Innovation at Kellett

By Mark Steed, Principal and CEO, Kellett School, Hong Kong

Kellett School is committed to preparing young people for the world of the mid-Twenty-first Century. With this in mind, Kellett Senior School has introduced ‘Innovation’ as a new subject on the curriculum.

‘Innovation’ at Kellett is an opportunity for students to learn through long term projects, many of which are at the cutting edge of technology, which encourage them to be creative, persevere, collaborate and rely upon each other's strengths. These projects will foster the key C21 workplace skills of teamwork, collaboration, communication and problem-solving. Most importantly, they will encourage students to experiment and to learn from failure.

In the first year, this takes the form of four projects running over the span of the entire year in rotation, meaning about 8- 9 lessons in total per project per group.

Some projects are stand alone, while others rely on a number of student teams or groups to work consecutively to continue the projects throughout the year. In this way we're trying to emulate the world of real work where a project is not something you always see through from start to finish but something you more realistically will have to pass on to another individual or team.

The Projects

Vertical Greenhouses and Hydroponics

Students will develop a vertical greenhouse on the roof of the school. Students will have the opportunity to research and develop a system to automatically water soil-based plants or float their plants on a hydroponic solution, as well as create the system to filter pump and manage the nutrients of the water which feeds their plants. This project will be run as sustainably as possible, for instance we're currently looking into recycling cardboard packaging to create biodegradable planting containers for saplings and other sustainable innovations.

Soft Robotics

Students will develop robots from soft materials such as plastic tubing and flexible resins, this will allow them to compete in a series of challenges from manipulating delicate objects to navigating safely through unpredictable terrain. Students will need to investigate how to manipulate compressed air and construct an inflatable robotic structure in order to move their soft robots in the directions they want them to, create grasping hands and attach cameras to the end of 'snake like' growing robots.

Hong Kong Conservation

Students will investigate the diversity and health of Hong Kong's wildlife by making their own camera trap from Raspberry Pi computers, a camera and a motion sensor. The student's camera traps will be placed in a wild location of Hong Kong and snap pictures of any passing wildlife, while recording the time and location. Students can then collate this information into a "big data" map and draw conclusions from their shared data across the entire year.

Stop Motion Animation

By far the most ambitious and intricate project, students will create a number of stop-motion animation productions over the span of an entire year between multiple groups. The first groups will build an armature (metal skeleton) to go underneath a character, the next group will cover that with plasticine or foam latex and model or sculpt a character's body or features, others will develop a short story suitable for animation (under 1 minute) which focuses around one of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, and then further groups will interpret, animate, film and edit from the storyboards and characters developed by previous groups.

“Students have reacted with lots of enthusiasm, and are enjoying learning in a totally different way than in any other subject. They are especially enjoying working in different environments and considering topics in a much larger context than within the bounds of a single lesson. Innovation has really pushed students to think about longer time-scales and a bigger picture, and many students are already beginning to see the value in this”, said Head of Innovation, Martin Davies.