“There is AI or Machine Learning in so many of the most popular websites, apps, and online tools – including the ones kids love! To understand, and to be safe in the modern world it’s so important for kids to know how computers can learn. It was great to be invited to join the Who Wants to Be a Twinner show and help the kids explore the world of AI in such a fun way.” Brendan Hills (Customer Engineer, Google Cloud)
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many schools were closed, upending children’s education across the globe. There on after, there’s been a ceaseless effort by educational institutions and parents, and everything in between, to identify and mitigate the issues brought on by the drastic changes to children’s school life and home life.
At Twin, we take this situation to heart – since our inception, our understanding of our role as an EdTech company has meant to us that we take active strides to becoming a leading member of the community, one that is committed to delivering a better education for the coming generations. With this in mind and being cognizant of the realities wrought on by the pandemic, Twin has taken concrete steps towards this goal by starting our STEM QUEST SHOWs in cooperation with Creative Futures Imperial College London and Royal Academy of Engineering. Every week, for a period of 12 weeks, we welcomed kids from around the world to spend an hour learning about science.
Who Wants to be a Twinner?
The idea behind STEM QUEST was to engage kids in fun and interactive activities while also teaching them about new fields within science. We welcomed kids from all over to join as our co-hosts, including from countries like Nigeria, United Kingdom, Turkey, Ghana, United States of America, United Arab Emirates, and many more. Each episode we reached over 200 students – all of which were joining our live Zoom sessions through our live chat.
We created a game-show type environment to encourage kids to speak up and be engaged in the Q&As while making sure to reiterate to those participating that the session was not a competition but a forum to discuss and explore new information and skills. Our co-hosts and moderators came from diverse backgrounds and were accompanied with years of experience in their fields, including years spent as educators. Throughout our interactive show, we asked questions about various fields of STEAM including physics, arts, zoology, space, and so much more! The kids were amazed to learn about all of these things and actively engaged in problem solving to figure out the how and why these things worked – and why they mattered.
Our team worked to find the most entertaining and suitable questions for kids aged between 8-13, but we were not alone! Thanks to our dream partners, Mr. Sunday, Kamini, Vargini and volunteers from Google, we came up with unique content each show. Volunteers from Google shared their work and knowledge on computer programming as well as artificial intelligence. Their insight and perspective of life inspired kids a lot, and their support was highly appreciated.
In each session we committed time to reflecting on what we learned and what we could do to continue discovering new things. A significant part of this discussion was talking about Twing, Twin’s flagship product, which is a free mobile app designed for children to discover scientific content using games and fun experiments. After each show we encouraged them to play and recreate STEAM experiments at home so they could share what they learned with us in the next session.
It was encouraging to see with each following episode kids came with renewed energy and sense of curiosity to discover more topics.
What’s Next?
The outreach we were able to accomplish through this show was very impactful. It was so successful that we were encouraged to continue the STEM QUEST into another season! Twin is committed to increasing its outreach, especially during these times. If you wish to join the upcoming season as a co-host send us an email ([email protected]).
Make sure you subscribe to our Youtube channel and follow us on Instagram to get the latest news. Until then, you can watch our very first season here:
