TinkerCAD Mentoring Program- SMK Bandar Kinrara
Social Engagement Reflection
By: Muhammad Hazmie Faiz Bin Mohd Zohdee
Matric No.: KIG190513 (17204513/1)
BEFORE THE PROGRAM
Understanding the project:
7 March 2021 was the day I was first introduced about the Social Engagement course in depth. My first immediate feeling when Dr Norhafizan explained the things that we have to do for this course is overwhelm. I felt overwhelmed about the things that we have to do and it feels like it is very complicated and too much work. The part that worried me the most is finding the community to conduct our program for. Since we are in a pandemic and the the society must adhere to the SOP provided by the government, finding the community will be more difficult than usual. The second part that worried me the most is the number of hours we have to complete. We have to complete 32 hours for the program, and that is not including the planning and discussion. 32 hours for the program alone is a lot and I have doubt whether I can complete it or not. Plus, Malaysia is in PKP which means that we are not allowed to do our program physically. We have to do it online. 32 hours for an online program seems like a lot of work.
Although I felt very challenged, I am also very excited for the course. Personally, I am very interested in the course that allows me to interact with the communities. It gives me a sense of satisfaction and happiness when I contribute to the society. It somehow makes me feel like a useful human being. I was looking forward to the program but I knew the challenges for this course will be great. Therefore, to avoid stress, I wanted to take my work one step at a time. I wanted to overcome the challenges one by one. With that being said, I need to move on with my work. Therefore, the first step I had to take was to find group members.
My Group Members and I:
The biggest challenge I faced in finding group members was that I could not find any. I did not know many people in this course. Plus, the classes are all online for this semester which made it more difficult to find group members who I can get along with. To overcome this issue, I contacted one of my friends and asked for his help in finding a group. He led me to this group called Sokju who was formed by Sofwan Azman. Below is a picture of my group members.
All my group members are very contributive in this program and I believed that I can get along just fine with them. Now that I have found myself in a group, the next step is to plan our program.
Plan, Plan and Plan:
After the group is formed and the members are finalized, we need to have our first meeting in order to discuss what we want to do for our program. We figured that before finding a community, we need to have an idea first on what our program will be. To be honest, I was struggling to think of an idea because the program that we are conducting must relate to engineering. Furthermore, it will be done online. To overcome this challenge, we had a meeting with the group members and everyone gave their ideas if they have any. We then evaluated those ideas and choose the one which we can work with. At the end, we decided that we wanted to teach a community about the Pascal's theory. We have decided to do that because it is very achievable since most of us already have knowledge in Pascal's theory. The program will be separated into two parts. The first part is teaching the community about the Pascal's theory. The second part is to demonstrate their learning by conducting an activity. The activity that we have initially planned is to demonstrate the learning by guiding the community in creating a hydraulic machine by using the Pascal's law.
Now that we have an idea for our project, we need a community to conduct our program for. As expected, the process was not easy. At first, one of my group members suggested to conduct our program for SMK Bandar Tun Hussein Onn. This was because he was studying there during his secondary school and he already has contacts there. After contacting them, unfortunately the school did not agree to conduct the program because we need official letters from the ministry of education. Furthermore, the PKP and SOP regulations make it very difficult to conduct the program. To overcome this issue, we had another group meeting to discuss other communities which we can conduct our program for. We have decided to target small private communities because we figured that it would be easier to work with and there will be no bureaucracy involved. Therefore, we found a community called Tahfiz Darul Furqan. After we contacted them, they initially agreed to conduct the program. Now, we have our program idea and the community. The problems are sorted and everything seems to be going well. However, nothing goes as planned.
Nothing goes as planned:
During the planning process, we received a text from the Tahfiz and they said that they had to cancel the program. This was also because of the PKP regulations and the Tahfiz could not find the right time for the program. I was devastated because the deadline for the program was closing in and we still could not find a community to conduct our program for. We were running out of ideas. To overcome this challenge, we decided to ask Dr Norhafizan for help. He suggested that we worked with another group led by Adam Zaini. His group is teaching SMK Bandar Kinrara on modelling by using CAD in order to improve and create the Aquaponic system in the school. This was a very good news for us because now, we will finally have a community that we can work with.
