In this school year, I’ve participated in five different explorations. Out of those five, I felt that only three of them made me change Cambodia. Those three explorations are Robotics, and two more explorations are very similar, The Cambodian Geography Book 4 and The Cambodian Geography Book Editing. For the other two explorations are also changed my mind a little bit but it is not as special as other three explorations but it’s also changed, too.
The biggest changed among those explorations is The Geography Book. It changes my mind to know more about my country. The goal of the exploration is to make a book about THE CAMBODIAN GEOGRAPHY. We are working on a Cambodian geography book for government schools and other people interested in learning about Cambodia. We are collecting information from each province of Cambodia. We’ve divided into four groups to go to each region around Cambodia and I was in the 4th region. Then, each group went to their regions to research information about the five themes (Infrastructure, Environment and Society, Location and Spatial Terms, Physical systems, Places, and Regions) and geographical highlights for each province. The goals of the trip are to visit and experience the geographical highlights, do interviews so we can get a good story from each province. After the trip, we research the history of each province and make suggestions for the future. All photos and maps are created on our own and not copyright. Then, the next exploration comes, I worked on the content editing which is checking everything mistake to make the book better. This Cambodian Geography Book has changed me a lot and it makes me change my country.
Another change for this year is ROBOTICS exploration. Many people in Cambodia including me never know anything about robotics. Robotics is the branch of technology that deals with the design, construction, operation, and application of robots. The main goal of the exploration was to complete the robotics competition in Singapore which is called FLL or First Lego League. During the exploration, my teammates and I were working very hard on big projects. We needed to keep core values in our minds. The project is about HydroDynamics which is all about water. In the project, we had two main parts to do. One is all about robotics and one more is about water. As what I said the big theme is about water so we need to solve water problems to help our community. Also, in that season, we were explored and got to learn about the amazing engineering used to protect our most precious liquid asset which is water. For the robot part, we have to control the robot to complete missions on the board. The robot was all made from Legos. The mission board is flat on the table with wall surrounded it so that the robot is not dropping. Building and some tool models were built by legos on the board and each building have something related to water; example, water treatment, water filter, broken pipe, fountains and a few more. Those robot game missions provided real-world examples and problems for our project. We had to solve those problems missions by coding our robots. Example; the broken pipe mission; in this mission, there are two pipes, one is the yellow pipe which is the broken one and the other one is the blue pipe which is the brand new pipe. In that mission, we needed to take the broken pipe out and replaced it with the new pipe. That was one of the missions, and all missions had something different. After those 7 weeks of exploration, my teammates, my facilitators and I went to Singapore to compete in FLL HydroDynamics 2018. I was very excited to represent Cambodia to other different countries from all over the world and presented my project and controlled the robots to complete missions. In the qualify round, we did really great jobs and we passed to the final round. In the final round, we also did very good job but we did not win the competition. Anyway, It has been a fantastic experience to do robotics and represent Cambodia to many people around the world.
Beside those explorations, I also participated in other essentials that made changes to me.
First one all, my English literacy class has made me change Cambodia about gender equity and introducing Cambodia to a pen pal from the other country.
Nowadays, many Cambodian usually think the wrong way about gender equity. Most of Cambodian always think that men are stronger and better than women. After I learn this lesson, I knew that men and women are the same, they are all humans, they have eyes, ears, mouths, arms, legs, and educations. Nothing proves that women can’t be leaders or play sports and participate in politics, both men and women have the same abilities. That lesson has made me want to educate people in my community and my country to not racist and make gender more equity. One more change is telling other people about Cambodia. My facilitators wanted to have this opportunity for me to have a Pen Pal buddy. The goal is to connect with each other so that we can talk and have discussions with about current world issues like migration and rights.
That is a great opportunity for me to learn about other countries and improving networking skill. When I connected with that pen pal buddy, I was telling and introducing him about Cambodia; how cool is Cambodia and facts about Cambodia. After that, my pen pal buddy was exciting and he told his classmates and his family about Cambodia and he wishes that he would come to Cambodia one day. Both of those changed Cambodia to make gender equality becomes gender equity and introducing people to my country, Cambodia.
In my Khmer class, I’ve learned many new, interesting topics such as learn how to report news, writing news, learning about our histories, debates, and especially about the Model United Nation (M.U.N) in the Khmer language. Those topics were very wonderful after I learn because I gained much knowledge and made me changed, too. Why? Not many students can report or writing news, debates, and brave enough to give formal speeches in front of many people and some of them don’t even know about their own histories. Before, I don’t know or understand how to do with those things, writing about news or report news was very hard for me; sometimes, when people ask me about histories, I only knew a bit of it and it might be wrong, too. Forgiving formal speeches like, debate and M.U.N was very difficult and it needs a lot of skills, like researching skills, speaking skills, teamwork and many others skills that I was not quite good about. But now, after I learn about those in my Khmer class, I was very proud of myself that those subjects changed me and made me change my country. Now, I am very confident, I know how to write or report news, I know a lot about my histories which I can use to share to more people, I know how to research and be confident to give formal speeches to many other people. After I learn, I get to share with many people around me, too. These topics above made me change my country so much.
To sum up, these explorations and subjects changed me and educated me to change my country, too. Last but not least, Education is very important because it’s the weapon which you can use to change yourself, the people around you and the whole world.