voyeurism

Destination Guide -> SL18B -> Beneath the waves

Beneath the Waves at SL18B

Come explore ecosystems, such as the littoral zone, reef environment, neretic zone, and the demersal zone of the oceans. This installation is dedicated to all who have designed and built wonderful marine ecosystems in the waters of Second Life over the past eighteen years.

Visit in Second Life

 

Beneath the waves: an installation at SL18B

today sees the start of two-and-a-half weeks' of commemorative events (collectively known as SL18B) celebrating the eighteenth anniversary of the main grid of Second Life coming out of beta :-)

the annual celebrations are always something i look forward to, and i have participated by contributing installations in 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013 and 2020.

this year, i had not anything new to share with fellow residents, but i felt prompted to participate nonetheless. 

inspired by this year's theme of 'hidden worlds', i designed and built a simple installation dedicated to all those who have contributed wonderful and awesome aquatic and marine ecosystems in the waters and oceans all over Second Life, over these past eighteen years. 

titled 'Beneath the waves', i tried my best to represent the vertical zonations of the littoral, the reef, the neritic, and the demersal. 

Beneath the waves is also dedicated to the memory of Ebbe Altberg.

Beneath the waves is located at SL18B Incredible. when you visit, do consider visiting the two parcels immediately to the east and west of the installation. 

adjoining Beneath the waves to the east is an installation representing the Second Life Endowment for the Arts. The SLEA is the spiritual successor to the former Linden Endowment for the Arts (LEA), a decade-long partnership with the arts community that aimed to help new artists, cultivate art in SL, and foster innovation, collaboration and education.

adjoining Beneath the waves to the west is an installation representing the Second Life Coast Guard. The goal of the SLCG is to teach those interested, real life safe boating courses from within the virtual world. 

SL18B runs till the 6th of July.

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)

Yunnan Rangers hybrid AR board game at the 7th international conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network

our team has received news that we will be able to present a paper on the hybrid Augmented Reality (AR) board game that my team developed - Yunnan Rangers - during this year's international conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network (iLRN).

our paper is titled Communal Spaces As Ludic Resources Of Learning With Augmented Reality And Board Games. its abstract reads: This paper describes a learning activity using Augmented Reality (AR) which seeks to take advantage of the potential for learning about history and culture through exploration. This is represented by a garden in a university campus that affords visitors a scaffolded experience comprising a game-driven narrative in which visitors to the garden may assume the roles of different protagonists. In addition, we also sought to design a paper-based board-game for visitors who are not yet able to visit the garden in person. Both aspects of the learning activity – namely, the game-driven narratives in the actual garden as well as in the board-game equivalent – were piloted in December 2020. The study suggests that a combination of Augmented Reality, storyline and role-play could increase the probability of encounters with spontaneous elements in learners’ local environments that encourage learning.

iLRN 2021 runs from the 17th of May till the 10th of June, and i am scheduled to read the paper on the 2nd of June :-)

 

Yunnan Rangers hybrid AR board game: shared with alumni of the Nanyang Technological University

my team and i are very grateful to the Development Office of our parent university - the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) - for so graciously deeming our recent hybrid Augmented Reality (AR) board game Yunnan Rangers as worthy of being shared with those members of the alumni of the university who are currently based in China.

the Development Office supports the university's mission by fostering meaningful relationships and strategic partnerships with philanthropists, alumni, business community partners, corporations, foundations and friends that result in goodwill and philanthropy towards education and research that underpin a shared sustainable future. Together, the Office and its partners nurture the next generation of leaders and build sustainable support in education and academia.

the Office will be sharing Yunnan Rangers in a coming Electronic Direct Mail in both English and Mandarin Chinese, to alumni. for example, the Mandarin Chinese version will be shared with NTU China, which is an industry-academia collaboration between NTU and the Chongqing Yubei District People's Government in Yubei district, Chongqing municipality.   

it's such a privilege for us, because we conceptualised, designed, and developed Yunnan Rangers during 2020 - as part of our team's response to COVID-19 - particularly with the Chinese diaspora in mind. it's tremendous that our parent university understands, appreciates, and is able to support our work in Augmented Reality and learning.

we are so grateful to the Development Office of the NTU.

