Bell Village, 12 July 2019: The winners of InnovEd 2019, organised by the National Productivity and Competitiveness Council (NPCC), were rewarded yesterday at an award ceremony at the Rajiv Gandhi Science Centre, Bell Village.
This year the NPCC innovated with the concept of “Mind to Market”, that is creative ideas from the mind of students are translated into prototypes which were improved further into products and services having a potential to be marketed. The novelties introduced in InnovEd 2019 included the Innovation Clubs at school level, a MasterClass on Innovation in Education that was held in April and a CREAThon in which prototypes in the Innovation Clubs were selected to be developed into potential products/services with assistance from experts. In fact, during the CREAThon, the students and their facilitators had to improve their projects and prepare an ‘Elevator’ pitch to present within a limited timeframe.
For the present edition of InnovEd, participants from secondary schools regrouped in teams, presented projects under six different themes namely, Interactive Media, Cultural Heritage, Performing Arts, Visual Arts and Craft, Design and Languages and Publishing.
“The projects developed by the participants in fact speak for themselves. The present era of digitalization has set a new paradigm that warrants us to keep at par with all technological developments. This new paradigm also requires us to come up with solutions that suit our way of life and sustain our efforts for a better tomorrow. Indeed, the continuous transformation of local education system has shown that we can achieve great feats and the opportunities are lying out there. We simply need to tap on them,” the Executive Director of the NPCC says.
The event was marked by the stage performance of two participating teams in the Performing Arts theme, namely Sebastopol SSS and Ideal College, whose students composed a song on the impact of drugs on our youth and the five elements of nature respectively.
The chairman of the NPCC, Mr. Sanjiv Mulloo, motivated the students to adopt the Problem Based Learning approach through which they can learn to identify problems and develop sustainable solutions. “Innovation involves four underlying points namely Visioning, Sense Making, Relating and finally Inventing. Teamwork is another crucial element for a successful project. Once Apple founder, Steve Jobs, said 'stay hungry and stay foolish'. What he meant was staying hungry for knowledge and have a passion to do something good,” the chairman pointed out in his speech.
InnovEd is a project organized by the NPCC in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Human Resources, Scientific Research and Tertiary Education and the Mauritius Institute of Training and Development (MITD). The objective is to promote and instill creative, critical and innovative thinking among students. InnovEd aims to evoke and foster creativity in schools which will better prepare students for further education and employment. InnovEd targets all secondary schools and MITD Centers in Mauritius and Rodrigues.