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.
During the last few weeks a significant number of blog posts and ‘tweets’ on Twitter have been along these lines:
“Just a week to go before I am off to the NECC”
“Five days to go and I will be at the NECC”
“NECC next week!”
“NECC here I come!”
“Packing my bags for the NECC!”
“So excited about going to NECC!”
“At last, just about to hop on a plane for the NECC”
“Sitting in an airport lounge… NECC is my next stop”
The education networks are inundated with the term NECC (just like this blog post). Thinking about it, the fact that the term is prevalent in so many posts would make searching for relevant data regarding the NECC a little more challenging.
Something else crossed my mind as well. The NECC has been around for nearly thirty years now and I wonder if the demographics of the attendees has altered during the previous three decades. In particular, has the advent of the read~write web (aka Web 2.0) had an impact on the demographics at the conference?
Will there be hard core programming types mingling with newbie, web 2.0 entranced teachers? Will the educators that have their roots in command line interfaces cope with the Twitterers in their midst? What will the mix be I wonder?
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.
I have a keen interest in converging teaching, learning and technology. I also provide
professional development for teachers and academics in the field of educational technology, particularly in Singapore.
Shao Ping is my wonderful wife and she likes to teach Mandarin and
blog as well. I listen to David Bowie and others, read some science fiction and laugh at comics such as B.C. and the Wizard of Id.
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.
