Introduction:
For over a decade, the NASA Space Apps Challenge has been a catalyst for innovation, bringing together creative minds from around the globe to solve real-world problems. Last year marks the third year since the Ministry of Education, Innovation, and Talent Development Sarawak first brought the NASA Space Apps Challenge to Sarawak. A lot of change has occurred since 2021 until the latest challenge in 2023. Let’s explore the profound impact that the NASA Space Apps Challenge has had on participants, solutions, and the broader community in Sarawak.
Watch the Impact Through the Years Video:
How it started and how it is going:
The NASA Space Apps Challenge was first introduced to the Sarawak participants in 2021 with the help of our NASA Space Apps Sarawak local leads, Teacher Teo and Lunnie Gan, the Sarawak state government under the Ministry of Education, Innovation, and Talent Development Sarawak, the Sarawak Digital Economy Corporation Berhad and other valued partners.
Despite being the first initiation, the Sarawak participants warmly welcomed the challenge. The success in 2021 was followed by 2022 when the NASA Space Apps workshop started the hybrid approach toward the events, workshops, and roadshows for the participants. This eventually resulted in more participants from Sarawak than the first year. The reach of this challenge continues even further this year as more suburban and rural area students have participated in the 2023 challenge. For more details, visit the Space Apps Sarawak website.
Watch the NASA Space Apps Sarawak 2021 Highlight Reel:
Watch the NASA Space Apps Sarawak 2022 Highlight Reel:
The impact on the participants:
One of the standout features of the Space Apps Challenge is its ability to foster crucial skills in the participants. Since the challenge was only 48 hours, the participants needed to work together and collaborate in those 2 days. More importantly, one of the highlights of the space app challenge was the creation of the 30-second video. This challenge forces the participants to condense a lot of information or message they want to deliver to the judges into a very short video. This challenge automatically forces them and teaches them to work under pressure. After all, there’s a saying that diamonds are made under pressure.
Therefore, through this challenge, the participants get to enhance their skills such as teamwork, presentation, creativity, communication, critical thinking, collaboration, and many more. Not only can it boost their skill and prepare them to be future-ready, but participating in these competitions will also boost their self-esteem, independence, and confidence level and help them throughout their life.
“I brought my students to the NASA Space Apps Sarawak to expose them a new knowledge about STEM which they cannot learn in school. After joining, my students become more independent and more confident and they really want to try to participate in any STEM competition in school.” Ms Fu, SMK Paku teacher
“Throughout this challenge, we learn that we know that collaborate with each other is really important. So we learn to bring our ideas together despite the difference in our ideas and the difference in our opinions when joining.” Erasmus Yong, 2022 Junior Champion
Watch the Space Apps 2022 Reflections: