voyeurism

Six Learnings: the story of the first ten years of the curriculum design framework in Singapore schools

two years' after i first shared my commemoration of the first decade of the Six Learnings curriculum design framework, i am happy to say that the story is being told in a chapter written by my team, which has been published in a Springer volume that has just been released.

my co-authors Yuen Ming De, Ahmed Hilmy, Derek Chua, Joshua Lee and Joel Ng and i have written the synopsis as follows:

Since 2009, the Six Learnings curricular design framework (Lim, 2009) has been used in the design and development of lesson units in several neighbourhood schools in a variety of subjects. The programme leverages primarily open-source tools and platforms to help teachers design canvases within which their students can express their emerging conceptual understandings. In this way, students’ thinking and intuitions – which would otherwise be largely tacit – are made visible and can be dialogued around with peers. Learning is thus more enduring as first-principle understanding is built.

This chapter discusses scaling and translation in a system of education, using the case of the Disciplinary Intuitions / Six Learnings programme and how it has evolved since 2009. It advances the argument that successful scaling and translation is predicated upon a set of design principles – wider to the intervention itself – and concludes with discussion of a principle in emergence over the past two years of the programme.

Data Science and AI, the SORBET Project and Yunnan Rangers shared during the opening keynote of ELSI 2021

my team and i are very happy and humbled that our various projects on Data Science and AI, the Socially Responsible Behaviour through Embodied Thinking (SORBET) Project, and the Yunnan Rangers hybrid on-site / off-site Augmented Reality board game has been chosen by the Director of the National Institute of Education, Singapore to be shared during her opening keynote delivered during this year's Educational Leadership Summer Institute (ELSI).

ELSI 2021 was hosted by the College of Education, De La Salle University, the Philippines, from the 30th of September till the 2nd of October. This year's theme was Educational Leadership in the New Normal: Navigating Technodependence.

we would like to thank our Director for her gracious encouragement.

:-)

hosting a Senior Manager from the Singapore Polytechnic

my team and i are very privileged to share that - over the next six months - we will be playing host to an Industrial Attachment to us, on behalf of a Senior Manager from the Singapore Polytechnic.

The Singapore Polytechnic is the first and oldest polytechnic here.

we are so privileged to enter this collaboration with the Department of Student Development and Alumni Relations of the polytechnic, and are humbled by the trust our guest has emplaced in us.

this Industrial Attachment has been fourteen months in the planning. we look forward to walking this journey together with the polytechnic as we learn from each other.

:-)

this year's iLRN conference was special

this year, after a period of relatively low numbers of COVID-19 diffusion within the country, Singapore entered a partial lockdown from the 16th of May till the 13th of June.

this span of dates coincided almost exactly with the 7th international conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network (iLRN 2021), which ran from the 17th of May till the 10th of June.

being able to attend iLRN 2021 helped me to get through the partial lockdown. i looked forward each day to attending sessions both in the mornings and evenings, while attending to my regular work duties during the day.

the timing of the sessions for iLRN 2021 enabled me to attend more sessions than i was able to last year. i attended sessions on research models, ethics, cybersecurity and so much more. i was also given the opportunity to share my team's work on the hybrid Augmented Reality board game we call Yunnan Rangers.

each day, without fail, i would be warmly greeted by the effervescent Heather Dodds. Heather is the Chief Operating Officer at iLRN, and she was the standout among many standouts of the conference. may God continue to bless you, Heather.

visit our team's mini-campus in Frame VR

my team and i are very happy to invite you to visit a mini-campus - in Frame - which we have designed to showcase some of our work.

Frame is a website that lets people communicate and collaborate in a 3D space as avatars from a browser on desktop, mobile, or VR. It is currently still in beta.

for our mini-campus, we used one of the standard environments provided by Frame, and populated the space with examples of our work.

we are excited about Frame because the multiplicity of ways in which content may be accessed - from smartphone to full-blown desktop VR - coupled with the low barriers to access - visitors only need a standard web browser - points a way forward for immersive and VR learning spaces to come.

for example, Frame runs from a web browser on desktop (including Chromebook), mobile, or VR.

on desktops and notebooks, Frame is accessible through Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Chromium-based Edge browsers.
in stand-alone VR, Frame is accessible through the Oculus Browser.
on mobiles and tablets, Frame is accessible through Chrome on Android, and Safari on iOS.

do have a go :-)

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.

:-)

thank you to the Office of Education Research, National Institute of Education

i would like to thank my colleagues and mentors for the very gracious recognition.

with deep gratitude.

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'.