However, another challenge came. In order for us to conduct the program with SMK Bandar Kinrara, we can no longer teach them the Pascal's Theory. We have to conduct our program that is related to their aquaponic system. Our team leader, Sofwan Azman, contacted the teacher from the school and the teacher told him that their aquaponic system faced power outage problem from time to time. Therefore, our main project idea must revolve around that. To overcome this challenge, we had another group meeting to discuss our main program idea. We decided to teach the students about electrical circuit and Arduino which can be used to help them solve their aquaponic problem. Therefore, we had finalized our program which is to teach SMK Bandar Kinrara about electrical circuit and Arduino by using TinkerCAD. To demonstrate the learning, we decided to guide the students to develop a device that can solve their aquaponic problem by using Arduino. Now, the next step is to prepare for our program.
Program Preparation:
We decided to conduct our program in four sessions. I was in charge of session 4. The schedule of our sessions can be seen above. My part is to teach and guide the students in creating a device that can solve their aquaponic problem. To be honest, this part was very challenging for me because I have very little knowledge about Arduino, let alone creating a device using it. As a mechanical engineering student, we did not learn about Arduino. We only learnt about basic electrical circuit. Therefore, to overcome this challenge, I had to teach myself about Arduino and how to create this device. I did a lot of research and I finally was able to come up with an idea on how to create the device using Arduino. Below is a screenshot of one of the research that I have done. I was very proud and satisfied with myself to be able to learn it in such a short period of time. Although there are obviously way more things to learn about Arduino, the research that I had done was enough for me to teach the students. After finishing all the slides and the necessary materials to teach the students, we are now ready to conduct our program.
My biggest valuable lesson:
From all of this activities done before the program, the most valuable lesson that I gained is understanding how important it is to have a back up plan. Sometimes, as a human, all we can do is plan. In reality, the plans which we had done might not work as we hoped. Things might not go according to our plan. In this situation, of course we will feel frustrated and stressed. However, I learned that we have to always react quickly and come up with another plan. To prevent the frustration, we must always have back up plans. Back up plans are very important because if our original plan does not work, we will always be prepared for it.
During the Program
The Opening Ceremony:
This is the day that we have been waiting for. The actual program where we get to meet the students. Overall, we have 15 students consist of form 2 and form 3. The students are all provided by the teacher. To be honest, I expected the program to just be low profile program where the students just joined the meeting, we teach them about TinkerCAD, and then it would be over. However, my perception immediately changed during the opening ceremony. The opening ceremony was hugely welcomed by the SMK Bandar Kinrara where all the students, teachers and even the school's principle joined the meeting. I immediately knew that this was not going to be a normal low profile program. This was going to be an actual official program for the school. I was very excited to conduct the program. Below is a screenshot of the opening ceremony.
Session 1, Session 2 and Session 3:
Session 1 was handled by Imran, Treechawith and Yusri. For the first session, the purpose was just to get the students familiar with TinkerCAD. The mentors taught the students on how to create multiple electrical circuits by using TinkerCAD and the students all followed. I am very impressed with the teachings of my group members. I believe that they have conveyed the message well and it was easy to be followed by the students. Session 2 was handled by Irfan and Iman. The purpose of session 2 was to introduce the students to Arduino and how to build electrical circuit by using it. They were also very good at teaching the students. Our process of teaching was not a one-way communication process. We used a two-way communication process in order to get the students involved. Surprisingly, the students were very comfortable to interact with us. They even did a few jokes during the sessions, which was very good because I did not want the students to feel pressured and burden by the program. I wanted the students to have fun while they learned. Below are some of the screenshots from session 1 and session 2.
Session 3 was a bit different because I was partially involved in it. Session 3 was handled by Sofwan and Aiman. This session was all about testing the students on what they have learned in the past two sessions. The students were separated into groups and we had a total of four groups. The groups were supposed to discuss among each other and create a traffic light system using Arduino on TinkerCAD. Therefore, we have created four different meeting links for each group so that they can discuss privately. However, each meeting link was handled by mentors so that we can guide and help them. I was in charged of group 3. The biggest challenge I faced was getting the students to discuss among themselves. The students did not know each other so the discussion was very awkward at the beginning. Initially, I was just supposed to watch them discuss but since the students were too shy to discuss, I knew that I had to do something. To overcome this challenge, I guided the students on how to discuss. I told them step by step on what to do so that they understand the task. It went surprisingly well and at the end, the students were able to create a working traffic light system. After all the students finished, everyone went back to the original meeting link and the students presented their traffic light system. I was very impressed with my group because they were able to present confidently and they showed that they understand the electrical circuit. Below is a screenshot of me and my group discussing about the traffic light system.
