Final day in Singapore.
Monday I conducted a workshop at the Institute for Adult Learning Singapore. It was an iPad workshop and I had a number of participants from a wide spectrum of the Singaporean community. There were participants from Temasek Polytechnic, the Port Authority of Singapore, the Adult Education Network, the IAL itself and private training companies. The workshop was fruitful and like previous workshops I worked in group work, shadings and participant presentations in order to foster collaborateion, engagement and a process through which the participants taught each other the benefits and iniquities of the iPad as a medium in the teaching and learning process.
A highlight of the day was catching up with Kenneth Tan who works at the IAL and kindly gave me a lift from Queenstown MRT to the IAL. It was excellent seeing Kenneth. AFter the workshop I discussed with Shirley and James to possibility of future workshops at the IAL early in the new year.
I ventured into Chinatown after that and had dinner and a drink in my favourite haunt, again. I recorded some video of the world as it passed by. I shall try to upload that on the weekend.
Yesterday I criss-crossed the island catching up with friends and educators. During the morning I visited Dr Seah-Tay Hui Yong at Nanyang Girls High School. Dr Seah-Tay is the Director of Curriculum at Nanyang Girls High and I was keen to meet Dr Seah-Tay and explore the future rollout of an 1:1 iPad programmes for the Secondary Two cohort at the school.
A number of teachers at Nanyang Girls High School attended my iPad in Education workshops last week. The workshops were conducted at Nanyang Technological University. The teachers brought a great deal of energy and positive input to the workshops. I hope to contribute to the iPad rollout at the school early next year in terms of further professional development of staff.
Dr Seah-Tay gave me a tour of the school’s campus and heritage museum. We discussed the pedagogical and implementation issues of the school. More on these ideas in future posts.
Following that I met up with Paul Gagnon at Nanyang Techological University. Paul is the lead of the eLearning Programme of the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine at NTU. Paul shared with me the implementation plan for iPads within the school as well as some of the delivery tools that will be embedded within the iPad for students and faculty within the medical school. We also shared a rather tasty Japanese lunch. Excellent. Hoping to catch up with Paul when he attends the LAMS conference in Sydney this December.
After that I made way to the National University of Singapore to meet up with Kenneth Pinto who works at true Computing and Information Technology Centre at NUS and also my former students and colleague Alan Soong who works at the Centre for the Development of Teaching and Learning at NUS. It was good catching up with both Kenneth and Alan. Kenneth and I discussed the pros and cons of tablet devices in teaching and learning and after that Alan gave me a tour of the CDTL.
Then, I made my way to my favourite haunts in Chinatown and caught up with a rather dynamic member of my PLN, Christel. She joined me for a tea after she finished work for the day which was quite nearby. Christel works for HAVAS media as a Social Media Architect and Strategist. We talked about teaching, photography, family and life in Singapore. Christel is evolving considerable expertise in the field of social media and we often exchange links via Twitter.
Christel left for home and after a meal I made my way back to NTU where I am staying.
This morning I made way to the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at NTU and thanked the team for their excellent support and assistance during the previous eight days. I particularly thanked June, Ganthi and Salmah for the great help during the workshops. They always ensured that myself and the participants were well cared for and also well fed. Excellent. I also dropped by the School of Computing Engineering to visit my friends Josephine and Chia to thank them for their ongoing support as well. We had a great chat about the changing landscape, politics, democracy and the future of the region.
After that I checked in my single bag at the airport and confirmed my online check-in. I took the MRT back to the city and had lunch in town. I checked the Twitter feeds and I received an invite from Adrienne Michetti to visit her at the Australian International School in Singapore. Adrienne commenced teaching at the school in July. Adrienne took me on a tour of the campus and introduced me to a number of the staff, including Mark Holland, Director of ICT at the school. You may remember that Adrienne was one of my first guests on the Friday Follow Twitter Interview. It was great meeting Adrienne for the first time. We “got on like a house on fire” and cemented what has been an excellent connection via our respective PLNs. Education is the best profession. Thank you Adrienne! See you in 2012!
Well, I am vegetating now and taking it easy. I will process some of the photographs that I have taken during the last few days and add them to this post. Next blog post will be the Friday Follow Twitter Interview. Stay tuned.
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