voyeurism

"We, the citizens of Singapore, ..."

the fifty-first episode of ventriloquy is a recording of a talk by Dr Hong Lysa of the History Department at the National University of Singapore.

she was addressing the History Association of Singapore on the topic "the construction of national identity through Singapore history" on 25 March.

the title of this post is taken from the first line of Singapore's National Pledge, which was written by Sinnathamby Rajaratnam in 1966, while he held the post of Minister for Foreign Affairs. he would later rise in the ranks to become Singapore's Senior Minister from 1985 to 1988. Rajaratnam passed away on 22 February 2006, at the age of ninety. it is to the reactions to his death that Dr Hong makes reference to in the initial part of her talk.

come explore the fascinating issue of just how the various histories of Singapore differ, through this 62.5 MB download!

Show notes:
- opening remarks
- Singapore history: unilinear & 'reformed child' versions
- the trivial pursuit version
- the humanised version
- the 'blame the government' version
- Not the Singapore Story: the cloak & dagger version
- the recuperative version
- the 'I too, was there' version
- the mature version
- Appropriation of the Singapore Story
- national identity and the Singapore Story
- the Malaysian version of the Singapore Story

God's grace :-) #7

got the wonderful news today that i've been given approval by both the Ministry of Education and the National Institute of Education to present a paper on podcasting at the Symposium of the Commission on Geographical Education of the International Geographical Union and the International Cartographic Association, to be held in Brisbane in June :-)

my airfare and conference fees will be fully funded, thanks be to God!

i'm very excited about this, because this will afford me an opportunity to visit the Great Barrier Reef :-)

Technorati Tags: education, geography, IGU-CGE2006, podcast

tutorial discussion - fieldwork (part II)

here's the concluding part of the 89-minute discussion.

it weighs in at 19.6 MB.

in this part of the episode, the Masters candidates share their thoughts about the two presentations on fieldwork, as well as briefly discuss Professor Lily Kong's paper entitled 'Nature's dangers, nature's pleasures: urban children and the natural world'. This was published in the book 'Children's geographies: living, playing, learning', edited by Holloway and Valentine in 2004.

with this episode, i celebrate a gigabyte of audio- and video-podcast content, since uploading my very first episode last June :-)

to God be the glory!

Show notes:
- Planning the presentations
- Implementation issues in different school cultures
- Students' evolving perceptions of fieldwork
- Relevance of fieldwork to the curriculum
- Multi-disciplinary fieldwork
- Other representations of spatial reality
- External constraints on fieldwork
- Affective learning through fieldwork
- ICT in fieldwork
- Brief discussion of Professor Kong's paper

tutorial discussion - fieldwork (part I)

this is the third and final installment of a series of audio recordings of the discussions which arise amongst the teachers who are taking a Masters-in-Education module offered by my colleague and i. the discussion which i present here centred around the role of fieldwork in geographical education.

because this fiftieth episode of ventriloquy is 89 minutes in duration, i've split it into two parts. the first part is 111.7 MB in size, and captures two presentations in response to a quotation by Willard Miller in 1981: "One of the traditional tasks in geography is the study of spatial reality. A major means of accomplishing this is through fieldwork."

specifically, the two teachers were tasked to centre their presentations around the following related questions: "How do the 'traditional tasks' in geography compare with the more contemporary ones? To what extent have the means to these ends evolved over time?"

Show notes:
Section A: presentation I
- Outline of presentation
- Importance of fieldwork to geography teaching
- Learning geography through fieldwork
- Evolution of fieldwork (overview)
- Fieldwork in the '50s & '60s
- Fieldwork in the '70s
- Fieldwork in the '80s
- Fieldwork in the present day (overview)
- Geographical enquiry
- Discovery fieldwork
- Sensory fieldwork
- ICT and fieldwork
- Enquiry-learning and fieldwork
- Fieldwork then and now
- Looking ahead
- Virtual fieldwork - evaluation
- Field-based learning outside the UK
- Field-based learning in Singapore
- Conclusion
- Reflections
Section B: presentation II
- Development of fieldwork
- Evolution of field-based tasks
- Traditional approach
- Quantitative revolution
- Issues-based approach
- Dimensions of field-based learning
- Caveats for the planning of fieldwork
- Some summative thoughts
- Fieldwork and thinking skills
- Example I: Malaysia 2003
- Example II: orienteering in Kent Ridge Park
- Sharing on map reading

lest we forget (continued)

this episode of ventriloquy is a continuation of Episode 45 - it features more footage from Singapore's most recent gazetted national monument 'Memories at the old Ford factory'.

this site, which really was a Ford factory back in 1941, was where the British forces ceded control of Malaya to the Japanese army on 15 February 1942. it has been painstakingly restored in order to recreate a sense of what life was like during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore.

do download the 45.4 MB forty-ninth episode, and be taken around the grounds of 'Memories' by our guide - Stella Wee - from the National Heritage Board.

tutorial discussion - mapping skills (part II)

here's the concluding part of the 79-minute discussion.

it weighs in at 4.0 MB.

in this part of the episode, the Masters candidates discuss John Thornes's paper entitled 'The visual turn and geography' and Gillian Rose's rejoinder entitled 'On the importance of asking the right questions, or what is the power of PowerPoint, exactly?'. These were published in the journal Antipode in 2004.

Show notes:
- A success story with PowerPoint
- Other technologies in the geography classroom
- Technology and affective learning
- Affordances and disaffordances of technologies

tutorial discussion - mapping skills (part I)

the forty-eighth episode of ventriloquy is the second in a series of audio recordings of the discussions which arise amongst the teachers who are taking a Masters-in-Education module offered by my colleague and i. the discussion which i present here centred around mapping skills.

because the episode is 79 minutes in duration, i've split it into two parts. the first part is 53.9 MB in size, and captures a presentation and ensuing discussion around the following questions:

"to what extent is geographical understanding predicated upon an accurate interpretation of a map? Is the teaching of map reading in Singapore schools today still relevant?"

Show notes:
Section A: the presentation
- Introductory ideas
- What are maps?
- Types of maps
- Purposes of maps
- Discussion topic
- Maps and geographical understanding
- Caveats and limitations
- Maps and historical change
- Maps and natural change
- Latin - 'mappa'
- Disaffordances
- Maps in the Information Age
- Electronic aids in map reading
- Questions on the teaching of map reading
- Map reading and gender
- Assessing map reading
- Children and maps
- Catling on children and maps
- Concluding the presentation
Section B: the discussion
- Planning the presentation
- Teaching map reading
- Children's perceptions of the real
- Google Earth
- Clarifying the discussion question
- Basic mapping skills
- Mapping skills and mathematics
- Representing the third dimension
- Video games and mapping skills
- Surfacing latent mapping skills
- Preparing for assessment

a kindred spirit

Andy Ramsden, from the Learning Technology Support Service at the University of Bristol, maintains a blog which i visit daily.

he's recently linked to a paper i'm presenting at the Symposium of the Commission on Geographical Education of the International Geographical Union at Brisbane later this year :-)

if you have the time, do browse Andy's mobile-learning site. it's one of the clearer and more lucid online voices on e-learning.

thank you, Andy!

Technorati Tags: education, learning, podcast, technology