voyeurism

google's top hit

w00t :-)

just for fun, i googled 'phd skypecast'.

(i'd done that just last week, in order to verify that the skypecast of my oral defence would indeed be the world's first)

to my utter (and, it must be said, very pleasant) surprise, it turns out that my skypecast is - for now, at least - the top hit, from among 10800 results!

thank You, God, for continuing to surprise me :-)

God's grace :-) #10 (a.k.a. viva voce) (part II)

here is the concluding part of this morning's recording of the oral defence of my doctoral thesis.

it brings you the question- and answer-session which followed my presentation to the panel of examiners.

this part of the episode is 16.1 MB in size and 34 minutes in duration.

God's grace :-) #10 (a.k.a. viva voce) (part I)

the sixty-ninth episode of ventriloquy is one which i have been working towards for many years - it brings you a recording of the oral defence of my doctoral thesis in adolescent spatial cognition, here at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

by His grace alone, the defence was successful and my thesis was accepted in full, without amendments being necessary.

i would like to thank the following people, who comprised the members of the panel today:
Professor David Hogan, Dean, Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice (CRPP), National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University
Professor S Gopinathan, Vice Dean (Policy), CRPP
Associate Professor Tan Seng Chee, Deputy Head, Learning Sciences and Technologies Academic Group (LST), NIE
Associate Professor Michael Jacobson, LST (my Chief Examiner)
Associate Professor Augustine Tan, Associate Dean, Academic Research, Graduate Programmes and Research Office, NIE

i would also like to thank my supervisor Professor Allan Luke for his many critical insights.

my gratitude also goes to my two research assistants - Teo Jie Hua and Jason Wang, as well as to Low Hock Siang for helping me this morning.

with a research endeavour of this magnitude, there are many others whose contributions were crucial. i acknowledge them in the wiki - voxpopuli - which is crafted around the thesis.

because of its duration, i have split the episode into two. this first part is 29.6 MB in size and 46 minutes in duration. it is the recording of my presentation to the panel.

Show notes:
- Introduction
- Significance of study
- Theoretical framework
- Research questions
- Related work by others
- Methodology
- Scope, limitations and critique
- About the research subjects
- Types of data collected
- Analysis of results
- Contributions

"testing... testing... is this thing on?"

(deep breath)

okie! i've decided to take the plunge with skypecasts :-)

i can think of no better excuse to commemorate this endeavour with skypecast-hosting than to allow you to listen in, live, to the oral defence of my PhD research on adolescent spatial cognition.

long-time readers of this blog will know that my initial forays into my doctoral research were driven by my interests in social software (only later did i realise that what i was researching was not actually the software side of things, but the heartware). so, once again, as with the blog voyeurism, as with the wiki voxpopuli, there's no better way to talk about social software than to get one's hands dirty by actually using it.

thus i will attempt to bring you what might well be the very first PhD oral defence skypecast ever :-P

God willing, this will take place at the following time (please try your best not to get confused by the time zones)
- Singapore time (Thursday 21 September 9 am)
- Greenwich Mean Time (Thursday 21 September 1 am)
- US Eastern Daylight Time (Wednesday 20 September 9 pm)
- US Pacific Daylight Time (Wednesday 20 September 6 pm)

don't fret if you won't be free at this time - i'm hoping to record the session too and upload it as an enhanced podcast, together with the slides that i'll be using in my presentation.

now, because i am such a control freak (and also because i don't wish to disappoint you), i'm going to do a rehearsal (of sorts) for this, by also presenting my class this coming Tuesday (or Monday, depending on which part of the world you're listening in from) as a skypecast.

specifically, it's my QCG521 class with postgraduate pre-service teacher-trainees, which is about teaching Social Studies in secondary schools in Singapore. as this is only our class's third session, i'll be talking in very general terms about the rationale behind the subject and its syllabus, as well as giving them some background as to how the syllabus was implemented, and (time permitting) go on to an overview of source-usage in Social Studies.

