voyeurism

sharing a Computer Vision / Machine Learning project at EDUtech Asia 2021

my team is responding to an invitation extended by the organisers of EDUtech Asia 2021 to faculty of member institutions of the Association of Southeast Asian Teacher Education (AsTEN) to share work.

EDUtech Asia runs from the 9th till the 11th of November 2021.

the team has decided to share early work in Computer Vision / Machine Learning, which was conceptualised by a pair of students whom we mentor. Our sharing is titled Investigating aquatic ecosystems with Computer Vision, Machine Learning and the Internet of Things. It is an inquiry-driven project catalysed by their observations of a school pond.

sharing our work on physiological stress, local microclimate, wearables and Data Science at AAG 2022

my team and i are very excited to share that we have been afforded the opportunity to share our early and ongoing work at the intersection of physiological stress, local microclimate, wearables and Data Science, during the conference of the American Association of Geographers (AAG) which runs from the 25th of February till the 1st of March 2022.

our paper on Investigating the relationship between physiological stress and environmental factors through Data Science, the Internet of Things and DIY wearables has been invited to be part of a symposium organised by Ast/P Guiming Zhang from the University of Denver and Ast/P Xi Gong from the University of New Mexico. My co-authors are Nguyen Duc Minh Anh and Nguyen Thien Minh Tuan.

the theme of the symposium is Human Dynamics Research: Mining Human Dynamics with Big Data, and it is sponsored by the Spatial Analysis and Modeling (SAM) specialty group, the Geographic Information Science and Systems specialty group, and the Cyberinfrastructure specialty group of the AAG, as part of the 8th Symposium on Human Dynamics Research.

Dr Gong is a faculty member of the Department of Geography & Environmental Studies, at the UNM Center for the Advancement of Spatial Informatics Research and Education (ASPIRE). Dr Zhang is a faculty member of the Department of Geography and the Environment at his university. Together, they describe the symposium as follows:

With the advancement of information and communication technologies (ICT), location-aware technology, and mobile technology, data about human behaviors and interactions in physical, virtual, and network space has been generated at an unprecedented scale. The so-called big data bring in both opportunities and challenges for understanding, modeling, and predicting human dynamics. On one hand, the big data are collected from ubiquitous data sources (social media data, volunteered geographic information - VGI, sensor data, GPS tracks, transaction records, etc.); the data can cover aspects and scales of the human dynamics that are unseen from traditional data. On the other hand, revealing meaningful spatio-temporal patterns are challenging due to the high volume, velocity, and variety nature of the big data. Recent cutting-edge techniques such as data mining, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI) open up new opportunities for unveiling the hidden spatio-temporal and network patterns of human dynamics in the big data.

This session welcomes both methodological research on mining human dynamics with big data and human dynamics applications utilizing big data. Potential session topics include, but not limited to:
• Mining, detecting, or modeling human dynamics in physical, virtual or network space using big data (such as social media data, VGI, sensor data, GPS tracks, and transaction data).
• Algorithm design/optimization for mining human dynamics in big data.
• Spatio-temporal analytics of human dynamics using big data.
• Comparison of big data and traditional data in human dynamics research.
• Innovative data sources and data collection methods for human dynamics research.
• Data quality and privacy issues of big data in human dynamics research.
• Visualization of human dynamic patterns in big data.
• Predicting human dynamics based on historical pattern analysis on big data.

Data Science and AI, the SORBET Project and Yunnan Rangers shared during the opening keynote of ELSI 2021

my team and i are very happy and humbled that our various projects on Data Science and AI, the Socially Responsible Behaviour through Embodied Thinking (SORBET) Project, and the Yunnan Rangers hybrid on-site / off-site Augmented Reality board game has been chosen by the Director of the National Institute of Education, Singapore to be shared during her opening keynote delivered during this year's Educational Leadership Summer Institute (ELSI).

ELSI 2021 was hosted by the College of Education, De La Salle University, the Philippines, from the 30th of September till the 2nd of October. This year's theme was Educational Leadership in the New Normal: Navigating Technodependence.

we would like to thank our Director for her gracious encouragement.

:-)

Disciplinary Intuitions: welcoming college students to NTU's Undergraduate Research Experience on Campus (URECA) AY 2021 / 2022

further to my post two months’ ago, my team and i are really happy and privileged to welcome four college students (from a total of fifteen applicants) to our projects offered under NTU’s Undergraduate Research Experience on Campus (URECA) programme for the Academic Year 2021 / 2022.

one of our students is from the National Institute of Education, another is from the School of Computer Science and Engineering, another is from the School of Materials Science and Engineering, and another from the School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences.

