23 April 2019, Johor Bahru – Johor Bahru, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia successfully organized the first ever innovation competition that focus secondary school students from B40 group. Five groups from five schools around Johor were selected from twenty-four (24) submission involving 72 students. The five groups had undergone two-days bootcamp and eight-weeks mentoring session. They are required to build their innovative product from scratch using microcontroller namely Arduino. This program is sponsored by U.S. Embassy that focuses on students from B40. The competition also involve 6 states namely Sabah, Sarawak, Kelantan, Penang, Kedah and Perlis coordinated and organized by university partners namely UMS, UNIMAS, UMK, USM and UniMAP respectively.
The objective of this program is to provide opportunities to under privileged children in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM), to develop life skills – innovative problem-solving, design thinking, resilience, persistence, collaboration and pitching and to inspire continuous learning through systematic exposure to open-source software and hardware.
In the current Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR4.0) era, student are not only required to excel in academic but also to be more competitive in technological-related skills. Therefore, initiative and support from government could be seen especially in developing students in those skills. This exposure is vital to nurture computational thinking that is required in development of problem solving skills.
Grand prize winners, Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Seri Perling and Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Bandar Uda Utama, will be representing Johor to YMC@AC National on 2nd May 2019. They carried home certificates of achievement, cash money valued at RM200, a plaque, Maker Uno sponsored by Cytron Technologies SDN BHD. Consolation prizes winner are Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Felda Ulu Tebrau, Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Taman Desa Jaya and Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Taman Johor Jaya 1. They carried home certificates of achievement, cash money valued at RM150, a plaque, Maker Uno sponsored by Cytron Technologies SDN BHD.
Johor State Level YMC@AC was organized by UTM Centre for Student Innovation and Technology Entrepreneurship (UTM XCITE) in partnership with U.S. Embassy and supported by Johor Department of Education and Ministry of Education as well as Johor Bahru City Council. Welcoming speech was given by also attended by Mr Bradley Hurst, Counselor of Public Affairs, US Embassy. The program is officiated by Deputy Secretary of Johor Bahru’s Mayor, Ir.Hajah Nazatul Shima Binti Mohamad. The event was held at Sultan Ismail Library, Larkin.