Session 4, My Part :
Now, it is my turn to teach and interact with the students. I was in charged of session 4, along with my group member, Sofwan Azman. For session 4, it was all about applying the things that the students have learned in the previous sessions, to create a device to solve their aquaponic power outage problem. To solve the issue, my idea was to create a device that can alert a certain individual through SMS when power outage happened. This was pretty advanced for the students so I was struggling to find the right way to communicate with the students. There were a few things that worry me. Firstly, I was afraid that the students will lose interest and get bored. This was because for my part, the students would not be using TinkerCAD because the component that we want to use to create the device is not available on TinkerCAD. So, I had to manually draw the circuit. I was afraid that the teaching will become a one-way learning process where it was only me communicating with the students. To overcome this issue, I decided that throughout my teaching, I would get the students involved by asking them questions and their opinions. I even added a Kahoot game quiz at the end of the session so that the students follow my teaching and have fun throughout. I am very happy at the end because the students were very interactive throughout my teaching. Everytime I asked questions and their opinions, they quickly replied in the chatbox. They even interacted casually with me and made jokes which I feel very comfortable with. This was because I know that they were paying attention and they were having fun. However, I believed that it would be better if they interacted with me through their microphone instead of the chatbox. Although some of them did, I wish more students did the same. Nonetheless, I am very happy with the interaction with the students. The second part that worried me the most is the timing. The time allocated for me was one hour. I had doubt whether I can teach the students for one hour. To overcome this issue, I tried to teach the students as precise as possible so that they understand my teaching and I can complete the one hour time allocation. In the end, I was very happy with my teaching and I was also very proud of the students who interacted with me throughout the session. Below are some of the screenshots from session 4.
My biggest valuable lesson that I gained during the program is how to teach and interact with the students. Initially, I was really worried on how to communicate with the students. I was worried that I will accidently treat the students too much as kids. I was also worried that my communication would be too advanced for the students. This problem exist because I personally did not go to secondary school (Sekolah Menengah) because I was not living in Malaysia during that time. So, I had difficulties in understanding how teachers interact with students from form 2 and form 3. To overcome this issue, I watched and adapted the way of teachings from the previous sessions in which my group members were handling. I watched how my group members taught the students and I tried to adapt it in my own teaching. I was very impressed that I was able to teach and interact with the students very well. Based on the Kahoot quiz as well, the students show good understanding on what they have learned. I am very proud of my group members, the students and myself. I am actually considering to become a teacher now :).
After The Program
This is the End.....:
I am very happy and thankful to SMK Bandar Kinrara for allowing us to conduct this program. All the students and teachers were very cooperative. Working with them was a great pleasure. However, everything has an end. After the final session, we must say our goodbyes to each other and this was done during the closing ceremony. During the closing ceremony, we thanked SMK Bandar Kinrara for their cooperation and we thanked the students for participating in our program. The school also thanked us for teaching the students and I felt very honored and appreciated. The teachers also gave a few feedbacks and they believed that our way of teachings were very nice and easy to follow. The school wanted to take things further and they wanted to physically create the device. I am very happy that the students take the initiative to do so. This mean that our teaching would mean something to them. During the closing ceremony, we revealed the certificates and the awards for the students. We awarded the students based on two categories, which are the best student throughout the overall program and the best group from session 3. Now that the program is done, all we have to do is the report, video and this blog. Below is an image from the closing ceremony where we all took a photo.
My biggest valuable lesson:
Actually, this is more of a realization than a lesson. After the program, one thing that I realized is the importance of sharing knowledge with others. I feel very happy and warm when the students were interested in learning and took part in the program. Initially, I thought that it was not a big of a deal because we were just sharing what we know about electrical circuit to the students. However, to them, it was very meaningful and they showed appreciations to it. I realized that something that seems little to us, might be very big and meaningful to others. It encouraged me to contribute more towards the community and helping them as much as I can.
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