Polytechnic student Marc Tan knows all about the stigma that is attached to the stream for slow learners. 'I was so ashamed,' he told The Straits Times in an e-mail message he wrote after news broke that the current system would be replaced by subject-based banding in 2008.

With the change, he hoped that the labelling and stigmatisation of students will go away. He remembered how streaming affected the way teachers treated the students.

'In primary school, I was quite good in maths, but all the teachers treated us like we were troublemakers and worthless.'

Marc might be exaggerating the extent of derision his teachers dished out. But he is clear about who is responsible for his turnaround: his form teacher in Secondary 1. 'He made me the monitor of the class and said I was better in maths than some of his Express stream students.

'It made all the difference. It was such a confidence boost for me. I worked hard to prove him right,' he said.

Marc took the predictable route for most EM3 pupils, making it to the Normal (Technical) stream in Secondary 1. But where he broke tradition was when he did well enough in Secondary 1 to be transferred to the Normal (Academic) stream in Secondary 2. In Secondary 5, he did well enough in the O-levels to make it to a junior college, but opted for a polytechnic course instead.

Do teachers' expectations of students' performance affect how well their charges do?

Harvard psychologist Robert Rosenthal thought so. His seminal study in the 1960s of young students in what he called 'Oak School' found that when teachers expect students to do well and show intellectual growth, they do.

Likewise, when teachers do not have such expectations, performance and growth are not so encouraged and may in fact be discouraged in a variety of ways.

His conclusions were based on a 'trick' he performed on teachers. After he gave an intelligence test to all the students at the beginning of the school year, he selected 20 per cent of them randomly.

Then he told the teachers that these were students who showed 'unusual potential for intellectual growth' and could be expected to 'bloom' in their academic performance by the end of the year.

Eight months later, he re-tested all the students. Those labelled 'intelligent' showed significantly better results in the new tests than those who were not singled out for attention.

Hence, the Rosenthal Effect: Teachers' expectations about intellectual performance can lead to an 'actual change' in how the students do later.

What happened in between? A self-fulfilling prophecy, going by Professor Rosenthal's observation: 'If you think your students can't achieve very much, are perhaps not too bright, you may be inclined to teach simple stuff, do a lot of drills, read from your lecture notes, give simple assignments calling for simplistic factual answers; that's one important way it can show up.'

Subsequent studies by other researchers appear to back this up. One study involved videotaping the teachers' interaction with students who had been identified as bright.

The tapes showed that teachers smiled and made more eye contact with 'bright' students while other students were treated in a generalised, standard manner.

If the Rosenthal Effect is real, will Singapore's subject- based banding, as opposed to streaming, alter teachers' expectations of their weaker pupils?

That would be wishful thinking. This is how subject-based banding will work for the weakest pupils who are currently streamed into the EM3 course.

All pupils, including those who are lagging behind, will be banded according to their strengths in specific subjects.

For example, a student strong only in mathematics will study it at the standard PSLE level but he will take English and Mother Tongue at the easier foundation level, which covers the basics.

In the current system, he would be studying all three at the foundation level, branding him a weak student.

While the refinements recognise that even the weakest students may have strengths in some areas, let's not run away from the fact that the education system is centred on the belief that children have varying levels of ability and need different curricula and teaching approaches.

This has always been the case, from the days when classes were labelled Primary 1A, B and C. The difference is that the humiliating label EM3 will now be defunct.

Prof Rosenthal himself believed that children have varying abilities. He complained how, at Harvard, some of his colleagues gave out all As.

'Not everybody is going to be a star, a PhD or what have you, that's reality,' he said.

But he strongly believed that all his students can 'learn more than they are learning' and does not prejudge a student's ability.

So he sets high expectations of all his students at Harvard and almost always, all of them deliver.

It would be too much to expect all teachers not to have any kind of expectations when they teach a class.

After all, as one veteran primary school teacher pointed out, the school system itself encourages the differentiation, right from the start in Primary 1.

