The 2008 National Robotics Competition

Message From The Minister of Education

It is a great pleasure to see the National Robotics Competition (NRC) being held for the fourth consecutive year. The NRC has successfully raised interest in Science and Technology, and robotics among our students. The response from schools last year was overwhelming. We hope for the same thing this year as this will help towards achieving our goal for 2008 – preparing students to be of international quality to face global challenges.

A student's performance outside of the classroom is as important as his or her performance within it. It is the ministry's aim to produce all-round students who excel in scholastic and non-scholastic areas. Our students should possess good values and morals, and be disciplined and resilient, in addition to having outstanding academic records.

The National Education Blueprint 2006-2010 will enter its third year of implementation this year. One of the areas it will focus on is the creation of human capital suitable for the future workforce. In other words, we wish to produce students who are competent in Science and Technology, and are innovative and creative as well as marketable. To this end, students are encouraged to take part in creativity development activities such as the NRC.

Through participation in the NRC, students will be introduced to areas of science and technology in a hands-on, experimental way. They will explore problems and discover their own solutions. The problems and challenges the students will face in the competition will encourage them to use their imagination, try out their problem-solving skills and cooperate with others.

The feedback we have received regarding this programme has been very positive. Participation in the NRC has increased every year and last year we saw a total of 3000 teams from schools all over the country taking part in the programme. Our students' achievements in the WRO 2007, held in Taipei, are certainly something to be proud of. The Malaysian contingent won a gold and a silver medal, and ten Excellent Winners awards. One of our primary school teams also won The Most Popular Team award.

I would like to urge students and teachers to make full use of the opportunity that this competition gives them, to acquire knowledge and master skills in the field of Mathematics, Science and Technology which will stand them in good stead in the future.

DATO' SERI HISHAMMUDDIN TUN HUSSEIN

Minister of Education

Ministry of Education, Malaysia

To provide a powerful learning platform to enable students to cope with skills those are essential for success in the 21^st century.

To develop and strengthen critical and creative thinking and social skills those are essential prerequisites for success in further studies and future careers. These skills include:

  Problem-solving skills

  Creative thinking skills

  Interpersonal communication       Skills

  Collaborative teamwork skills

To help students build a solid foundation in mathematics, science, technology, design and ICT through hands-on experience or investigation.

To train students to work together to solve challenging problems in a spirit of cooperation and collaboration.

To enable students to develop logical and systematic thinking as they plan and implement programmes through the programming of robots.

To enhance students’ creativity in problem solving and raise their awareness of the many possible ways of arriving at a desired outcome.

To promote competition in robotics amongst Malaysian school students as a healthy and fulfilling pastime.

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