the timing of this earlier skypecast will be as follows:
- Singapore time (Tuesday 19 September 12:30 pm)
- Greenwich Mean Time (Tuesday 19 September 4:30 am)
- US Eastern Daylight Time (Tuesday 19 September 12:30 am)
- US Pacific Daylight Time (Monday 18 September 9:30 pm)
this session will be two hours in duration, and will not be recorded for podcast.

if you can make either skypecast, or if you have any queries on the topics, please feel free to leave me a comment and i'll try my best to clarify things :-)

please note that for both skypecasts, i will be using my MacBook Pro's built-in microphone, so please do not expect stunning sound quality.

more importantly, please also note that i'll be configuring both skypecasts such that listeners will not have speaking privileges. this is because for the oral defence itself (for which the earlier skypecast is technically a rehearsal for), i am only supposed to be questioned by my examiners - even the physically assembled guests in the audience are not supposed to speak. i do apologise for this, and, if i feel that the skypecasts are feasible and worth exploring further, i will likely consider making them more interactive subsequently.

for now, however, mum's the word.

:-)

Technorati Tags: cognition, constructivism, discourse, education, geography, globalization, landmarks, learning, maps, multiliteracies, navigation, place, quantum classroom®, semiotics, Singapore, skypecast, TLLM, viva, Vygotsky, wayfinding

the quantum classroom®, and Globalization 4.0

just got a mail from the National Institute of Education's Graduate Programs and Research Office.

these are the kind people who are facilitating the arrangement of my oral defence, which will be at 9 am on the 21st of September!

they've asked me to prepare three unbound copies of the thesis, which will be given to the panel members in advance.

God had an extra surprise in store today: my latest book - co-authored with my colleagues Assoc Profs Ooi Giok-Ling and Kalyani Chatterjea, and Asst Prof Chang Chew-Hung, entitled 'Geographies of a Changing World: Global Issues in the Early 21st Century' - is hot off the presses from Pearson Prentice Hall :-)

this book is significant because it marks the debut - in Chapter Nine ('Thinking Global, Acting Local: Stakeholders, Issues and Perspectives in Globalization') - of my emerging thoughts on the quantum classroom®, and of what i term 'Globalization 4.0'.

Globalization 4.0 builds on Friedman's three phases of globalization in his 'flat earth' thesis. As i express it on page 223,

"This phase, while similar to the preceding three in that it follows the logic of the shrinking world, is distinct from the others in that its defining characteristic is not so much size, but ubiquity.

"It is my contention that so-called Globalization 4.0 will be characterized by the ability of its participants to collapse time and space to the extent that they can be virtually anywhere, and at any time.

"To elaborate, I see four levelers which are setting Globalization 4.0 in motion. They are:
- mapping technologies as typified by Google Earth
- the provision and access to virtually unlimited amounts of storage space by services such as Gmail and Odeo
- the provision and access to increasingly higher bandwidth (both wired and wireless), and finally
- the development of what has been variously termed ubiquitous, pervasive and wearable computing.
Taken together, these technologies might be projected to converge, in the not too distant future, in several ways.

"An early example is the use of so-called life-blogs. In their current form, life-blogs are an extension of text-based blogs to incorporate multimedia recorded spontaneously. As storage and bandwidth fade from consideration, and as positioning, recording and playback devices shrink to the point that one forgets that one is wearing them, the time is not too far away when a person’s entire life experience – what he sees, hears, feels, smells; what his physiological reactions were; where and when he went – can potentially be digitally captured for posterity, for any participant to re-live."