:-)

first enaction of the Socially Responsible Behaviour through Embodied Thinking (SORBET) Project in the primary school curriculum

ten years' ago to the day, Japan was rocked by the Tohoku earthquake, which triggered the Fukushima nuclear disaster. 

at that time, my team and i were collaborating with a local primary school here in Singapore, and the teachers designed a series of activities to help children make sense of what had happened, within the context of the Social Studies curriculum.

it represented one of the earliest examples of enactments inspired by our Six Learnings curriculum design framework, and we remain very grateful to those teachers.

i am very excited to share that today marked the return of the Six Learnings to the primary school Social Studies curriculum, this time under the auspices of the Socially Responsible Behaviour through Embodied Thinking (SORBET) Project.

catalysed by the COVID-19 pandemic, our team has been singularly privileged to walk this journey with teachers and students from Xishan Primary School.

we have learned so much from the teachers and have also learned to see the world through the eyes of the students.

Yunnan Rangers now part of the Singapore Kaleidoscope

two days' ago, i introduced Yunnan Rangers - a mixed-reality board game that my team and i have developed.

we are very humbled to learn that Yunnan Rangers has been incorporated in what is known as the Singapore Kaleidoscope. The Singapore Kaleidoscope is a compulsory course under the enhanced Postgraduate Diploma in Education programme of the National Institute of Education, Singapore. The Singapore Kaleidoscope course was introduced in December 2016. It seeks to enlarge student teachers’ understanding of the issues confronting Singapore, while cultivating appreciative inquiry as well as self-directed and experiential learning skills. As part of the course, student teachers explore various themes, such as “Nature and Biodiversity” and “Singapore in the World”. ‘Yunnan Rangers’ is positioned within the theme of “Heritage, Society and Culture”.

we thank God for this opportunity.

Yunnan Rangers hybrid Augmented Reality board game: introduction at the Innovations in Teaching & Learning seminar 2021

two days' ago, i introduced Yunnan Rangers - a mixed-reality board game that my team and i have developed.

next month, as part of the Innovations in Teaching & Learning seminar hosted by the National Institute of Education on the 2nd of March, we will be sharing briefly our experience to fellow faculty, as part of a panel themed on 'advancing research'.

Introducing Yunnan Rangers: a hybrid on-site / off-site game themed on history, culture and ecology

Yunnan Rangers is a hybrid on-site / off-site game based on the Yunnan Garden situated at the campus of the Nanyang Technological University. The garden was built in the 1950s and spans nine hectares. It was re-opened in 2020 after a renovation lasting about three years. The renovated garden features clusters of floral species along the water course of a rain-garden – the latter is a bioretention facility designed to treat polluted stormwater run-off, by using plants and differentiated layers of soil to increase infiltration of water which would otherwise pond on the surface. As for the clusters of floral species, they are accompanied by text-based signboards which describe the significance of the various species to the heritage of the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, in cultural terms such as medicinal use, use in textiles, and so on.

This board game was designed as a companion to an augmented reality (AR) game which is designed to be played on-site at the garden; this version can be played by visitors who are unable to visit the garden in person. The layout of the board game is based on that of the actual garden, and Augmented Reality is used to complement game-play by providing the player(s) with supplemental information as they advance through the game. 

Please feel free to download the game documents for yourself :-)

My team worked alongside Wong Yuk Yi from April till December 2020 to develop this game.

Disciplinary Intuitions / the SORBET Project: welcoming college students to NTU's Undergraduate Research Experience on Campus (URECA) AY 2020 / 2021

further to my post four months’ ago, my team and i are really happy and privileged to welcome four college students to our projects offered under NTU’s Undergraduate Research Experience on Campus (URECA) programme for the Academic Year 2020 / 2021.

two of our students are from the National Institute of Education, another is from the School of Computer Science and Engineering, and another from the School of Social 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:

NIE20243 - Knowledge mobilisation of the Six Learnings curriculum design framework and its associated theory of Disciplinary Intuitions

NIE20244 - Exploring how the Socially Responsible Behaviour through Embodied Thinking (SORBET) Project might be applied to Geography curricula

NIE20273 - Exploring how the Socially Responsible Behaviour through Embodied Thinking (SORBET) Project might be applied to citizenship education curricula

NIE20274 - Adapting the Socially Responsible Behaviour through Embodied Thinking (SORBET) Project to the mobile platform