The weaker pupils are identified through a school readiness test and given special help through the learning support programme.

The question is, are teachers even aware of the sort of impact they have on a child's ability to perform?

Six out of seven teachers polled by The Straits Times had not heard of the Rosenthal Effect.

Researchers at the National Institute of Education have attempted to study teacher perceptions of EM3 students and how these affect their teaching. Once the results are published, they must be scrutinised, to open the eyes of teachers to how their expectations can shape their students' performance.

As the good professor said, it is the moral obligation of a teacher to check his own presumptions.

And if a teacher does not believe in a student's capacity to learn, he should not be that student's teacher.

If the only true love one can find in one's lifetime is romantic love, this does not bode well for people who are single, or the numerous young persons of marriageable age that I interact with in my job, many of whom earnestly seek to find the love of their lives.

While romantic love is what most of us gravitate towards, the happy secret is that true love may be found in other than what the ancient Greeks called eros or romantic love. Eros has been contrasted with three other types of love: philia (friendship), storge (parental love), and agape (God's unconditional love as understood in Christian thought, or what St Augustine referred to as caritas or charity).

The sad truth, however, is that unfailing or true love of any sort between humans is a rarity in a postmodern world preoccupied with the self, where we are congenitally given to our little goals of making ourselves feel good, and flee at the first sight of trouble in our relationships.

Indeed, our unconscious emphasis on romantic love - seeing how the word 'love' has been hijacked for this alone - sometimes belies self-centredness and the preference for safe investments in that one person who would give love back to us, and who would hopefully prioritise us just as we prioritise him or her.

True, most of us profess that we do not think that romance is all we need. To match our romantic comedies, Hollywood has produced occasional friendship hits such as Stand By Me, Beaches, Fried Green Tomatoes and Simon Birch. But our actions and thought patterns reveal the contrary. Finding one who believes in true friendship tends to be even harder than finding one who believes in true romantic love.

As C.S. Lewis once noted: 'Very few modern people think friendship a love of comparable value or even a love at all... To the Ancients, friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it. We admit, of course, that besides a wife and family a man needs a few 'friends'.

'But the very tone of the admission, and the sort of acquaintanceships which those who make it would describe as 'friendships', show clearly that what they are talking about has very little to do with that Philia which Aristotle classified among the virtues or that Amicitia on which Cicero wrote a book. It is something quite marginal; not a main course in life's banquet; a diversion; something that fills up the chinks of one's time.'

Our downplaying of friendship in adult life is somewhat sad when, from our childhood days, we have had a tendency to veer towards a best friend. Most come to expect less of friends after disappointments and the experience of waning friendships as people go through different phases of life. The lack of expectations is not necessarily healthy because it may express a lack of confidence and an unwillingness to commit, in the same way we do not expect anything of an animal in the zoo.

Still, most of us would not have any difficulty describing what we think ideal friendship consists of: Friendship involves free choice and particular persons; it involves reciprocity; the parties participate in it as an end in itself; it involves a commitment into the future; it involves a predominance of reactive rather than detached attitudes.

Of course, there exists friendship of varying intensities: Kant speaks of ideal friendships of disposition, in contrast to those of need or taste; Aristotle speaks of true friendships of character, in contrast to friendships of pleasure or utility. We do not share our deepest secrets with our business associates; we may eat a satisfying burger with an acquaintance, but it is with our best friend that we think of sharing with great relish the description of our discovery of something mundane like delicious food.

That we de-emphasise friendship in adulthood should be a matter of regret, as friendship is potentially a rich relationship in which we experience true love.

In the West, there has long been two prevailing schools of thought about the value of friendship. The first was that friendship met one's needs for human association and support, while the second was that friendship was a school of virtue in which one rises above instinctive self-interest and trains one's character.

Perhaps neither view is complete. It is loathsome to treat another person solely as the means to satisfy one's needs, as the friend becomes fungible like wads of cash: one wad is no different from the next; a friend becomes replaceable by another who can meet the same needs.

