On the evening of Wednesday, August 9, the Girls Guide Headquarters hosted the Stem programme 2023’s final session.
This three week programme has been running for years, and many students have graduated from it with knowledge of cutting-edge technology. This year was the same as the programme’s introduced artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), and other very intriguing courses to the students (both in their primary and secondary group).
Mr. Gumbs believes it is crucial to teach children about these technologies and how to utilize it effectively since it will impact their learning outcomes. These technologies enable researchers to complete their work in half the time and with only a few clicks to acquire the information they need. In one of the presentations at the program, a group of young women noted that some “low end” jobs, such as tellers, data entry clerks, cashiers, travel agents, or even customer support representatives, may become less available in the next five years according to their research. This information was provided by the well-known and potent AI CHATGPT and it provide practical reasons.
According to Bill Gates, we are no longer living in the era of technology but rather the era of knowledge, and how we access it is extremely significant and crucial to our students, as indicated in Mr. Gumb’s presentation. At this stage, CHATGPT was able to vocalize its response to an eight-year-old participant at the program after it recognizes his voice and the vocal question he asked it. Mr. Gumbs mentioned how crucial it is for our children to have access to these tools so they may find the information they need in the most efficient way possible.
After seeing the student work being presented this year, FLOW, one of the nation’s top telecom providers, agreed to completely sponsor this program. Mr. Hull, the country manager for FLOW, expressed his satisfaction with his organization supporting this project. According to him, his corporation had previously supported the initiative under his leadership, but he is now fully committed to supporting this program. He examined the program’s activities and found that they perfectly matched the organization’s pillars. He acknowledged that FLOW has a summer program of its own, but said that he realized pupils needed to be more engaged in exciting activities and the technology of the future, such as those offered by the STEM program. Understanding the fundamentals of computers is no longer vital because youngsters today come almost fully capable of working with devices. It’s time to inspire interest in future technological education as well as in exploring and learning about their own country.
Mr. Hull exclaimed with delight that his company had enthusiastically agreed to a three-year collaboration contract with the STEMSVG summer programme. As Mr. Gumbs did remark, it can be rather expensive to execute a program of this complexity, doing this would allow the iniativie to be available for a while.
Additionally, it appears that the STEMSVG effort encompasses more than just this summer programme; it also includes a year-round online school that supports both adolescents and adults who require academic support or wish to take the CSEC exam in the coming years. Over 100 people were helped by the online programme in 2022–2023, 48 of whom were from Bequia (both adults and students), as Bequia does not have an adult learning programme. Mr. Hull request to Mr. Gumbs and his team is that he would like an inclusion of a telecommunication course in future installments of the programme.
We hope that Mr. Gumbs and his team may continue the job they have been doing all year long with the confidence that they have the full support of FLOW and other sponsors to see the survival of this programme.
