on the role of public health officials and exploring ways to educate the public to stop the spread of the disease.

Students will model a remote sensing device called LiDAR by engineering a technology to produce a 3D image of a landscape. They can use mirrors to collect information from a distance by changing the way light travels and combine technologies, like optical filters, with remote sensing devices to reveal information. Manipulating colors can help them make sense of complex visual data.