CYBERJAYA: The Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), Malaysia's lead digital economy agency announced the return of the #MyDigitalMaker Fair 2021.
To be held virtually for the second time, the fair, which will run until Nov 21, 2021, will be in five-part series--with each, focusing on different localities namely Perak, East Coast, Kedah, Sabah as well as the Central and Southern regions.
Each series is designed to give visitors a hands-on digital experience through a variety of exciting programmes that cover wide areas of interest such as career path awareness, digital-making workshops for teachers and students, self-learning content, competitions, webinars, and exhibitions.
The digital fair serves as the flagship event for MDEC's #mydigitalmaker Movement, which was created to provide experiential opportunities as well as inspire future generations to embark on career pathways
towards digital technology, in line with the Malaysia Digital Economy Blueprint (MyDIGITAL).
"We must future-proof our children with essential skills that will help them thrive in the fast-evolving digital economy. Initiatives such as MDEC's #mydigitalmaker Movement aims to play a crucial role to prosperously transform Keluarga Malaysia into being digitally-savvy, to achieve the goals of MyDIGITAL and the 12th Malaysia Plan," said Communications and Multimedia Minister Tan Sri Annuar Musa.
A joint public-private-academia initiative, the #mydigitalmaker Movement was launched in August 2016 to create a nation of digital makers, a mission established to address the need of future-proofing the next generation.
It involves strategic programmes that help to strengthen digital skills among youth such as coding, application development, 3D printing, robotics, embedded systems and data analytics.
MDEC's chief executive officer, Mahadhir Aziz in a statement said that the programme provides opportunities as well as inspires future generations to be technology ready.
"The #mydigitalmaker Movement is a crucial programme in inculcating a love for all-things digital and equipping our next generation of digital producers and leaders with not only the necessary skills and knowledge, but a digital-first mindset. The 12th Malaysia Plan has made digital central to the growth of the economy and MDEC will continue to drive the digital economy forward, in line with Malaysia's vision," said Mahadhir.
To date, more than 2.2 million children have benefited from the initiative through the integration of computational thinking and coding into the national school curriculum, co-curricular activities as well as extra-curricular activities conducted in more than 60 Digital Maker Hubs and by the #mydigitalmaker ecosystem partners.
To provide more localised content, this year's fair is being jointly hosted by five strategic partners - Perak's State Education Department, Jazari Robot Resources, Kedah State Government via Kedah Digital Centre, iTrain Kids Sdn Bhd and Petrosains Sdn Bhd.
The virtual fair will commence with the Perak session, which also extends to those in Penang. This first part of the fair is ongoing until Oct 15, 2021.
Look forward to workshops and sharing sessions by Digital Perak Corporation Holdings, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, National STEM Association (Perak) and Asia Drone IoT Technologies.
The week-long fair gives local communities enough time to access more than 100 workshops, webinars and tutorials organised for students and teachers.
From Oct 17 to Oct 22, 2021, Jazari Robot Resources will be hosting the fair which will focus mainly on the East Coast participations with feature sessions by Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, Universiti Malaysia Pahang, Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin, University College TATI, National STEM Association (Terengganu), Pusat Sains dan Kreativiti Terengganu and CyberSecurity Malaysia, and many others.
The #MyDigitalMaker Fair 2021 will also feature exclusive content from a wide range of tech and communication players such as TikTok Malaysia, IBM Malaysia, PlayStation Studios Malaysia, Digi Telecommunications and Maxis, as well as local and international non-profit organisations such as UNICEF Malaysia and Code.org.
In conjunction with the fair, TikTok Malaysia launched #BelajarDigital awareness campaign to ignite interest towards digital technologies to school students and teachers.
For more information on the #mydigitalmaker Movement, visit https://mdec.my/mydigitalmaker/