Well, we're not exactly off to the Far East, but from a Vancouver perspective, we are heading a fair distance in an easterly direction.  The students in Fusion have been busy preparing for their year-end trip to the University of Waterloo where they will be exposed to a myriad of activities ranging from tours of the world renown Perimeter Institute of theoretical physics, to work in a mechanical engineering lab where they will disassemble and rebuild an engine.  They will be posed a challenge where, with limiting constraints, they will compete to create the most value and pitch their projects to local gurus in the entrepreneurial world.  They will also be matched up with University of Waterloo faculty and staff to discuss the personal projects that they've been working on at home for the last few months (more on those below).  In their "down time", they will also be attending a performance of The Tempest at the Stratford festival and enjoying Mennonite cooking at St Jacob's Market.
If you are interested in getting more of a taste of what the week has in store, you might want to bounce back to posts from last year's trip.  While the students and some of the activities will be different, you will get a flavour of the week (and a few days) at the following posts: Update 1, Update 2.  If you want to see the ongoing reflections of the students themselves, make sure that you check the student portfolio links in the right sidebar as the week proceeds.
The personal projects, have resulted in some very interesting thinking.  The task was to identify with a problem worth solving and to come up with a solution.  The only constraint is that the problems must leverage their growing knowledge in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields.  The projects were wide ranging in their topics, from designing a new international language, to developing nutrient rich breads that are inexpensive enough to be eaten in poverty stricken areas of the world.  We had others develop satellite systems for early detection of forest fires while still others looked at how to insulate existing buildings from sound and heat by attaching panels to the outside of the structure.  Another pair of students looked how they might create an anti-bacterial keyboard for computers in medical environments.  They pitched their ideas to their parents and school faculty last week.  The photos in this post are from that event.  You will likely find the posts that the students wrote on their projects interesting.  These are also in the student portfolio links in the right sidebar.

Please come back over the coming two weeks to see what we're up to and how the trip progresses!  You might also want to follow us on Twitter!