voyeurism

Conceptualising, Designing and Enacting a Zone of Proximal Development for an After-School Coding Curriculum

my students - Jie Bin and Deepankur - and i are happy to share that a chapter that we contributed to a book four and a half years' ago has finally been published :-)

our chapter is titled Conceptualising, designing, and enacting a Zone of Proximal Development for an after-school coding curriculum.

its abstract reads:

This chapter describes an intervention which was enacted from April 2018 to February 2019, in an orphanage in Singapore. The learning intervention comprised a coding curriculum conceptualised, designed and enacted by two high-school students, in their capacity as interns to the Lead Author. Written in the form of a narrative inquiry, the chapter describes the trajectory charted by the students as they sought to take their conceptual expertise in the Python coding language to design a scaffolded curriculum through the lens of a Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). This curriculum was enacted on a weekly basis after formal curriculum hours, with one of the orphans who was their peer in terms of age (prior to the intervention, the students were not acquainted with the orphan). The chapter thus describes the reflections and learning points about their personal ontologies of coding, and about their struggles as they appropriated the epistemologies of curriculum designer and tutor—as the three peers met each week for the better part of a year. The chapter therefore has potential takeaways for those interested in peer-based learning, non-formal after-school contexts of learning, as well as the place of coding and computational thinking in the curriculum.

co-hosting students from CHIJ Secondary for their Work Experience Programme

my team and i are happy to be given the opportunity to co-host some students from the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (CHIJ) Secondary School, with a few of my colleagues from the Sustainability Learning Lab, National Institute of Education.

this opportunity comes under the auspices of the school's Work Experience Programme, and our team will be co-hosting on the afternoon of the 1st of November.

the objectives of the programme are:

- to provide an experience in which the students familiarise themselves with a variety of work situations through attachment to a workplace and they learn through direct participation and observation;

- to build life skills for the world of work; and

- to help the students make informed decisions regarding career selection.

we are happy and grateful to be part of this opportunity :-)

the Life2Well Project: a thrilling moment :-)

we are thrilled, and so very humbled.

thanks be to God alone for His grace.

The Life2Well Project shared with Senior Minister Teo Chee Hean

my team and i were thrilled to have the opportunity to share our work on Learning at the intersection of AI, physiology, EEG, our environment and well-being (The Life2Well Project) with Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security Teo Chee Hean.

the opportunity was so graciously afforded to us by the Senior Leadership team of the National Institute of Education.

we are also very grateful to the staff and students of Serangoon Garden Secondary School, without whose presence the activities of the afternoon would have been greatly diminished.

our sharing was titled An example of student-driven inquiry of their own well-being and within their local environments, as facilitated by the Internet of Things and Data Science.

:-)

my student-teacher conducts a lesson of his own design with students visiting from a local school

during the preceding academic semester, a student-teacher from the Natural Sciences and Science Education Academic Group of the National Institute of Education - Koh Shao Wei - attended the General Elective which my team offers (AGE08D Designing Learning Environments with the Internet of Things).

as part of his work for the course, he conceptualised and designed a learning activity for the topic on Forces and Dynamics in Physics Education, using Lego Mindstorms robots.

you can imagine how excited and grateful we were when staff and Grade Eight students from a local school - Serangoon Garden Secondary School - agreed to help us with enacting the activity, to the benefit of Shao Wei (who gained a more embodied understanding of the working out of his lesson planning) and the students themselves. 

having had the privilege to be present during the activity, i felt that Shao Wei did a great job of designing a scaffolded learning activity which bridged the concrete with the abstract (as forces acting on an object are themselves not visible).

representative feedback from the students included:

"i like it when we can do hands-on stuff; it makes learning easier";

"i think doing hands-on activities is quite useful, it helps me visualise"; and

"i wish the whole class could come so that we experience it together".

Shao Wei and i would like to iterate again our gratitude to the Principal, staff, and students of the school for the trust they have extended to us.

:-)

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.

Stewards Pooi Kei Primary School - Singapore STEM study tour

something i treasure about my job is that it allows me to meet and interact with learners and educators from different cultural backgrounds.

over these couple of days, my team and i are helping students, their parents, and teachers from Stewards Pooi Kei Primary School of Hong Kong, on their Singapore STEM study tour.

it’s just amazing to think of the opportunities these young minds have had, and the wonders they will go on to create.

:-)

my talk at FabLearn 2013 on an emergent school-based makerspace

many thanks to my fellow panelists Christa Flores, Heather Allen Pang, Lucia Arias and Susanna Tesconi, and to Jaymes Dec, our most excellent facilitator :-)

visiting St Stephen's Girls' College and St Paul's College in Hong Kong

much gratitude to Christine Shain - Principal of St Stephen's Girls' College - and John Kennard - Principal of St Paul's College - for your gracious hospitality to Geoff and Jacky Newton and myself, during our visit to Hong Kong :-)

the visit also coincides with Sheila Elias's talk at the Apple Store on sketching with the iPad, and with the Asia Contemporary Art Show and the Annual Awards of the Hong Kong Institute of Architects :-)

the Six Learnings at SPRING Singapore's Education Innovation conference 2012 - the videos

as a follow-up to last month's post on SPRING Singapore's Education Innovation conference, here are the videos from the session that i conducted jointly with teachers and students from Ang Mo Kio Secondary School, on the Six Learnings curricular design framework and its associated orientation of Disciplinary Intuitions.