voyeurism

blowing the horn

as promised, here's an update on food and transport.

collected the vouchers from Stephanie Loh of McDonald's this morning :-)

also collected the laminated maps for the pre- / post-tests, part two of the main intervention, and the peer critique. three different types of maps in various sizes, for these three types of activities :-P

the transport will be provided by Anne Chua, who is also trying to help me source some chaperones.

i would like to welcome Alexius Yeo as a chaperone. Like Kwangsheng, he is awaiting enlistment, and will be able to help with the Yishun Town Sec study.

on Monday, i hope to collect the SIM cards from Starhub.

okie, i've saved the best for last:

congratulations to developer Jason for winning a Sony Ericsson T610 for himself in the Wireless Java Jam competition, in the category 'Best User Interface' :-)

the competition is organised by the Java Wireless Competency Centre. here's the report from 'The New Paper'.

to quote the article "the most impressive effort had to come from Jason Wang... Jason is the only multimedia student among the winners - the others are all IT students".

well done, my friend :-)

lest we forget

Happy New Year to all :-)

almost completed negotiations about the transport arrangements and the food vouchers - more on those once things are confirmed :-)

since my last meeting with my supervisors on 18 December (undocumented elsewhere in this blog because it was just a status report to them), i'm still trying to get the chaperones to fill all necessary places.

have clarified with the schools that the roster does not conflict with Youth Day (4th July), nor with the National Education days, specifically Total Defence Day (15th Feb), International Friendship Day (third working Friday of Term Two), and Racial Harmony Day (21st July).

also realised that i had to buy two more Nokia 6600 - for the Structured Academic Controversy component.

finally, bought umbrellas and clipboards, and will be using my existing stock of mineral water before buying any further bottles.

hope i haven't left out anything - i've never considered myself much of a details-person. God is showing me the way, as always :-)

show and tell

have finished the presentation for the school briefings, as well the handouts for the pupils during the briefings :-)

details of time and space #2

i've just completed some necessary parts of the preparation for the intervention next year.

basically, i've planned the destinations for each day in the field for each of the four schools.

that has allowed me to decide upon the topics for the Structured Academic Controversies (eight topics in all, to ensure that pupils from each school will have exposure to topics on each of the three syllabus themes of 'development', 'environment' and 'tourism').

finally, i have designed, printed, and reproduced sufficient copies of the:

- worksheets for orienteering
- worksheets for land-use mapping
- worksheets for Structured Academic Controversy
- instructions for the chaperons
- recording instruments for the pre- and post-tests
- recording instruments for pupil performance during orienteering (individual and summative)
- recording instrument for pupil performance during the Structured Academic Controversy

on the shoulders of giants

over the past four days, i have had the privilege of attending a course facilitated by two giants in education - Marlene Scardamalia and Carl Bereiter. Both are faculty at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto.

In fact, Marlene holds the Presidents' Chair in Education and Knowledge Technologies at OISE. She is also Director of the Institute for Knowledge Innovation and Technology. Carl is co-director of the Education Commons at OISE.

i was also pleased to meet Elizabeth Morley, who is the principal of the Laboratory School at the Institute of Child Study, University of Toronto. Together with Richard Reeve and Richard Messina, she shared her vision of how knowledge building can be effectively translated in a whole-school context.

the course was MID 816 - Advanced Computer-based Systems for Education and Training. basically it was a showcase for an online collaborative learning environment developed by IKIT, known as Knowledge Forum . Knowledge Forum is designed specifically to support what are known as knowledge-building communities (knowledge-building is defined as the production and continual improvement of ideas of value to a community; thus, knowledge-building communities can be thought of as Communities of Practice which are specifically devoted to the creation of new knowledge). the metaphor presented was the contrast between the Ptolemaic view of the curriculum (centred around tasks and activities) and the Copernican view (idea-centric). an example of a knowledge-building community is the Children's Own Museum.

