Was out for dinner with some NIE classmates on monday, told them about the question I directed to PS2 during the teachers conference. Our discussion inspired this post. I actually told this to Dr Chee, my MAIDT lecturer whom I consider to be a great teacher, before - that I'm beginning to doubt that all the large scale "innovation" policies leads to better learning on the students' part.

I've come to this idea through my own experience and observation that meaningful learnings take place in a classroom not because of some fancy policy implementations. Rather, they take place because of the teachers, who decided to take charge of his/her classes and really spend the effort and time to create a conducive learning environment, and design lessons which are meant to let students learn something meaningful (not fanciful). And this is true no matter what the education system is like, no matter what era we live in! Through the ages, what really matters most in education is the teachers.  read more »

The 3rd keynote speaker was Dr Weissberg. I missed a large part of his talk as I was not feeling well and went to Watson's to get some medication. On my way back, I spotted a JC classmate who was also not feeling well. We ended up talking (some frivolous stuffs) and by the time I felt well enough to go in, the talk had almost ended. I did manage to take down the following URL though: 

http://www.casel.org

The visit to IBM was not as exciting as I expected. We were given a few talks by executives then brought around the building to look at some of the innovative corporate implementations. What did caught my attention was how the marketing director described the difference between invention and innovation. Essentially, invention is the creation of something new. Innovation, on the other hand, is invention with insight - creating new things that solve problems or make something better. 

I must admit, I'm quite surprised that of all the keynote speakers, the best turned out to be the 2nd Permanent Secretary. She was eloquent, funny, and able to connect with the audience of teachers. She also came out as being honest rather than bureaucratic, and some of what she said and her responses to questions surprised me.

A main focus of her talk was on the changes that are happening in the education landscape. There are mainly four points:

1. Options - in the form of paths and choices
2. Autonomy - for schools
3. Motivation
4. Quality of interaction

She also shared many examples of successful teachers and ideas, including video clips, teachers' powerpoint slides and reflections. Overall, the message is not that different from what has been passed down over the past few years - changes and innovations.  read more »

It's the 1st day of the Teachers Conference. The opening was, frankly, quite bad. It was very cliche and I wished I could find a hole to hide my head out of embarassment. But the video they showed - an excerpt from the BBC documentary "Trials of Life" - about birds weaving their nests, was quite good. The speech by Angela Ow was, erm, pointless. The opening address by Tharman was not as good as some of his better ones. Overall quite a waste of time for the morning.

The first keynote address was delivered by Dr John Seely Brown, former Chief Scientist of Xerox Corp and current Distinguished fellow of Idea Factory, was quite good though it contained nothing new for me. I guess after a while and some experiences of going to conferences you will hear the same things being repeated. He did have one thing I've not heard of though - the KEEP toolkit.  read more »

It's rather amazing, but I have had this idea of creating a website on educational issues since 2 years back, and even talked to two great friends and ex-colleagues - Weikang and Laycheng - about this. So it materialises today. The delay is partly due to the fact that I've been living in a rented place without internet connection, and also partly due to the crazy schedule I've been on since I left my previous school.

These 2 years must be one of the most stressful and eventful experience of my life. In a way I've also learnt a lot during these 2 years, though going by Dewey's theory, this may not be considered education for me. For Dewey, education is experiences which will help to open up (as compared to shut down) a person's access to future growth experiences, thereby expanding the person's likely contribution to society. So if you have an experience which helps you to grow and WANT to experience more and contribute to society, then that's education. Everything else is distraction. Therefore, my experience, which causes me to want to shut down and bid education farewell, might well be a distraction, though I suppose there are experiences which at a specific point of time cannot be ascertained to be educational or otherwise.  read more »