Sponsored by the Education Bureau of Jing’an District, co-undertaken by Jing’an Education Cooperation & Exchange Center and Shanghai Shixi High School, and co-organized by Shanghai iMake Education & Technology Co., Ltd., the closing ceremony of 2023 City Theme Camp of UN SDG Science and Innovation Training Camp for Jing’an Children & Youth was successfully held in Shanghai Shixi High School on August 21, 2023.
The UN SDG Science and Innovation Training Camp carries out project-based learning (PBL) based on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The theme of this training camp is “Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities”. In March this year, the training camp kicked off in the senior high school department of Shanghai Shixi High School. After recruitment and selection, nearly 30 students obtained the opportunity to participate in this SDG Science and Innovation Training Camp. During the training camp lasting for several months, students learned and understood the SDGs, deeply explored and thought about various problems in the cities and communities where we live, fully experienced information technology, artificial intelligence and engineering design processes, innovated tools and methods, and tried to turn their creative ideas into reality to solve practical problems.
Wu Yugang, Deputy Director of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) CIFAL Shanghai, Yang Zhenglai, Deputy Director of the Publicity and Education Department of Shanghai Shixi High School, Chen Yurong, Founder of Shanghai iMake Education & Technology Co., Ltd., and relevant personnel from Jing’an Education Cooperation & Exchange Center and Shanghai Shixi High School attended the closing ceremony.
At the closing ceremony, students successively displayed and shared the works independently designed and invented by each group, including the intelligent billboard, intelligent classroom, rotating funnel, energy-saving elevator and sign language translator. Although with a short time to learn and create, students greatly impressed the guests and teachers by virtue of their creative design. In the session on reporting achievements, students spoke from design concepts, design ideas, thinking sorting and innovation skills, to material selection, tool use, difficulties encountered in creation and how to overcome them to finally achieve the goals in a confident and eloquent manner. The achievement reports of each group fully demonstrated their in-depth reflection on the topic of Sustainable Cities and Communities.
Students’ Works (slide left and right to see more)
After the on-site guests voted, “Intelligent Classroom” and “Intelligent Billboard” won the “Best Creativity Award” and “Most Socially-Influential Award” respectively.
Best Creativity Award—Intelligent Classroom
Most Socially-Influential Award—Intelligent Billboard
The training camp was guided and supported by the UNITAR CIFAL Shanghai. All participants in the training camp successfully obtained the completion certificate of the Sustainable Cities and Communities Theme Camp and the UN Sustainable Development Goals Training Certificate issued by UNITAR CIFAL Shanghai.
Wu Yugang, Deputy Director of UNITAR CIFAL Shanghai, fully affirmed the students’ works and creativity and encouraged them to delve more deeply into SDGs. He also hoped that they could design projects through learning, exploring and combining software and hardware technology with artificial intelligence technology to solve practical problems encountered in real life. Wu said that the projects designed by students have certain social significance and development potential, and expected them to make persistent efforts and contribute more to society.
Yang Zhenglai, Deputy Director of Shanghai Shixi High School, felt excited and satisfied to personally view the creative works and listen to the wonderful achievements report of students from Shixi High School. Yang said that through learning and exploration, students have paid attention to the problems in their surrounding environment and incorporated several important contents of the current national development strategy into the project design, which is of great practical significance. We hope that in the future, students will have more opportunities to learn science and technology, think independently, participate in teamwork, and improve their ability to find and solve problems.
With more than one semester of study and practice, students focused on real-life scenarios, learned programming engineering knowledge and reading & speech skills, and cultivated abilities of innovative thinking and teamwork from understanding SDGs to determining innovative projects, which fully demonstrated their ability to solve practical problems and creative design. We hope that the sparks of thought generated in the training camp can help students in their future lives and guide them to become global citizens with an international vision.
