If you have read my previous three posts you will realise that I am presently working in Singapore. Conducting a number of workshops. Yesterday I conducted a workshop that was organised by Keith See from the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore.
Read~write web workshop, Singapore, July 11th 2008.
I had received an email from Keith in early April of this year inquiring about Web 2.0 workshops. I assumed that Keith may have attended my presentation at the Good To Great Teaching Seminar here in Singapore last February and found out about my work as a result of that.
Yesterday, being curious, I asked Keith how did he track me down. Keith replied that he had found me via a Google search on Web 2.0 related topics (workshops, Singapore) and it was my del.icio.us bookmarking site that had first caught his eye and then my site. I was amazed to hear that. Good old del.icio.us bookmarks. Social bookmarking works for me!
Yesterday. My first full day in Singapore on this trip. Did not sleep much the first night. Too much on my mind. Getting past the first workshop or presentation is always a bit of a hurdle. Not sure why. Anxiety, probably. Those stage-fright tensions. Always feel it even though I have been doing this sort of thing since 1994. Once the curtain is raised I feel fine.
I conducted the first workshop at St Joseph’s Institution Junior School [wikipedia entry]. The campus is located on the site of the former St Michael’s School in Novena. It is a primary school. The workshop consisted of presentation and a hands-on component. There were teachers from a variety of schools across Singapore. About 30 teachers in all.
St Joseph’s Institution Junior School. Condominiums in the background.
Time was at a premium and I attempted to make the most of it. I created a presentation ppt yet that is more for the benefit of the participants as they make notes on the hard copy as I usually flick across to a browser and show them examples of the tools at work.
The teachers were quite reserved which is not unusual and I always look for ways to break the ice like singing a song in mandarin, sharing some anecdotes about history and so on.
The workshop was organised by Keith See from the Infocom Development Authority of Singapore (IDA). His colleagues, Chan Chuan and Feliz were also in attendance. The IDA is working in tandem with the Ministry of Education on a number of innovative projects including the Edvantage Programme, Future Schools@Singapore and iAccess~Interactive Learning Trails. There are many more projects. Singapore is an island state. Its main resource are the children of Singapore. As well as my presentation there was a demonstration by Ng Ming Liang of G Element Pte Ltd of Earth@SG and several impressive geographic visualisation tools being developed for use in teaching and learning.
The day concluded about 5.30PM or thereabouts and I congratulated the teachers for their attentiveness on a late Friday afternoon. The likelihood of that happening with teachers in Australia is not as high. Once that Australian school bell rings at 3.30PM there is a stampede, with the teachers leading the charge, and the school is empty by 3.35PM, with the dust barely settled.
Chinatown
I chatted with some of the teachers after that and we then began to make tracks for our respective digs. Jumped on the MRT and alighted at Outram Park. I eventually ended up in Chinatown and had dinner at my favourite haunt. I have been eating in this ‘coffee shop’ for about nine years now. I used to work just around the corner. Ate the usual and slowly consumed a nice drop of Tiger beer with the owner of the coffee shop.
Tiger Beer
Then, unwinding. I sat for a while, thought about the day, watched the world go by, finished the beer, cooled down and then caught a train and bus back to the NTU campus.
Grabbed a quick video as I strolled from the Boon Lay MRT to the adjacent bus interchange. It was about 10:00PM and life was happening. I was on my way back to NTU after having dinner at my favourite haunt in Chinatown.
Sungei Buloh Wetlands, Singapore. Malaysia in the distance.
The other day my good friend Siva tweeted that since I felt liberated after renaming my blog I should post a few items about my life in Singapore. Well, this is my first post in that series. I have lifted much of the text for this post from a page created about this event. Just noticed that I typed in the wrong date! It was January 3rd and not January 1st, 2003.
As many of you have figured out my wife Shao Ping and I spent a number of years in Singapore. During that time one of the things I was partially involved in was the creation of a CD-ROM about mangroves and the Sungei Buloh Wetlands Reserve in Singapore. That was how I met Siva. He was one of our subject matter experts. Incidentally, Siva was blogging before most of us were born. All his and his students’ blogs can be found here. Siva and I have been the best of friends ever since we met.
I went to Sungei Buloh Wetlands Reserve on the 3rd January, 2003. It was late in the afternoon and the weather was closing in somewhat. It was a good thing to go however. I was taking time off work from the eLearning job. I had worked over Christmas and the New Year and life was closing in. I needed a break otherwise I felt I would surely break.
Sungei Buloh is a great place to go in order to unwind. Especially on week days if you can make it. You can recharge your batteries, so to speak. It would be neat to work there, I think. I have formed good friendships at Buloh.