Nor can another human simply be someone on whom we practise goodness for our own sake, as our focus turns inward to becoming good persons, when perhaps we do the infinite value of our friend justice only when compelled outward, relationally, by the other-directedness of love.

If it is true that love requires self-giving, putting others above one's self and even laying down one's life for others, it is unsurprising that we who count our interests first in a postmodern world run into immense difficulties giving true love to another human being. As one of my friends wrote even of her best friendship, she has seen 'how inadequate Man's love is, how small our means'. Still, as the writer of Sirach, a book of the Apocrypha, wrote: 'A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter; whoever finds one finds a treasure.'

At the end of the day, statistics aside, we cannot deny that our selfishness is one hindrance to finding true love. We may have all the opportunities in the world to know another person, but until we learn to prefer another, our budding relations will never fulfil their potential. May we remember Emerson's words, that to form friendship, one must first be a friend. To find true love, be prepared first to love.

A five-year tie-up between the Media Development Authority (MDA) and the university in Boston has produced the Singapore-MIT Game Lab, which will enrol its pioneer batch of game designers and media researchers by the middle of next year.

Announced by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong yesterday, the initiative will bring together Singapore game designers, MIT academics and game-industry professionals for research into the creative, business and social aspects of computer gaming.

They will also develop games for public distribution.

The lab, situated at MIT, is the latest move to jump-start the fledgling interactive digital media (IDM) scene here.

IDM, identified by the National Research Foundation early this year as a key industry for the future, encompasses activities like animation, video games, artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

Mr Michael Yap, the executive director of the new IDM R&D Programme Office here, described IDM as a developing field in which sure-fire bets were hard to spot.

The office has $500 million in its kitty to grow the IDM sector for the next five years: It aims to create 10,000 jobs and contribute $10 billion to the economy by 2015, up from 2003's $3.8 billion.

Apart from helping universities here discover cutting-edge technologies, the office will also fund research into the impact of digital media on society, and convince companies to test the latest technologies here.

Mr Yap said: 'We want to be the world's preferred test bed for digital media. We already have some of the newest technologies in high-definition television and fibre-to-the-home.'

Schools are also expected to be a major part of the IDM push. They will look into using technology to make lessons come alive.

Physics, for example, can be taught by using a racing game where cars react realistically to crashes.

The mobile computing revolution promises numerous benefits in the education sector – for both students and teachers, and for the schools and universities themselves.

According to Andy Macleod, business development manager for education at Cisco: “In education, mobile computing is certainly the way to go. From a digital equality point of view, learners should have universal access to the web, plus their own storage space and applications.”

Mikko Kiukkanen, director of business development and sales at wireless infrastructure vendor Meru Networks, said: “The trend towards more collaborative and open learning environments, fuelled by the increasing availability of mobile devices among both students and faculty, is driving aggressive adoption of mobile computing solutions among educational institutions.

“With anytime, anywhere access to resources, students can work in unconventional settings, such as the cafeteria, student centre or the library. Similarly, wireless allows instructors to deliver lessons in places outside the classroom.”

Laptops and portable devices can be taken home by teachers for lesson preparation and by students for homework. According to Simon Brown, director at VAR Scalable Networks, those who benefit most from mobility are often teachers and support staff.

“Laptops or PDAs enable access to secure applications such as attendance tracking and lesson scheduling,” said Brown. “Meanwhile a teacher’s ability to move freely around the classroom helps solve behavioural issues and creates a more mature learning environment.”

Steve Dracup, managing director of interactive and display distributor Promethean AV, said: “Teachers can simply pick up their laptop, plug it into an interactive whiteboard [IWB] in a different room and run with a lesson straight away. This saves time compared with a desktop, because teachers don’t need to recall lessons off a network or save to disk.”

Macleod said: “There’s good ROI [return on investment] for applications that have nothing to do with teaching and learning. For example, if an estates manager can be in contact with the network via their PDA, they can respond to time-critical situations, whether it is opening a gate for a delivery or responding to an incident in the classroom.”

