voyeurism

Disciplinary Intuitions / Six Learnings / Maker Motes: welcoming two college students to NTU's Undergraduate Research Experience on Campus (URECA)

further to my post four months’ ago, my team and i are really happy and privileged to welcome two college students to our projects offered under NTU’s Undergraduate Research Experience on Campus (URECA) programme for the Academic Year 2017 / 2018.

one of the students is from the Nanyang Business School, and the other is on the Teaching Scholars Programme.

the opportunity to participate in URECA is extended through invitation only to select second- and third-year undergraduates, who will subsequently be conferred as NTU President Research Scholars.

the projects we have offered are:

NIE17066 Exploring the affordances of open-source sensors in promoting authenticity in learning

and

NIE17095 Learning with micro:bits: exploring conceptual understanding through local phenomena.

Guide to developing digital games for early grade literacy for developing countries - the cover for the book :-)

this is what the cover for a Guide to developing digital games for early grade literacy for developing countries looks like :-)

Maker Motes and micro:bits: sharing with pre-service student-teachers

further to my post last month, my team shared our experience with implementing Maker Motes and micro:bits in STEM-based curricula in schools in Singapore and Indonesia, during this week’s QCS50H pre-service teacher education course at the National Institute of Education.

i am so grateful to God for the privilege of being part of this team. i am especially taken by Ming De’s inspired localisation of a micro:bit container - it’s not just cool, but meets several critical functional criteria as well.

Disciplinary Intuitions / Maker Motes: details on the seminar on STEM education in schools, hosted by The Education University of Hong Kong

further to my post last month, here are more details about the seminar on STEM education in schools, that my team and i have been invited to facilitate in Hong Kong.

Approaching curriculum design for STEM education and computational thinking is a seminar organised by [email protected], and hosted by the Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology at The Education University of Hong Kong.

it will be held on the 20th of October 2017, from 2 pm to 5 pm, at Block E of the university campus at Tai Po.

During the first hour, i will introduce Disciplinary Intuitions as a theoretical lens through which to conceptualise curriculum design for STEM education.

This will be followed by three concurrent breakout sessions, each helmed by a member of my team, themed on Investigating our local microclimates with Micro:bit boards.

These concurrent sessions will be offered in both English and Mandarin.

During these sessions, participants will learn how to connect weather sensors to a Micro:bit board and transmit the sensor readings via Bluetooth to a computer. They will then engage in a facilitated discussion on possible STEM lessons on the investigation of local micro-climates using data gathered from Micro:bit. It is expected that participants will have a greater understanding of how to set up Micro:bit boards to gather weather data, as well as how to design STEM lessons to investigate local micro-climates using these data.

Registration closes on the 6th of October.

Do consider signing up if you are in Hong Kong :-)

'a guidebook on developing digital games for early grade literacy for developing countries' at the 2017 symposium of the Mobiles for Education Alliance

further to my post from last week, i am able to share a few more details about my participation at this year’s symposium of the Mobiles for Education (mEducation) Alliance, to be held in Washington DC from the 5th to the 6th of October.

my co-author John Comings and i will be talking about a guidebook on developing digital games for early grade literacy for developing countries, during a session on the 6th of October, themed on non-formal education and lifelong learning.

my fellow panelists (and their presentation topics) during the session will be:

Vakkayil Ummer Koya, Jan Shikshan Sansthan Malappuram Role of ICT in Literacy and Adult Education;

Andrew Rudge, CEO, The Reach Trust Escaping the Literacy Poverty Trap - Helping Low Literacy Parents to Establish Literacy Foundations in their Children; and

Kamal Bijlani, Director, Amrita E-Learning Research Lab, and Dr. Prema Neudngadi, Founding Director, AmritaCREATE, Amrita University Empowerment of Labour Force via Lifelong Learning Records, Competency Mapping for jobs and Skill Training.

if you are in DC during those two days, please do consider saying hello :-)

i would like to take the opportunity to thank the agencies responsible for the commissioning of the guidebook.