Regular readers of voyeurism will recognise that i was first introduced to these ideas at the Human-Computer Interaction conference last year, specifically in the session described in this post.

now, mustn't forget about printing the thesis! off to the printers i go :-)

Technorati Tags: geography, globalization, Globalization 4.0, quantum classroom®, viva

doreen's first-year confirmation

sitting here in my colleague's - doreen's - first year confirmation seminar.

she's doing her research in the teaching of history and social studies in secondary schools in Singapore.

her data is mainly qualitative, and the methodology is divided into three phases, as are most research studies, including mine.

like suthakar's seminar, she has a separate slide on types of data collected. worth thinking about.

generally, she's very interested in teacher belief-systems and the extent to which teachers see themselves as curricular gatekeepers.

one of her concerns is how teachers conceive of what constitutes thinking historically.

by the way, the Layers of Inference framework which is often used in social studies education here in Singapore is from Claire Riley (1999).

hmm.... during the 'Q&A', once again, just as in during suthakar's, the contribution of the thesis was suggested to be made more explicit. another issue was to come up with descriptors for measuring the attainment of historical understanding. hmm... the distinction was drawn between "what is history?" and "what is historical understanding?", and how the extent to which one's historical understanding influences how history is taught. the difference between 'knowing' and 'knowing how'.

Suthakar's first-year confirmation

here i am sitting in the first-year confirmation seminar of one of the doctoral students from my department at the National Institute of Education.

he's K Suthakar, and his research is on how remote sensing techniques might be used to make sense of how land uses have been changing in Sri Lanka's Jaffna peninsula, partly as a consequence of the conflict between the central government and the Tamil Tigers.

he's got an interesting slide near the beginning of his presentation, entitled 'outline of the research', which he divides into inputs, processes and outputs. worth thinking about, in terms of my own oral defence in time to come.

some of the questions raised by the panel include more explicit coverage of significant contributions, and a closer link between the lit review and the research methodology.

Technorati Tags: geography, maps

chewhung's big day

today was chewhung's turn for oral defence :-)

(ivy had her's last September)

i took away three tips for the presentation portion, for when it comes to my turn:

- have a slide titled 'intended contributions', with a couple of key questions which the audience can bear in mind throughout the presentation. this slide should first appear early in the presentation, and should be revisited at the end

- do remember to talk about reliability and validity

- have a slide about self-critique of the research and its limitations

- have a slide about how the research informs good teaching practice :-)

well done, chewhung!

Technorati Tags: viva

dress rehearsal

okie had my first year confirmation seminar today :-)

present in the panel were allan, chorboon, cherping and jeanette. john was there too, and so were several fellow graduate students :-)

started promptly at 2 pm, i talked for about forty minutes, then had questions for half an hour. then they sent me out of the room while they deliberated.

in a nutshell, i have to rework the chapter organisation somewhat - john suggested constructing narratives based on the neighbourhoods instead, so that the way the various pieces fit together might be made that much more explicit.

it was also suggested that shift the emphasis away from pure discourse analysis, to a focus more on the actual geographical and spatial perceptions.

allan introduced me to a metaphor which i don't think i will forget in a long time: this is not the Indy 500; this is just the driving test. my job is to stay within the lines and not hit anything :-)

by 3:30 pm, i was given the tremendous news that i had passed from MPhil to PhD candidate :-)

all thanks and praise be to God :-)

ivy's big day

i'm sitting in my friend and colleague ivy's oral defence right now.

her research was on the effect of the cooperative learning strategy known as Group Investigations might have on learners of different academic abilities.

it is quite an eye-opening experience for me (as i thought it would :-P ).

the last time i was in attendance in anything quite as similar was back at the MIT in '98. that was a very different experience, in many ways. first, today's defence is a real viva, with four members of the viva team seated around a table. it's also a quasi-closed-door session, conducted in a meeting room, with only the viva team being allowed to ask questions (note that the viva team are distinct from the examiners - i didn't know that either :-P ).

wow... as i was typing those words, all the students seated behind were asked to leave the room. ivy too needed to leave.

as for the questions asked by the examiners, they were definitely not beyond what ivy could handle.

looking at her draft copy of her submission, i can see it came up to just over 200 pages.

eeks.

Technorati Tags: viva