Knowledge Forum is similar in concept to bulletin boards and threaded discussions, with the enhancements that it allows the posts to be arranged spatially on screen. this allows related posts to be overlaid against background images (which, if well designed, can be used to further augment the spatial organising framework). the object-oriented approach to the traditional bulletin board also means that posts can be easily referenced and viewed in multiple contextually-specific ways. special effort has been made to allow for scaffolding of posts (for those who prefer it), as well as to facilitate what are known as 'rise aboves'. the latter are essentially points of summary and/or summative insights obtained retrospectively.

part of the course featured a video conference between participants from Canada, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and (i believe) Italy. it was certainly a first for me to experience such a novel mode of discussion :-)

Technorati Tags: constructivism, education, learning, technology

happy trails

over the past week i have been visiting the seven neighbourhoods which i had identified last week for the Structured Academic Controversies.

i've decided to have the orienteering routes to also be in these same neighbourhoods, so that at least pupils would have some initial familiarity with the neighbourhoods, as they would have explored them during the orienteering, before they embark upon the Structured Academic Controversies.

the routes are all between 1.5 km and 2.0 km long - the shortest being Pasir Panjang, and the longest Singapore Expo.

an update on the scheduling - Christ Church Secondary has elected to do the study from June - August '04.

i would also like to welcome two chaperons to the team - Koh Hock Leong (who will be helping out in the mornings in June, ie with Bowen Secondary), and Tan Kwang Sheng, (who will be helping from January till early March, with Yishun Town Secondary)

details of time and space

over the past week i've been in contact with the principals of the four schools which have very graciously signed up for the project - Yishun Town Secondary will be the pilot school (February - March '04), and Bowen Secondary has elected to have their study done in June '04, during the school holidays.

Yishun Town Secondary has also said that they will be tying the study to Project Work, which i think is an excellent idea :-)

today i also identified seven neighbourhoods for the Structured Academic Controversy activities of the main intervention.

they are: Holland Village, Little India, Pasir Panjang, Lower Peirce / Thomson, Xiao Guilin / Bukit Batok, Jurong East and Singapore Expo.

i believe they are areas which are rich in information from which to tease out non-congruent points-of-view, in terms of land use potential.

hardware and heartware

quite a lot has happened recently.

last week i sent out the call for quotations for the phones. yesterday, i retrieved the quotations, and made my purchase.

i bought 5 NGages and 3 Nokia 6600 from MacShop at Funan.

i decided to use the 6600 instead of the P900 for the study because of cost.

i also bought some 64MB multimedia cards for the phones.

i collected the phones today, and will be giving Jason his NGage later tonight, at a department barbeque.

so it will be the first time John meets Jason :-)

also had my third meeting with my supervisor today. basically we discussed the rationale for using NGage, and agreed that it need not be used for the post-test, just as a pre-test, in order to establish a baseline. this is because the NGage task is so similar to the actual exploration task.

i also received feedback on the three chapters which i have submitted so far. standardise the tense and write in a less jingoistic fashion; also change 'pupils' to 'students', and use 'Grade 9' instead of 'Sec Three' :-P

we also talked about manpower requirements - whether to get an RA or simply a chaperone.

i shared with them that i will be firming up plans with the schools next month (once the nationwide exams are over), also i have to map out the neighbourhoods then.

rushing off to the barbeque now :-P

coming aboard #2

today, within twenty-four hours of my delivering the invitations, three more schools have expressed interest in participating in my study :-)

they are Bowen Secondary, Fuchun Secondary, and Yishun Town Secondary :-)

God's grace :-) #2

WOW.

today, i received the wonderful news that my funding application has been approved _in_it's_entirety_ :-)

woohoo!

the two-month wait has certainly been worth it :-)

the second piece of excellent news is that i am able to today welcome the first school which has agreed to take part in my study - it's Christ Church Secondary School, a mission school in Woodlands.

i would like to put on record my sincere appreciation and gratitude to its Principal - Mr Ang Chee Seng.

i am especially grateful because he and his Vice-Principal made the decision to commit within only a few hours of my extending the invitation to them.

:-)