voyeurism

EcoRangers® is granted its trademark :-)

woohoo!

within nine months of filing the application, EcoRangers® has been granted a Class 09 trademark under the Singapore Trade Marks Act, by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore :-)

the trademark number is T05/04675E.

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EcoRangers® - results of the Formalities Examination Report

thanks be to God, our patent application for EcoRangers® has been deemed by the Singapore Registrar of Patents to have satisfied the formal requirements of the Patents Act and Rules.

this clears the application for its next step, which is to file the Request for Search Report.

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EcoRangers® - patent application number

our patent agent has informed us that EcoRangers® has been assigned a patent application number of 2005 00539-2.

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EcoRangers® - patent application

our patent agent lodged the application for EcoRangers® today, through the Singapore Patents Registry.

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EcoRangers® at EdTech Awards 2004

today was the presentation ceremony for the award winners for this year's HP INIT and the [email protected] competitions.

it was held at the Ministry of Education's Edutorium, and the Guest-of-Honour was MOE's Deputy Secretary (Policy) - Mr Chan Yeng Kit.

it was very exciting to see the presentations from several of the award winners, specifically 'The Fellowship Project: an integrated learning forum' from Pasir Ris Secondary School (which used Tolkein's 'Lord of the Rings' to draw parallels with modern history), 'Solving crimes based on unique features of human beings' from Fuhua Primary School, and 'Designing a paper glider that flies the longest distance' from Dunman Secondary School.

i was especially intrigued by the efforts of Tan Yuh Huann and Mdm Teo Eng Hui (from Beatty Secondary School and Nan Chiau High School respectively), on 'Online student reading portfolio using blogs'. These two pioneers in education technology in Singapore have been responsible for setting up an exciting new website: edublog.net

do check it out :-)

Technorati Tags: EcoRangers®, education, games

EcoRangers® wins HP INIT award

woo hoo :-)

by God's infinite grace, EcoRangers® has been awarded a Merit award at this year's Hewlett-Packard Innovation in IT (HP INIT) competition :-)

this means that Fuchun Secondary, in which EcoRangers® was piloted back in April, has won S$3000 worth of HP products :-)

i am so happy for the school :-)

HP INIT was started back in 1998, as a key programme between Singapore's Ministry of Education and Hewlett-Packard to:
- recognise innovation, creativity and experimentation in the use of IT in education; and
- promote collaboration and networking amongst teachers and educators from Institutes of Higher Learning

congratulations to Fuchun, especially to its principal - Mrs Chuah-Koh Eng Ngoh - and to the HOD (Humanities) - Mr Zainudin :-)

way to go :-)

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EcoRangers® at ICET 2004

over the past two days i have been attending the inaugural International Conference on Educational Technology, here at the Singapore International Convention and Exhibition Centre.

the quality of the papers and panel sessions has generally been very high, and the conference was very well attended. in fact, i met several of my former students (from various cohorts) at the conference - many of them are currently trainees at the NIE.

earlier this morning i had the privilege of conducting a twenty-minute sharing session on EcoRangers®. my paper was one of five on the theme of Emerging Technologies in education. the speaker immediately after my presentation was one of Jason's teachers at Ngee Ann - he shared on some of the wireless initiatives that the campus has been implementing.

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leaving on a jet plane

just over a month after i received the terrific news that i'll be able to attend the upcoming conference in Edinburgh to present some preliminary findings from my research, God's grace is evident once again, when a letter arrived in the post saying that my airfare and my conference fees will be fully funded by the NIE :-)

this past week, i finished the last round of post-tests. this also means that, for the time being at least, there will be no more formal opportunities for EcoRangers® to be played. i am truly grateful that, in the end, three schools were able to try the game, and i collected more data than i had originally envisaged. the improvements in version 1.1 have gone a long way towards improving game play.

i also took the opportunity of this year's Strategic Planning Day of the department which i belong to here at the NIE to share with all my colleagues for the first time about EcoRangers®. and to think that i had only learned about Structured Academic Controversies from my colleague A/P Wang Zhenping during last year's Strategic Planning Day. time truly flies when one is having fun :-)

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a round of applause

Congratulations to Jason for being awarded the Merit award in the Technology category during Ngee Ann Polytechnic's Student Excellence Awards 2004.

Jason was one of only two award recipients in the Technology category, and his programming contribution was the only Information Technology-related award this year (the other award went to a pair of Biotechnology students).

Way to go, Jason :-)

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debut, with a twist

EcoRangers® debuted in two conferences in two different continents this week :-)

first, John is representing us at the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education's 'Ed-Media: World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications' in Lugano, Switzerland. the focus of his presentation is on the preliminary research findings of the pilot study.

second, with grateful thanks to Michael Flynn of SuccessLink.org, i took the last fifteen minutes of his experiential session at the International Association for the Study of Cooperation in Education's biennial conference (held here in Singapore for the first time) to introduce the game itself.

quite a unique debut on the world academic stage, but one quite befitting the unique nature of EcoRangers® itself :-)

Technorati Tags: EcoRangers®, EdMedia2004, games, IASCE2004