Little scientists from Ashuganj Tap Bidyut Kendra High School of Brahmanbaria showcased their innovative skills at the Bangladesh-China Friendship Conference Center, at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar on Sunday (June 28). On display was a farming rover, a watercraft and a drone. All those contraptions are connected with the farming and fishery sectors. According to Amjad Hossein, an eighth grader of the school and a member of the team representing at the talent show described the different features of their innovations and explained to the visitors how they designed their three-unit project. The project, he added, would serve the large segment of the population engaged directly and indirectly in the agriculture and fishery sectors of the economy.
Tanvir Ahmed, a 10th-grader and another member of the team, described how their farming rover would analyse the condition of the land under cultivation and put the information on how to tend and take care of the land on the website. The AI camera, on the other hand, would detect the diseased parts of the plants and recommend remedy. If the worm-eaten section of a plant proves incurable, it would be removed with the help of a laser beam to save the entire plant in question. The self-propelled watercraft, on the other hand, would examine the levels of oxygen and other elements, while the drone would have its multiple use in the farming and fishery sectors.
The innovators of those electronic devices, some components of which are AI-enabled, are just secondary-level schoolchildren and their innovations are not just creatures of their fancy, but tailored to meet the needs of the people engaged in farming and fishery. And this is coming from the students of an upazila-level school. It could be learnt from reports that the school team in question is participating in a national level competition where other little scientists, innovators and would-be entrepreneurs from different other schools of the country would also join and demonstrate their innovative skills. No doubt, it is an impressive show of the fact that our schoolchildren are not only in touch with the advancement of modern science and technology, but they are also concerned about how the country and its people could benefit from modern technology through their innovations. While applauding the innovative skills of our young talents from secondary schools as demonstrated at the showcasing event, it is also to be noted that similar showcasing competitions are being held regularly ending with the distribution of prizes among the best competing talents since long.
But we don't hear much about those talents afterwards. These showcasing of young talents should not be like our cultural events that fade into oblivion as soon as the function is over. The budding talents should be allowed to grow and flower. The event styled 'Startup, science project and innovation idea showcasing program' is organized under the Education Excellence Support Scheme (EESS) by the Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education (DSHE), with the aim to, what it declares, nurturing the students' creativity and analytical thinking and entrepreneurial skills. Indeed, the students who demonstrate their talents at the showcasing event did hard work in developing their innovative setups and many of them are very gifted boys and girls. Have the organizers of these events thought about what happens to these children in their later years? Actually, there is no arrangement to nurture the creativity, analytical thinking or entrepreneur skills of the participants of the talent shows. If Bangladesh is not to lose out at least to its regional competitors in the forward march of science and technology, the government should devise a policy to pick out these talents at their foundational stage and provide support to help them grow into innovators or entrepreneurs they once dreamt of becoming. In advanced economies, state resources are accessible to their budding entrepreneurs and innovators. So, they have their Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Daniel Elk, Boyan Slat or Takeshi Numoto, to name but a few. But here the state resources are hard to come by. So, the government needs to extend support to our own budding Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.
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