The ability to move kit from room to room means a school or college may need less equipment overall. Portables can be more easily locked away at night for security reasons (schools are notoriously vulnerable to burglars and vandals). And since many classrooms were never designed to accommodate computers, the space-saving aspect of portables can be a major attraction to education establishments.

Also, applications that businesses take for granted can be unexpectedly valuable in a school. Kelly MacMillan, business solutions marketing manager at networking vendor Mitel, said: “Traditionally, teachers didn’t have their own phone or extension number and classrooms don’t contain phones. By providing teachers with a softphone on their laptop, the days of notes in pigeon holes and students roaming the corridors to deliver messages are gone.”

With so much to gain, are schools and universities tooling up with mobile technology? Well, up to a point, according to Dave Leach, head of marketing at educational hardware vendor Research Machines (RM).

“Mobile computing is widely used and sales are increasing, but not as fast as everyone is predicting,” Leach said. “We see about a five per cent swing from desktops to portables each year.”

Portables account for about 30 to 45 per cent of education PC sales, depending on whose figures you believe, he added.

Ian Newell, director of SME and channel sales at Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC), said: “Portables are not taking over from desktops. Desktops are still used for fixed-based learning and for holding central information that mobile devices can access.”

The reason for this relatively modest growth is that, in schools at least, portables are issued to staff rather than students, according to Dominic Webb, senior category manager for the public sector at Hewlett-Packard.

“In primary education we see notebooks used by the teaching and support staff,” he said. “In secondary education we see the majority of notebooks used in the same way.

“However, a small but increasing number of secondary schools are starting to use notebooks for students. A sub-sector of secondary education – the newly formed academies – tend to have a wider use of notebooks across both staff and students. Further and higher education both show widespread use of notebooks for staff and students alike.”

Mike Puglia, product marketing director at wireless security vendor Bluesocket, said: “Many universities require students to have their own laptops. Students truly live in the information age. You would be hard pressed to find a university student without several forms of wireless mobile devices, such as a mobile phone, laptop and PDA.”

Although some schools are experimenting with issuing laptops, tablet PCs or PDAs to some of their students, it is more likely that individual students will buy their own machines. This is a practice that is becoming more common among sixth-formers, according to Leach.

University students tend to buy their laptops through standard consumer channels, but schools are beginning to help their students to buy, either by advising on where to get the best deal or actually buying laptops to lease to them. The latter arrangement has tax advantages for the students or their parents. This is similar to the old Home Computing Initiatives scheme, which was recently scrapped by the government (CRN, 8 May).

Apart from special cases and private-sector sponsorship, dedicated funding for mobile technology purchases is rare, and the government’s Laptops for Teachers scheme has also ceased. Webb said that in most cases the purchase comes from the school’s standard IT budget, so price and performance is a major influence.

“Primary and secondary schools tend to buy medium specification laptops,” he said. “They have a 15in display, a good battery life and a DVD drive with either CD or DVD writer capabilities. Most establishments are open to either an Intel or an AMD offering.”

RM claimed that £500 machines with 1.5GHz Celeron M processors and 256 or 512MB RAM are popular. After all, says Leach, educational software and accessing the web are not particularly hardware intensive.

There is also a trend towards putting somewhat higher specification laptops into classrooms in place of desktops, Leach said. This allows ‘fixed’ resources to be moved around the school more easily. Such machines may be built with extra robustness and special features such as a quick-release power cable in case a student trips over it.

Leach claimed that laptops are the most suitable hardware format for education. Because the standard applications used in schools work best with a mouse and keyboard, tablet PCs and PDAs can be awkward to use, although teachers may find PDAs useful for high-mobility applications.

Other vendors have more faith in smaller form factors. Newell said: “We are seeing a growing demand for tablet PCs because they allow teachers and pupils to access their work easily and they can connect to the other devices in the classroom, such as IWBs.”