Have you ever seen the rain?
Anyway, during that afternoon the heavens opened up and I watched the downpour from the boardwalk. It was actually quite cool, at least for Singapore. I took a lot of photographs. The rain fell down and the mud lazily danced as each drop met its maker. The greys painted the world in Sungei Buloh that afternoon.
Thank God I was there to witness it. Infinitely better than slaving away in an office where working 60 or more hours a week was considered admirable and critically essential for a pay rise or promotion. I was there for another three more months after that. I then relaxed for about three months. Did a few odd consultations and was lecturing part time at the NIE. Spent a few weeks in Australia. That was a long time ~ 3 months. Recharged my life. I then moved on to the CED at NTU. That was a good move. I will be back at NTU later this week. I cannot keep away.
Westley Field, an old sparring partner of mind from that good old multimedia days at the University of Wollongong is always at me to be ‘online’ more often. That is, he often mentions that he cannot find me so to that end I have been leaving Skype and iChat online. Well, Westley and I have have had more chats of late and more collaborations have been generated as a result.
Well, last weekend I had a quick chat with Westley while he was in San Francisco and I knew he was heading over to Strawberry to take a canoe ride with Alan Levine. Well the iChat was fired up and we three managed to get in a quick conversation. It was good to actually speak with Alan (and Westley too!). All previous communications had been comment exchanges about recycling wood and interesting conference speakers.
Nothing serious. Quick chat about canoeing, looking for water, dogs, cats, absent principals, meeting my wife, NECC, July meetup, my next trip to Singapore, Skoolabarate Congress 2008 and the possibility of dragging Alan across to Singapore in February of next year for a conference. Laughed about collaborations, being high maintenance, and adventures abroad.
A nice moment all in all. Technology can be good. It’s wireless. Its now. Think about it. Half a world away from each other, sixteen hours apart, yet three blokes share a laugh, swap a few notes and cement those bonds.
In my previous post regarding clotheslines I referrred to the high rise residential buildings in Singapore. This reminded me of a little video I had created that captures these buildings.
I am specifically referring to the public housing that is built by the Housing Development Board of Singapore. They are referred to by Singaporeans as HDB flats. Several years back I sat at the front of a Light Rail Transit vehicle with my little video camera and captured the journey around half of the circuit. I used Apple’s iMovie to create a simple Quicktime movie of the project. I increased the speed of the movie. I reduced a 20 minute journey to about 30 seconds.
Whenever visitors came up from Australia or elsewhere we always took them on the LRT. The vehicles are driverless. We never mentioned that to our visitors until they asked the inevitable question, “Where is the driver?” I remember taking a ride on the LRT the day it was opened.
The vehicles pass close to some of the buildings and in order to maintain the privacy of the residents the windows of the LRT vehicle frost over as you pass by the building. You will see in the video the imposing avenues of the HDB blocks and it almost feels like flying an aircraft down a man-made canyon.
The population density of Singapore is 6489 people per square kilometre. You never get the impression that it is crowded however. It feels different to other cities such as Hong Kong. Sure, some peak hour trains are packed, but not like a tin of sardines. Some shopping centres can get a little crowded on Sunday afternoon.
Can my friends in the United States please confirm the following for me ~ Are backyard clotheslines really banned in some states or cities? Is it simply a local council edict or recommendation? I was amused to read about this in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning.
I wonder if there are similar regulations in some of the newer gated communities and elitist suburbs of Australia? Anyone know? When I lived in an apartment here in Australia residents were not allowed to hang out washing on their balcony as it would make the building look ugly. I was on the top floor so I could get away with it. Only visitors could see that I was breaking the strata rules of the estate [The body corporate of this estate annoyed me. One year I collected as many proxy votes as I possibly could from absent landlords. At the annual general meeting I voted myself in as President and Treasurer of the estate's body corporate organisation and simply voted against a number of the more contentious and costly proposals. The busy-body clique that used to 'run the show' were not amused.]
In the article, Getting pegged for letting it all hang out, Ian Munro, reporting from Connecticut, writes how it is illegal to have a clothesline in one’s backyard in some parts of the United States. Attempts to have clotheslines legalised have failed as some residents are fearful that property values will drop.
Mr Munro writes that “Electric clothes dryers represent about 6 per cent of domestic power consumption, according to official estimates, and while the world searches for responses to global warming, Mrs Vocke points to her backyard, wind and solar power.” This brought home to me the usefulness and intrinsic value of the old backyard clothesline.