Digital Learning for Development (DL4D) is part of the Information Networks in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (INASSA) program funded jointly by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada and the Department for International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom, and administered by the Foundation for Information Technology Education and Development (FIT-ED) of the Philippines.

All Children Reading: a Grand Challenge for Development (ACR GCD) was launched by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), World Vision, and the Australian government, as an ongoing series of projects which leverage science and technology to create scalable solutions to improve literacy skills of early grade learners in developing countries.

Maker Motes: details on the session at the international conference of the World Association of Lesson Studies (WALS) 2017

further to my post last month, here are details of our sharing session on Maker Motes, based on the tentative programme of this year's international conference of the World Association of Lesson Studies (WALS), to be held in Nagoya.

the Maker Motes sharing will be held on Saturday the 25th of November, for about half an hour, in a time slot from 8:45 am to 10:15 am, in Room 11 of the conference venue (which is in the campus of Nagoya university).

the two other presenters (and their presentation topics) in that time slot are:

Chang Hui-Ming from Taiwan a Lesson Study of the changes of students' English learning motivation through global learning; and

Eligio C Obille Jr from the Philippines Lesson Study: a framework for developing lessons that integrate science and mathematics.

see you at this year's symposium of the Mobiles for Education Alliance

i’ll be attending the 7th annual symposium of the Mobiles for Education (mEducation) Alliance.

the Alliance was founded in 2010 and is an international collaborative effort between bilateral and multilateral donors, NGOs, foundations, private sector partners, academic researchers, and implementing organizations.

this year’s symposium will be held in Washington DC from the 5th to the 6th of October. i will be there to attend the launch of this book :-)

i would like to take the opportunity to thank the agencies responsible for the commissioning of the guidebook.

Digital Learning for Development (DL4D) is part of the Information Networks in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (INASSA) program funded jointly by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada and the Department for International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom, and administered by the Foundation for Information Technology Education and Development (FIT-ED) of the Philippines.

All Children Reading: a Grand Challenge for Development (ACR GCD) was launched by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), World Vision, and the Australian government, as an ongoing series of projects which leverage science and technology to create scalable solutions to improve literacy skills of early grade learners in developing countries.

the 3rd University-based Institutes for Advanced Study Intercontinental Academia 2018 / 2019

i have just received the news that i have been awarded a Fellowship for the 3rd University-based Institutes for Advanced Study (UBIAS) Intercontinental Academia (ICA), themed on Laws: rigidity and dynamics, hosted by the University of Birmingham and the Nanyang Technological University in 2018 / 2019.

all praise be to God alone.

the ICA will convene over two workshops - one to be held in Singapore in March 2018 and the second in Birmingham in March 2019. through these workshops, i will have the opportunity not only to meet and interact with about fifteen other Fellows from around the world, but to also be mentored by a multi-disciplinary team of academic faculty, including two Nobel Laureates.

through these interactions, the ICA seeks to create a global network of research leaders by constructing opportunities for early / mid-career scholars to work together on cross-disciplinary research.

for the 3rd ICA, the theme of Laws: rigidity and dynamics was chosen because the concept of laws has different meanings in different settings, cultures, and to individuals. As participants, we will be invited to structure conversations about the origins of laws and the tensions among them.

What i personally find intriguing about the theme of the 2018 / 2019 Intercontinental Academia is the creative potential which likely lies in discussions and interactions at the nexus between - for want of better terms - ‘intuitions’ and ‘laws’.

Thus, for example, when do intuitions become codified in to laws? Conversely, when one attempts to unpack or deconstruct laws - both in the natural sciences and in the social sciences and humanities - to what extent can they be traced to the intuitions which novices have developed from their respective lived environments? Further, along the trajectory from novice to expert, how might the Disciplinary Intuitions (Lim, 2015) co-inform the respective canonical ‘laws’?

It is my hope that - through participation in the Intercontinental Academia 2018 / 2019 - some frames of inquiry in to these and similar questions might be crafted, in collaboration with my fellow participants and with the mentors.