It might seem shameless for a STEM non-profit to promote itself with a clickbait title.
But I received some feedback from our initial site launch that new partner organizations and volunteers who are unfamiliar with Operation Einstein may not understand what we do from our website alone.
This post aims to further explain in detail our founding vision for Einstein, and provide greater insight into what we do.
If you have any further questions or require more specific information, you can always just click on the Contact Us page.
Without further ado, let's dive right into the 5 Reasons to Engage Operation Einstein!
1. Our Einstein Storyline
Meet The Ministeins
Everyone loves a good story. Even teenagers and adults are not excluded.
Movies invest heavily in story arcs and character development because the best visual effects cannot make up for a bad plot. And motivational speakers often begin with a powerful anecdote about an experience that truly inspired them and transformed their life.
Stories are perhaps so deeply ingrained in the human psyche that ancient civilizations are rumored to have passed down their knowledge and traditions through elaborate storytelling rituals. Even kids who may not be avid readers are naturally drawn to good bedtime stories.
So the founding team of Operation Einstein decided to focus on stories.
No matter how many fun activities we created or great explanations we delivered, we needed a way to starkly differentiate our programs from traditional classroom lessons.
An interesting and engaging storyline not only engages kids from the beginning, but also enables them to better remember each activity and the science behind it.
This storyline-based learning pedagogy is deeply ingrained in our small group sessions through our very own Ministeins.
These small little steins are clones of the great Albert Einstein, and each of them have their own unique personality. They were created by Kok Hai from the founding organizing team, or OT1, back in 2017.
Our small group sessions typically begin with a short introduction that dives right into the storyline. We act out the origin story of the mini-steins, and explain that kids will be meeting each of the 5 mini-steins throughout the duration of their visit to the Einstein Lab.
Afterwards, we'll divide the kids into 5 groups based on age, gender, and group dynamics. Each group of five kids will be accompanied by two of our Einstein volunteers. They will introduce the mini-steins through fun group icebreakers.
Icebreakers and group introductions will last around 10 minutes, after which groups will set off to explore the Einstein Lab and meet the mini-steins.
As there are a total of five groups and five stations, group 1 will begin at station 1, group 2 will begin at station 2, and so on.
An OT member will be the station master for each station, and introduce the mini-stein at that station. The group will be required to help the mini-stein with two hands-on tasks (i.e. STEM experiments) based on the storyline.
Each station will last approximately 15 minutes, and group 1 will then move on to station 2, group 2 will move to station 3, and so on.
The infographic below concisely illustrates the structure of our small group sessions and how our storyline is intricately weaved into our programs!
2. Our Einstein Team
For Students, By Students
As mentioned under our FAQ section, our core organizing team comprises Olympiad medalists and award-winning young scientific researchers who understand the frontiers of science.
We expose kids to these practical applications so they can connect what they discover through our programs to their daily lives.
We also avoid scientific jargon because we've also spent many years as volunteer tutors in VWOs and children’s homes. Our pedagogy is grounded in the Feynman Technique of learning, and inspired by WIRED's videos where complex scientific concepts are broken down into five different levels.
All of us are either current students or recent graduates of Raffles Institution, and we are very familiar with the Singapore education system.
Like many of our beneficiaries, we dread boring lectures, lengthy worksheets, and rote-learning.
We thus focus on delivering our content through stories, skits, everyday analogies & DIY activities, and we engage every single child throughout each session.
As we've also benefitted from the privilege of having small class sizes for tutorials, we will group kids based on various factors like age, gender, ability, interest, and group dynamics. Volunteers will be attached to each group to provide individualized attention and mentoring.
All of our Einstein volunteers undergo training before each session to ensure that they are familiar with our program and pedagogy.
Many of our volunteers are also regulars because they really enjoy interacting with kids and sharing their love of science.
3. Einstein = Demos + Science
Hands-On and Minds-On Activities
As mentioned in the Home Page of our Einstein website, we’ve seen tons of workshops with either great demos that lack proper science concepts OR great explanations for pretty boring activities.
So we’ve created programs that fuse the best of both: the fun of mind-blowing experiments AND the fun of learning how they work.
We know this may sound rather abstract if you've never seen Operation Einstein in action at our small group sessions, carnivals, or camps.
Thus, we've embedded our Volunteer Handbook below with the list of our experiments and explanations for your reference! We kindly ask that you do not reproduce any part of the handbook below without our explicit permission.
Our hands-on & minds-on approach is based on the NUS Demo Lab which was founded by one of our Einstein advisors, Prof Sow Chorng Haur.
We complement this approach with the above-mentioned volunteer buddy system that provides individualized attention for each child within his small group.
4. Customizable Einstein Programs
No Child Left Behind
We understand that every child is different, and every organization caters to different beneficiaries and stakeholders.
We thus provide each organization the flexible option of customizing our programs to suit your needs.
In the past, we've curated a short mentorship program for Northlight School and conducted small-group sessions for MINDS where we incorporated more tactile activities.
We also recognize that your organization may have its own logistical constraints, so we'll conduct our programs in your preferred venue instead of forcing our beneficiaries to travel to a fixed location.
We'll also conduct a recce of your proposed venue at least one week before the session date to adjust our programs accordingly and plan safe distancing measures.
Check out our COVID-19 Advisory for more information!
5. STEM Education Non-Profit
Free Science Programs
Perhaps most importantly, Operation Einstein is a student-run STEM Education non-profit.
We are aware of the inherent inequality in Singapore's education system, and will elaborate on this growing inequality in future posts.
Rather than complain and bash the system and its associated policies, we're trying to bridge the gap in the specific area of STEM education. So we've made our small group sessions & carnivals free without any hidden terms or conditions!
If this sounds too good to be true, we'll just like to share that we've achieved this through economies of scale. From our founding in 2017 to the COVID-outbreak in 2020, we've reached over 1500 kids and their families through 45 small group sessions, carnivals, and camps.
Because of the scale of our programs, RI, North-East CDC, and the NUS Department of Physics has kindly supported our one-off investments in the necessary materials for our sessions because these tangible investments can be multiplied many times through the intangible impact that we have.
Engage Operation Einstein Today!
We hope that this post has given you better insight into what we do! As always, you can always Message Us on this site or email us if you have any questions.
Or if you'll like to partner with us, simply click the Engage Us page and fill up the short Google Form!
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