A quick bit of research revealed that clotheslines are clearly not illegal across all of the USA. This colourful site, Mrs Clothesline ~ A Celebration of Clothesline Culture, features a gallery of clotheslines with titles such as Shadow Line, Pretty in Pink and Midnight Love.
Clotheslines are a feature of the backyard here in Australia. Some of you may be familiar with the Hills rotary clothes hoist, invented right here in Australia. We used to hang from these as kids while a friend or sibling spun you around at high speed. It was a great way to demonstrate centrifugal force and also gravity for the smaller children. Are you reading this Dan? [Centrifugal force is not a real force apparently. I learnt something new today.]
Our rotary clothesline, sans clothes, with a kookaburra on the lookout.
Well, the anti-clotheslines brigade in other parts of the world would need to get used to the backyards of Australia if they ever moved here and I wonder how they would cope with the clotheslines of Singapore and Hong Kong? The clothing poles that project from beneath the kitchen windows or laundry areas of the high rise residential buildings cannot be missed.
The clotheslines in Singapore helped to break up the lines or form of the buildings and always added colour to the environment. Quite often they were the first indication of a change in the weather as the first hints of a breeze caused the sheets to flutter to and fro. It was always fascinating to watch nearly all of them disappear from view as the rain clouds approached.
I am not too sure what is the point of this blog post. Shao Ping and I hang out and collect the washing together. We also rush out to save it when a storm blows in. Do you have any interesting or colourful clothesline images from around the world?
Been meaning to write this post for a week or so now. The return to school and a bout of the ‘flu got in the way.
During my last trip to Singapore I made the time towards the end of the trip to catch up with some friends, old and new. Usually I fly, conduct the workshops and fly out. This time I added in a weekend. It was well worth it. It was a nostalgia trip in some respects.
One evening I caught up with Sarah Teo. She is a senior staff member at U21Global, a cross between a senior project manager and senior instructional designer. We both worked at ICUS [recently purchased by Academee] together and collaborated on some eLearning projects for Singapore Airlines. Sarah was my project manager and I was the lead instructional designer during those days. I had a not too infrequent habit of leaving the office at about 5.30PM. I am sure Sarah would have been happier if I left later each day and put in a few more hours at work. I often worked late at home anyway, and the weekends, and public holidays.
Sarah and I at the Japanese restauarant
We had dinner at one of the old stomping grounds of the ICUS staff during lunch hours. We had a Japanese dinner. Sarah has been incorporating blogs, wikis and video conferencing tools, such as Seesmic, within the courses that she designs for U21Global. Sarah’s deployment of the tools has been quite progressive actually. I was quite impressed and wonder whether or not I may make a more permanent return to Singapore to be a part of these developments at some time in the future. If not Singapore, then maybe Taiwan.
After leaving ICUS in April 2003 I had a break and returned to Australia for a couple of weeks to rest, and then returned to Singapore. I had about 6 weeks or so off altogether at the time. I was still teaching casually at the National Institute of Education. A few organisations contacted me regarding positions as an instructional designer. I was offered a job at U21Global to be the chief instructional designer back in June 2003. I spent some time there during the lengthy interviewing process and even developed a flow chart outlining my view of the course development process [doc][pdf] at U21Global. It’s a little imperfect and overly complex looking at it now. U21Global liked the general idea.
Proposed Course Development Process at U21Global
I turned down the offer, a difficult decision actually, and took a chance that I would be offered a position by Nanyang Technological University. The chance paid off and I soon began work at the Centre for Educational Development at NTU. It was great catching up with Sarah. Brought back a lot of memories and news of former colleagues.
Caught up with Siva during the trip. Seeing Siva is a must. Siva is easily one of my closest friends in Singapore. I met Siva while working on a cd-rom project for Knowledge Village. The focus of the cd-rom was mangrove environments and I was seeking subject matter experts. A search on the net turned up Siva. He was a researcher at the National University of Singapore and worked at the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research. I was quite an intense person at the time, probably due to the pressure being applied by Knowledge Village at the time. Too many projects, too few staff and too few resources. That is another story.
Siva and I share some Macintosh notes
Siva was a breath of fresh air. Siva and I hit it off immediately and then when we discovered we were Mac users we began swapping notes and ideas in earnest. Excellent! I became involved in some volunteer programmes around Singapore, as a result of meeting Siva, including the International Coastal CleanUp and simply fun things like the Pedal Ubin bike rides. Some of my galleries of those events are here: Pulau Ubin | ICCS 2001 | ICCS 2003 |
Siva has made excellent use of blogs in teaching his Biology courses at the National University of Singapore. In addition to his own excellent blog he has set up many others with his students and volunteers at the museum. Siva was blogging by phone using Bluetooth and other tools, out in the field, in the mangroves, to his original blog back in 2003, if not earlier.
