Teacher stands out in the Global Teacher Award 2021

Saúl Rivera, Computer Science teacher at Colegio Angloamericano, was ranked 15th out of 50 winners of the Global Teacher Award (GTA), given by the AKS Education Award. 110 countries from six continents participated in the competition.

Rivera is responsible for 10 awards that El Salvador obtained this year in international science and technology competitions with a specialty in robotics, with the project “Automated Microscope lego ev3”, which has as a novel element that allows to see four samples at the same time, at Unlike a conventional one, which has to be changing the plate over and over again.

The team led by the teacher competed with this robotic microscope, with which observations can even be made remotely by means of a cell phone thanks to the fact that they adapted a camera apart from the Lego kit with which it was built, in countries such as Guatemala, Chile, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Mexico and Ecuador, Asia Pacific and Malaysia, among others.

“Being among the best 50 in the world is a pride not only for my family but for the country, because this award is also for all of El Salvador. The effort and performance of a Salvadoran teacher who stands out among the best powers in the world and A place is accredited in that prestigious worldwide award, it is a pride and a commitment to continue giving the best of me for education, for children, for youth, “said the winner.

Rivera, who has been teaching for two decades, has no less than a dozen projects in mind, what he lacks are resources. Each Lego kit you build a project with costs $ 700. You always have to disassemble one in order to assemble another.

“It makes me sad. I have friends who work at MINED (Ministry of Education) and they have the kits thrown away, they are worth between $ 700 and $ 800, and they have them thrown there, because the teachers have not been trained so that the The students are not interested because the teacher does not encourage them, but how is he going to encourage them if he does not know, “he declared last April, when LA PRENSA GRÁFICA interviewed him for the first time, within the framework of one of those 10 awards you’ve won with your robotic microscope team.

For 2022, he has been nominated for the Global Teacher Prize, also known as “The Nobel Prize for Education,” organized by the Varkey Foundation.

In the meantime, he’s been working on two other robotics projects: an automated PH meter and an automated centrifuge, both lego ev3s.

The meter is a robot that can make mixtures and measure the PH in different substances, an instrument used to measure the acidity or alkalinity of a solution. With this, two prizes have already been awarded: in Guatemala, an accreditation for a competition in Mexico, and in Chile, an accreditation for another competition in Argentina, both competitions will be in 2022.

And centrifugation consists of the separation of liquids and solids into chemical substances, based on centrifugation or spinning at high speeds to which the chemical substances are subjected.