Bermuda Parent Bermuda Parent Spring 2015 | Page 36

Summer Camp 2015
Interactive Learning
The Way of the
FUTURE
BY Duncan Hall
Veteran educator Steve Doyling is on a
mission. The 42-year-old father of two
is intent on providing today’s students
with the education they need to thrive
in tomorrow’s world.
Doyling runs the innovative Inter-
active Learning Centre in Hamilton,
operating summer camps as well as
camps during every school holiday but
Christmas. He also teaches technology
and robotics classes after school twice
a week at Chatmore, the private boys’
school in Warwick, as well as instructing
three times a week at a robotics club at
Bermuda High School for Girls.
Doyling attended Purvis Primary
and Warwick Secondary School before
earning a degree in elementary educa-
tion from Oakwood University in Hun-
stville, Alabama. He taught for six years
at West End Primary, and for one year at
34
Gilbert Institute, before launching the
Interactive Learning Centre in 2008.
Camps are theme-based, he
says, with new lessons daily.
For example, campers take part in an
‘egg drop project’. Given a variety of
household items, the students design
objects to protect their eggs, which are
then dropped from a height of eight
feet, 11 inches onto a grass surface.
Then, the eggs are dropped from a
greater height onto a concrete sur-
face. “The ‘egg drop’ encourages the
students to adopt a design mindset,”
Doyling says. “An important element of
engineering is design. For the students,
it’s about creative problem-solving, ob-
servation and asking lots of questions in
search of new ideas rather than fixating
on the most obvious solution.”
Students also take part in a ‘mystery
Skype’ session where they connect with
another class somewhere in the world
– and must identify where the other
students live by asking questions that
elicit clues. “With the ‘mystery Skype’,
we have spoken to kids in Sweden, the
United States, Canada and China,”
Doyling says. “The kids learn to col-
laborate because in that programme we
assign nine jobs, one per student. They