On this trip Siva and I caught up during a MacMeetup. That was a great night. We talked about macs, blogs, blogging, publishing, censorship, politics, people, gear and so on. We all had to be kicked out of McDonalds at the end of the night.
I also caught up with Susan Sedro during the trip. Susan is a technology co-ordinator at the Singapore American School and she also has a rather elegant blog. We shared a nice breakfast at Causeway Point in Woodlands, not far from the school, early on the Saturday morning. We shared Singapore stories and previous career moves. Susan has also taught in Kuala Lumpur. I am always happy to meet other educators who make the move to destinations overseas.
Susan and I pose for a camera on a ten second timer
I was amazed by Susan’s stories of the International Schools Job Fairs. I never knew that these existed. [Note: Jeff Utecht at the SAS in Shanghai has blogged about similar job fairs]. I conducted a Blackboard LMS workshop or two at the Singapore American School back in late 2003 ~ early 2004. The school, as was other institutions in Singapore, was developing contingencies in the event of another SARS or similar outbreak. The SAS was also involved in the International Coastal Cleanups, mentioned earlier. Speaking with Susan, as well as Siva and Sarah earlier in the week, has reignited my interest in the region ~ in the sense of a more involved professional connection, as opposed to the quarterly trips.
Westley was staying at the Hwa Chong Institution, where he was conducting a presentation on Skoolabarate, a Second Life collaborative project, the following day. We had dinner and a couple of drinks and the following day we met up with Alan Soong at Kampong Glam for an incredible lunch and also a very interesting round of desserts.
Alan grins as Westley hams it up in Kampong Glam
Alan was one of my students in the Masters’ programme at the National Institute of Education, Singapore. I was teaching casually at the NIE while one of my former lecturer’s from the Masters’ Programme at UOW, Dr Cheung Wing Sum was on leave. It was Alan that introduced me to the staff at the Centre for Educational Development at NTU where he was an instructional designer. It was not long before I had the good fortune to work at the CED. Alan, Westley and I had a great Sunday together.
Later that day I caught the plane home to Australia.
Last Saturday afternoon Alan Soong, a friend of mine in Singapore, took Westley Field and myself on a tour around Kampong Glam and Arab Street [Gallery]. During the afternoon, as the heat increased, after all, Singapore is only about 1.5 degrees north of the equator, we decided that a cool dessert was in order.
We took an air-conditioned taxi to Liang Seah Street, between North Bridge Road and Beach Road. Alan led us to a classy little establishment. It was called “Remember Me”. [I had forgotten the name as I was writing this post and coincidentally Alan has just come on via Skype to plan some future workshops at NTU. He reminded me of the name of the eatery. How could I possibly forget?]
We three sat down at a table. We perused the menu and we ordered our rather exotic dishes. We consumed a variety of desserts. I had a red bean dessert. Yum.
Then Alan pointed out this dessert called Hashimi which included lizard saliva as an ingredient. Westley wondered what process was involved in securing saliva from a lizard. I kept envisioning the skinks and blue-tongue lizards that inhabit our garden. Of course there are larger “lizards” like Malayan Water Monitors (Varanus Salvator ~ don’t ask me why I remember that) or even the Komodo Dragons with their bacteria laced saliva.
Anyway, I ordered a bowl. It arrived on the table. The dish had a lid.
I carefully took the lid off the dish.
It looked quite fine. There were these wispy, ghostly remnants in the jelly. Was that the saliva?
Anyway, I ate the whole lot.
It was rather tasty. I enjoyed the dish. I will not be looking for lizards in our garden to milk them of their saliva. The proof is in the pudding.
During the last couple of trips to Singapore I have managed to photograph a few places I had visited while I lived in Singapore and as a result a few before & after opportunities have presented themselves. Singapore is constantly changing, constantly.
Sometimes the past is preserved. At other times the past disappears. Let me share three simple examples.
During the last couple of days I have sorted through photographs taken during my last two trips to Singapore in February and April of this year. I still have a few photographs to organise. I have created a number of new galleries and added them to the galleries of my main web site.
There were a number of other catch-ups with friends and culinary delights that I am going to blog about specifically in the near future, so please stay posted.
Last Thursday morning I conducted a two hour presentation~workshop at the Singapore Airlines Training Centre, the home of the world famous Singapore Girl where the newly recruited attendants are trained. When I had worked at ICUS eLearning I had led the design for some eLearning materials for Singapore Airlines. The online courses had covered areas such as ticketing procedures and cargo handling.
