High praise for NorthGate winners at Cubes in Space awards

A former NASA astronaut, the Minister of Education and the Canadian High Commissioner were among several high-profile voices to praise Northgate College at the award ceremony for the global Cubes in Space programme.

Cubes in Space is an international contest in which teams of secondary school students compete by developing science, technology, engineering or mathematics-based (STEM) experiments for launch into space. NorthGate College’s T&T-based campus won the top prize for its experiment design.

Education Minister Dr Tim Gopeesingh applauded the school’s students, teachers, principal and parents “for encouraging our students to move into the realm of STEM education”, adding that said STEM was also a strong point of focus for his ministry.

Seventeen NorthGate College students received awards personally handed out by the former US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronaut Dr Robert Crouch at the ceremony, which was hosted at the High Commissioner's residence in Fairways, Maraval on September 26.

“I understand that your design was quite spectacular,” High Commissioner Gérard Latullipe said. “To impress NASA astronauts really speaks volumes about your innovation.”

Each student got a signed lithograph from Crouch, who delivered the keynote address. The NASA scientist said the students’ experiment was “totally unique”. He commended them for doing the “the amount of hard work” needed to research and develop the idea behind the proposal, and lauded their persistence in designing and building the experiment, which was eventually submitted to NASA for space launch.

The experiment, which sought to measure how much electricity is generated by an object moving through the ionosphere, fit into a cube about the size of a baby's fist.

But NorthGate College Director Yolande La Pierre said the real value harvested from the exercise went far beyond the science experiment itself.

“The lasting lesson from Cubes in Space 2014 is the value of helping our children to be critical thinkers and to push past the boundaries of our geographic limitations. These children have become better students and indeed better persons as a result of the hard work, diligence and thoroughness they had to develop to emerge as winners and they did this as a team.”

Robert Sowah, founder of iDoodleSoftware, the Canadian company behind the global contest, congratulated La Pierre and her staff for distinguishing T&T among a field of global competitors, pointing out that NorthGate’s winning submission was “chosen from among hundreds around the world”.

The level of complexity in the experiment made it stand out from every other entry, said Chief Education Officer of idoodleSoftware, Amber Agee Dee-Hart, who founded the Cubes in Space initiative.

Dee-Hart showed the experiment to “several NASA scientists and they were blown away by the complexity of thought, the eloquence with which they spoke in the presentation video that they submitted.”

“It was quite exceptional,” she said.

The Cubes In Space program is a partnership between idoodlesoftware, Rubik Learning Initiative, the Colorado Space Grant Consortium’s RockSat-C program and is supported by the Sounding Rocket Program Office at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. Bevil Wooding, speaking on behalf of founder and chairman of NorthGate College Dr Noel Woodroffe, described NorthGate's achievement as "a testament to the potential that exists in all our young people".

"This is also a powerful reminder of the importance of providing our youth with leadership examples and a nurturing, values-based environment to inspire them to achieve their very best,” Wooding said. The prizegiving doubled as the global launch of the 2015 Cubes in Space programme, which targets 11- to 14-year-old students.

The award ceremony was held in conjunction with the launch of BrightPath Foundation’s TechLink, a science and technology education event, held on September 27 at the Cipriani College of Labour and Cooperative Studies, Valsayn.

BrightPath Foundation brings TechLink to T&T

Secondary school teachers and students will be immersed in a day of technology gadgets, spacemen and science experiments when the BrightPath TechLink program comes to T&T on September 27. “TechLink combines hands-on technology training with fun-filled creative activity, wrapped into a values-based learning experience that we believe can benefit participant for life,” BrightPath Foundation executive director Bevil Wooding told T&T Guardian. In the all-day event, students will use tablets, micro-computers, drones and robots to conduct special experiments that reinforce basic principles of science, technology, engineering and math. Since TechLink’s launch in Grenada in November 2013, over 400 persons, including educators, small business entrepreneurs, young people and parents in Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados and Saint Lucia, have taken part in the initiative. But for the T&T edition, there is a twist. Capitalising on the interest in space experiments following NorthGate College’s success in the 2014 Cubes In Space experiment design global contest, TechLink Trinidad will focus on a suite of technology-based science experiments, under the theme “exploration: learning, developing, innovating.” “Together with our collaborative partner iDoodleSoftware, we will be hosting NASA astronaut Dr Roger Crouch in Trinidad for the TechLink event,” Wooding said. “The goal is to produce a context in which education is more engaging and interactive. Participants  will be get to be young explorers for the day. They will split into groups to tackle real-world problems and use technology and science to come up with solutions,” he said. Corporate sponsors include regional broadband-provider Columbus Communications and the Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago. Rhea Yaw Ching, corporate vice president of sales and marketing at Columbus, said the partnership with BrightPath is part of Columbus’ wider commitment to investing in the communities it serves. “As more affordable high-speed Internet access becomes a reality across the region, Columbus is actively looking for opportunities to help users at every level understand how to make the most of it.” TechLink Trinidad will include an Educators Forum, designed to equip secondary school teachers with know-how and practical tools to use technology in the classroom. “While the students enjoy the chance to go deep into digital content creation, teachers will learn new and better ways to use technology in the nation’s classroom. This is technology meeting the real world. The goal here is to give a real sense of the possibility of technology being applied to Caribbean education," Wooding said. TechLink Trinidad will be held at the Cipriani College of Labour and Cooperative Studies on September 27.

ICANN Roadshow comes to Trinidad and Tobago

Local and regional technology experts will gather in Port of Spain, Trinidad later this month to share their knowledge with participants in a roadshow organised by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)

The roadshow will be the first such ICANN event in the Caribbean and it is expected to attract a wide cross-section of participants ranging from academia and technical communities, to corporations, government representatives, civil society and end users.

“We are extremely proud to break new ground in bringing the LAC-i-Roadshow to Trinidad and Tobago,” said Albert Daniels, Caribbean-area manager for ICANN’s Global Stakeholder Engagement team. 

The event, which takes place at the Hilton Hotel, St Ann’s, will start at 8.30 am on April 25.

The LAC-i-Roadshow is designed to raise awareness across the region on key topics related to the transition to IPv6, the impact of the new generic top level domain (gTLD) program, and the security and stability of critical Internet infrastructure.

Besides Daniels, other ICANN representatives expected to present are Tracey Hackshaw, Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) vice chair, and Dev Anand Teelucksingh, At Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) member.

Speakers are also drawn from regional registries and local organisations which work together to maintain the global interoperability of the Internet. Presentations will be made by representatives of The Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU), the Regional Internet Registry for the Latin American and Caribbean regions (LACNIC), the Caribbean Network Operators Group (CaribNOG), and the Trinidad and Tobago Network Information Centre (TTNIC).

“There will be four editions of the LAC-i-Roadshow per year in the Caribbean, the Andean region, Central America and South America,” said Daniels.