Some education authorities are experimenting with PDAs, including Wolverhampton, which has deployed 1,000 hand-held FSC PDAs to allow pupils to view content on classroom IWBs and access learning materials at home. Government targets to install IWBs in every classroom have firmly established the technology in schools, according to Dracup.

“Because a PC or laptop is a core part of the IWB bundle, continued investment in the technology represents an opportunity for resellers to target education with integrated sales,” he said.

Leach said that accessories such as spare batteries, memory sticks and digital cameras can add value to the portable sale. Classroom-based machines may be wheeled around on trolleys, which also act as charging stations overnight.

USB Flash drives are becoming more popular, according to Dave Flack, director of marketing at peripherals distributor Catalus.

“USB Flash drives are ideal for backing up data, transporting documents between college and home, and downloading journals to read on-screen,” he said. “Universities are encouraging students to use digital media for storage, with many now offering a USB drive as part of their freshers’ welcome pack.”

However, the critical supporting technology for mobility is wireless networking.

“Wireless is both a driver of portables into this user segment and a result of portables entering this market,” Kiukkanen said. “For students and teaching staff it delivers productivity and convenience. For the IT staff, wireless represents a comprehensive broadband network solution that can be deployed without the hefty price tag or administrative overhead of traditional wired LANs.”

Wi-Fi deployments in schools are increasing, but the technology brings its own headaches for IT managers, especially when students and teachers want to connect their own machines to the network. Are students’ PCs secure and free of viruses? Does the network support the right version of Wi-Fi? Can it support high-user densities and operate over widespread campuses?

On the other side of the coin, Wi-Fi can have competitive and even commercial advantages, especially for universities.

“Students today are more technologically savvy than ever,” said Kiukkanen. “Wireless access throughout campus and student living areas helps academic institutions compete for students and faculty.”

Puglia said: “Most universities used to make a profit from providing phone services in dorms, but with the advent of mobile phones they have lost this revenue stream. Fixed mobile convergence – the ability to use dual-mode mobile phones over both mobile and Wi-Fi networks – may allow resellers to partner with carriers to assist universities in a revenue sharing model. This leverages their wireless network infrastructure.”

For some resellers, selling Wi-Fi to education is a more attractive prospect than selling portable computers and laptops. Steve Byatt, technical account manager at Aruba Networks reseller Online Network Solutions, said: “We focus on the mobility network infrastructure and avoid selling portable devices where possible. Many in the education market will have contracts with companies such as RM to provide PCs. While we often make recommendations on 802.11 compatibility, the choice of client device should be left to the customer and their incumbent supplier.”

Leach said: “Education is a quirky market and quite tricky to get into. It’s well serviced and we have plenty of competition.”

He added that resellers who want to break into education should ensure they are offering something new in terms of service or price, and should focus on solutions and manageability.

“The issue is to identify the end-user and ensure the products offered focus on that end-user,” he said.

While primary schools can be reached via their Local Education Authority, secondary schools and colleges tend to control their own budgets, so a direct relationship with the individual establishment is important.

“Don’t underestimate the power of local relationships,” MacMillan said. “A small, localised VAR is in an extremely good position to approach a local school, empathise with its situation and offer a solution. Often, teachers will be quite technology adverse. This means that the benefits in terms of improving student performance, time efficiency and cost savings need to be easily demonstrable.”

Resellers may also need to demonstrate relevant experience, according to Byatt.

“With contracts ranging from £5,000 to more than £100,000, most customers will want to know that VARs have already deployed a similar solution elsewhere,” he said.

Getting certified by the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency and Catalist, the government buying and procurement group, can give resellers extra credibility in the education market. There is a National Notebook Agreement for selling portables into universities, but only a handful of vendors and resellers are included. Puglia also advised resellers to look out for government grants so they can guide customers through the approval and procurement stages.

Breaking into the education market is undeniably hard work, but with mobility becoming increasingly important to the sector, it can still be worth the effort.