Staff of the SIA Training Centre
I worked with Line Yeo, an instructional designer and senior officer with Singapore Airlines, during the development of the online courses. I first met Lina following a presentation I gave to a post-graduate class of Masters’ students in Instructional Design at the National Institute of Education, Singapore, back in July 1999. She was a member of the class which was taught by Dr Cheung Wing Sum. Wing had also taught me at the University of Wollongong during my own Masters’ Degree in 1994.
Staff of the SIA Training Centre
Lina caught my presenatation at NTU last February and asked if I could repeat the presentation for her colleagues at the SIA Training Centre. I adapted the presentation and materials to focus on the corporate sector. The presentation considered how SIA could deploy social networking tools within its various divisions and scattered international offices to develop collaborative communities. We also looked at how other airlines, such as SouthWest Airlines are using tools such as blogs and even Twitter to reach out to its customers.
Staff of the SIA Training Centre
Following the presentation I had a chat with staff and shared stories of my times in Singapore and experiences on their aircraft. I quite enjoyed the chat and it certainly raised some very sentimental and nostalgic moments for myself. I have lost count of the number of times I have flown with SIA. I am most fortunate indeed. We then retired to the canteen for morning tea. Trainees and staff were present and I grabbed the chance to take some photographs.
Relaxing in the canteen
The training centre’s canteen ~ note how the food stalls deploy SIA’s trademark font
Newly recruited SIA flight attendants ~ future Singapore Girls
Flight engineers relaxing in the canteen
The wonderful staff at Singapore Airlines, in particular Khee Boon, Linda, Catherine and also Lina, took excellent care of me during the visit. I really felt quite at home there. Everyone was courteous, friendly and very helpful.
I have been staying at the Nanyang Executive Centre at Nanyang Technological University during the last week. At the end of each day I usually grab dinner at one of the canteens on the campus and then walk back to the NEC. I relax a little and even watch a little of the local television. Shao Ping and I used to watch the local channels here during the years that we lived in Singapore.
It was good to catch a guest appearance by Kym Ng on the game show Deal or No Deal. She is my favourite Singaporean personality. It was hosted by Adrian Pang. I have always enjoyed watching the movie Forever Fever in which Adrian Pang played the lead. Some great footage of Singapore in that flick. Anyway, there are some photographs of the local media below for your enjoyment.
First up on Monday I gave a presentation to a group of educators from across the island on current trends regarding web based technologies as well as illustrating some of the possibilities relating to the application of mashups and data scraping to your RSS feeds.
Flipping between a Mac and PC
The audience begins to arrive
Lecture theatre 12 is a great venue, not too big, not too small
Nice smiling faces
On Tuesday I gave a reasonably straightforward workshop on some of the tools that one can use to manage their news feeds and bookmarks. We looked at readers, del.icio.us, blogger, wordpress and twitter. During the course of the workshops I posted micro-blogs to the ‘universe’ on Twitter to demonstrate aspects of its possibilties and the universe responded with an engaging shower of meteororic responses from Sue Wyatt, Siva, Sarah, Russel, Chris, Alec, Keamac, Helen and Jane.
I have mixed feelings about the Wordpress upgrade to 2.5. There are some interface improvements. Other interface let-downs. I am most unimpressed that it will not allow javascript in your widgets. Bad move Wordpress. I just might switch blogging engines again later this year. I will certainly never use Wordpress as the basis for my workshop. I will revert to Blogger. The Wordpress server was slow, dead slow actually on Thursday and again on the Friday with frequent time-outs.
CED Traing Room, there is Dr Jacob Gan in the foreground
Wednesday was quite an exciting workshop. We looked at RSS feeds in a little more detail. The types of tools we explored included Yahoo! Pipes, Dapper and AideRSS. We also performed an autopsy on Google Reader to see how we could derive greater benefit from the tool. We performed CPR on Google Reader after we stitched it back up and you will be relieved to learn it performed to our expectations.
It was quite an interesting day and admittedly I was a little apprehensive as some of the technologies are a little quirky. Everything went quite well. It is quite neat when you can create an RSS feed from a site where none previusly existed. We “collected” data from a number of sites that did not possess feeds, established the feeds and then merged them into a single feed. In that manner, when the sites were updated we were informed via our readers, such as Google Reader.
More happy participants… Wednesday’s workshop was quite fun actually
This is the blog site of John Larkin. I am a secondary school teacher who lives in New South Wales, Australia.
In addition to teaching history I have also been involved in the development and application of educational technologies at primary, secondary, tertiary and corporate levels.
The following links will take you to a constantly updated set of resources and links that are focused upon implementing Web 2.0 and other technologies in the classroom.