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:

NIE21271 - Exploring Data Science through the visualisation of environmental data from the Internet of Things

NIE21276 - Game-Based Learning and the surfacing of leadership dispositions within a campus

NIE21287 - The design and development of an adaptive and assistive coding tool for students through the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning

NIE21303 - Safe management in endemic COVID through monitoring the capacity of defined spatial areas

my team has been invited to share during the Gifted Education annual conference 2021

my team and i are excited and grateful to the Gifted Education Branch of the Ministry of Education, Singapore, for so kindly extending trust to us to be part of this year’s annual conference.

about 500 audience members are invited from among school leaders and teachers drawn from over forty primary and secondary schools across Singapore.

this year’s conference has as its theme ‘Timely changes, timeless constants’. it will be held as an online event on the 26th of November 2021. this opportunity is personally very exciting for me because it brings me back to the start of my career when i took electives on Gifted Education while i was training to be a teacher.

my team and i will be sharing our work in Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things, with examples drawn from Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and the Digital Humanities.

Thanks be to God for His Gift of enabling grace.

Disciplinary Intuitions / Six Learnings / Maker Motes / AI & data science offered as part of NTU's Undergraduate Research Experience on Campus (URECA) programme 2021/22

are you an NTU undergraduate eligible for the Undergraduate Research Experience on Campus (URECA) programme 2021/22?

if so, please do consider applying for

NIE21020 Exploring the potential roles that game-based worlds and immersive environments play in learning

NIE21021 Exploring the development of maker dispositions in learning through open-source hardware and software

NIE21152 Designing predictive models for analysing environmental sensor data from a network of IoT sensor devices

NIE21153 Exploring the role of coding, data science and machine learning in the Humanities classroom :-)

it would be my privilege to work alongside you :-)

visit our team's mini-campus in Frame VR

my team and i are very happy to invite you to visit a mini-campus - in Frame - which we have designed to showcase some of our work.

Frame is a website that lets people communicate and collaborate in a 3D space as avatars from a browser on desktop, mobile, or VR. It is currently still in beta.

for our mini-campus, we used one of the standard environments provided by Frame, and populated the space with examples of our work.

we are excited about Frame because the multiplicity of ways in which content may be accessed - from smartphone to full-blown desktop VR - coupled with the low barriers to access - visitors only need a standard web browser - points a way forward for immersive and VR learning spaces to come.

for example, Frame runs from a web browser on desktop (including Chromebook), mobile, or VR.

on desktops and notebooks, Frame is accessible through Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Chromium-based Edge browsers.
in stand-alone VR, Frame is accessible through the Oculus Browser.
on mobiles and tablets, Frame is accessible through Chrome on Android, and Safari on iOS.

do have a go :-)

a trajectory in Artificial Intelligence, Data Science and Machine Learning

as my team's experience with Maker Motes and the Internet of Things has grown since our first forays eight years' ago, we have anticipated that the datasets generated by the sensor meshes we have emplaced within school campuses across Singapore would be growing, too.

in late 2019, we started monitoring the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Science and Machine Learning (ML), especially as applied to learning and education. 

we have been dissatisfied with the extent to which the particular paradigm of using AI as tools for analysing student behaviour and performance has been pervasive in much conversation around education.

we challenged ourselves to continue exploring and keeping open minds, and, in - Steve Jobs's words - not to "settle".

we particularly also wanted to extend the narrative around AI, Data Science and ML beyond the traditional domains of Mathematics and Computer Science.

this year, together with some of our students, we conceptualised two examples of the applications of AI, Data Science and ML to the Digital Humanities.

the first is an idea for a History lesson unit in which a dataset of historical commercial voyages is visualised using the R programming language, in order to show the extent to which Singapore as a trading post in the 19th century was connected to other parts of the world.

the second is an idea for poverty mapping in which several years of satellite imagery is analysed using trained Machine Learning models in order to identify patterns of development across regions and countries in Southeast Asia.

through God's grace, and through the very kind invitation of Seoul National University, i will be sharing these projects on a session themed on Education Technology and the Learning Sciences, as part of the 21st International Conference on Educational Research (ICER) to be held on the 21st and 22nd of October.

all thanks be to God alone.

Credit: Lambert & Co., G.R. / Singapore
Leiden University Library, KITLV, image 150813 Collection page Southeast Asian & Caribbean Images (KITLV)