Saturday was another biannual showcase for Nanan Academy, welcoming Saskatchewan students interested in STEM to showcase their projects. Hosted every spring and October, the showcase lets students develop presentation skills and show progress in robotics on their report card. “We’re teaching those essential skills through these projects from an early age, such as leadership, collaboration, communication, creativity, grit, resiliency - those are the themes,” said academic director Shaun Nanan. “When they are creating a video game, what are they actually learning? They’re learning the math. They’re learning computational thinking, logical sequencing, creativity, and art.” Saturday’s showcase had around 25 students between the ages of seven to 15 presenting their capstone project. “There’s certain functionality of their game graphics, animation that they’ve created and are showing off,” Nanan said. Saturday was also the time to introduce the Unitree R1 humanoid unit, a new robot Nanan purchased a few months ago. He programmed the unit to show off a number of dance moves to those in the crowd. “It’s a morale booster. Just looking at it, everybody just gets excited and has a good laugh. Especially when we program it to dance.”
