The students in Bruriah’s 10th and 11th grade advanced engineering classes participated in the CIJE Innovation Day competition. Innovation Day represents the culmination of a year of work; working in small groups of two or three, students present the product they created to the judges and more than 950 other students from over 35 schools across the country. In total the Bruriah Team won five awards:
Eleventh graders Riki Kaminer and Atara Koplowitz won first place in Engineering for Personal Care and second place for Best Commercial for their project, DOTT Paulina Pearlman and Ma’ayan Schlissel won third place in Environmental Engineering and won a presentation award for their project C-REEFS; and 10th graders Elisheva Finkelstein, Esti Hess and Ella Keigher won a presentation award for their project The Position Patch.
Each of the students invested countless hours into creating her project. While some students commit themselves to the work for a love of engineering, most get involved with Bruriah’s CIJE class because they are drawn by the challenge of it. In fact, for virtually every student, the highlights included the opportunity to learn new skills, such as problem solving, time management (to fit in all those hours of building their product!) and public speaking. Schlissel commented that she never imagined that she would be able to present in public, but the course prepared her and she surprised herself by her new abilities that allowed her to receive the presentation award. In a mature insight, the students appreciated how these skills will be foundational in whatever career path they follow. When Pearlman pointed out the growth they achieved in teamwork, the rest of the students nodded in deep agreement.
The students explained that the amount of knowledge that was necessary to create each project was so varied, that there was no way for them to learn it in class. Each student commented that they enjoyed the opportunity to teach themselves new material in fields of science (including chemistry and biology) as well as marketing, video editing, website design and app creation. Hess emphasized that it was this aspect of creative freedom that she enjoyed most about her project. Their teacher and mentor, Dr. Bracha Erblich, would guide them to find the solutions they needed, but would never give them the answer (even though she usually knew it). Kaminer appreciated this aspect of trial and error in the process of building the product on their own. Keigher made all her efforts sound like fun when she described it as working on a puzzle all day.
These students worked hard and succeeded. Most importantly, they enjoyed the process of learning along the way. That is the biggest win of all. Kol hakavod to everyone involved.
