voyeurism

Teaching and Learning in 3D Immersive Worlds: Pedagogical Models and Constructivist Approaches

i am very pleased and excited to share that something which i hinted at some time back, namely a book which Amy Cheney and Bob Sanders have been working hard to edit - Teaching and Learning in 3D Immersive Worlds: Pedagogical Models and Constructivist Approaches - is finally ready to be ordered :-)

the book has been more than eighteen months in the making, so i hope you'll find it an enriching read :-)

my day out in London

i had quite a fun day out in London today.

i started the day in a certain queue which snaked around a store at Regent Street.

then, i went to the Tate Modern to have a look at Gabriel Orozco's works, especially La DS :-) the exhibition is on till the 25th of April. no photography was allowed, so i'm just sharing a general shot of the interior of the Tate Modern.

finally, i spent the afternoon quite literally shivering along the Surrey bank near the Hammersmith Bridge, and here's what i saw :-)

presenting at the Royal Geographical Society's annual international conference :-)

all thanks be to God :-)

i'll be able to attend the Royal Geographical Society's annual international conference - on the theme of 'The Geographical Imagination' - from 31 August to 2 September 2011 :-)

the conference is hosted by the Society in collaboration with the Institute of British Geographers, and will be at the Society's premises in London.

the first paper is titled 'The Love Boat Rebooted – the Seafaring Community aboard the SS Galaxy in Second Life', and will be part of a larger session organised by Ladan Cockshut, namely '"Getting lost on the way to Farmville" Virtual, mobile and online spaces of interaction: Exploring the emerging geography and culture of new media technologies'.

the second paper is titled 'Terra Incognita – Design Considerations for a Field Studies Centre in Second Life', and will be part of a larger session organised by Jennifer Hill, Mark McGuiness and Heather Winlow, namely 'Great escapes: encouraging the geographical imagination in informal settings'.

i'll post more details as soon as i know of them :-)

i hope to meet some of you there, perhaps :-)

Mr Lau, our hero

Jesse Sng - Senior Pastor at the Maranatha Baptist Church - has kindly given me permission to reproduce his account of Mr Lau's cremation service today.

(his post is reproduced in full, and was originally posted at this Facebook page)

*****

The Scene at Mandai

Roy Cheong and I arrived just when everyone was singing "Amazing Grace". There was a brief prayer as we committed his body and we quickly proceeded to move to the viewing gallery while his casket was being prepared.

We sang the School Anthem twice while we were at Mandai. The first occurred spontaneously as we walked solemnly from the Hall to the Viewing Gallery. We sang with pride, proud to have been associated and identified with this man and our beloved school.

We stood there in silence, waiting and watching for the casket to appear in Mr. Lau's silent and solitary journey. We stood there feeling helpless at the thought that none of us could accompany him in this final journey. The silence was punctuated at times with subdued sobs and futile attempts to hold back the tears.

Then everyone in the room perked up as we caught a glimpse of his casket, now almost bare in its simplicity and stripped of the ACS and BB colours that adorned it just minutes ago. As his casket began its final march, voices broke the silence as we sang the opening bars of the school anthem.

The second time around, it started slow and majestically, rising every once in a while in volume until the whole room resonated with our voices. We sang it loudly and with gusto, we sang it the Earnest Lau way, the way he had taught us to sing. As the robotic device transported his casket, we ushered it in its slow march down that empty room with every purposeful line of the anthem.

With every stanza and chorus, tears flowed freely down the cheeks of grown men but we resolved in our hearts to finish the task with gusto, pride and dignity. Personally I found it hard to finish the lines "we'll stand together for the cause…." and found my voice breaking each time with deep emotion and conviction.

I recalled one lady standing next to us turning later to tell us that we all sang well. I replied "that's how HE had taught us to sing!" and added that "we're ACS boys, every line and word of this song has been etched permanently in our memory. We'll never forget it".

It was definitely the best rendition of our beloved school anthem ever. It says a lot also that after 30 years or more, every word and line was still etched into our memories.

We had a good time of fellowship later, renewing old ties and making new friends while feeling as if we've known each other all our lives.

Earnest Lau moulded us in life, may he in his death bring many of us together.

We kicked the idea around that with every Founder's Day, that we should commemorate it by changing our Facebook profile pictures to the school crest. It was amazing to see so many school crests all over Facebook during the last few days.

Well done everyone, keep this group growing. There's more to come and some of us are just starting to get some ideas going here.

remembering Earnest Lau (1929 - 2011)

the recent passing of my former Principal - Earnest Lau - has given me pause for some circumspection.

Such was Mr Lau's stature among so many generations of the Anglo-Chinese School (ACS) family that his passing in our present socio-cultural milieu has resulted in a phenomenon that i've not personally observed before - the distribution of the collective grieving process over social media.

not to sound too much like a digital non-native, but it's been interesting for me to see how my cohort of ACSians has used Facebook as a collective platform for us to come together across time and space to remember the man who - in ways which we're yet to discover, i'm sure - has influenced - and inspired - each of us, to be the men we are today.

i hate to admit it, but i don't have any specific memory of Mr Lau. yes, i remember his voice - which was a unique amalgam of authority and avuncluarism, i remember his bearing - upright by all definitions of the word, but is there one enduring memory of him, for me? i struggle to answer in the affirmative.

maybe i just wasn't the type who got called to the Principal's office very often :-P (there was just this one time when i was twelve-years-old and just discovering aspects about my sexuality (although i didn't know it at that time, of course), and i was being bullied in class by the person sitting next to me (he was basically making my life a living hell, which was a bit awkward seeing that i was the Class Monitor). we did go to the Principal's office then, but mainly because mum saw fit to step in :-P

and for those of you reading this - yes, It _Does_ indeed Get Better, so hold on to life!

:-)

other than that, as an adolescent growing up in the 1980s, several ages before Twitter, YouTube and the iOS. life was glorious, it was sweet, there were some great friends to be made, and the music (like music generally tends to do) defined our generation.

as i write this, i'm in Singapore Airlines Airbus A380 9V-SKJ flying home from Zürich. For once, i'm forgoing the inflight movie-selection, and going old-tech with just audio-tracks instead. The Krisworld system has very kindly seen fit to populate its on-demand jukebox with UK chart toppers from 1961 to the present day, but, as i write my personal homage to Earnest Lau, i am of course listening to the UK hits of the 1980s.

Those were some truly vintage years - 1984 for one (when i was sixteen), with Do They Know It's Christmas?, Relax, Two Tribes, Careless Whisper, Everything She Wants, Agadoo, and Ghostbusters, and the following year with I Know Him So Well, 19, A Good Heart, and Take On Me.

so…

i'm not sure how much of a fan of UK chart hits from the 1980s Mr Lau was (somehow i think the answer is "not much"), but from one child of that era - from one of the countless boys who passed through the school's portals on his Watch, here's to you, SIR.

may the optimism of the era - as reflected in its music - continue to inspire this generation of your students to continue - in our own ways - the work that you helped us start.

i don't know why i'm tearing up, but i am.

Thank you, Mr Lau SIR. May your soul find its rest in His everlasting arms.