Lim, Kenneth Yang Teck

This paper reports on research carried out as part of a doctoral thesis which focuses on how the social software of the mobile internet, such as text messaging and picture messaging, is used by teenagers in the process of constructing negotiated and shared understandings of unfamiliar environments in which they find themselves. To this end, the study was constructed such that students were given opportunities to collaboratively explore and navigate unfamiliar environments using the technologies of the mobile internet, as well as to engage in debate, and use multimedia evidence recorded in the field to defend their positions both to peers in the field and in the classroom, regarding various issues of concern to these environments, with specific links being made to their studies in geography. Key research questions that delineate the bounds of the study are: 1) How do pupils seek to explore and understand the local environment in which they find themselves? 2) How are such understandings of three-dimensional environments communicated, through text, pictures and video, with their peers and friends? 3) What are the mechanisms (including textual and non-textual cues) which teens employ to coach their peers to successfully navigate alien environments? 4) How can the technologies of social software, specifically messaging technologies of the mobile internet, augment and / or detract from the semiotic processes of making and sharing meaning about place? Specifically, the requirement that the students engage in real-time collaborative interaction while still onsite in multiple remote locations can only be properly realized with the mobile internet. No longer should students have to wait till they return to school before sharing their thoughts with their peers. The study encouraged students to empathise with, and defend, different points-of-view. Through debate, students gained an appreciation of the issues pertaining to the geography around a particular location. The quality of the debate was a function of their powers of observation, and what they perceived as meaningful in their environment.

"To leverage the affordances of fictive worlds and virtual environments for learning, in order to help students develop enduring understandings in disciplinary-specific epistemologies ; To leverage these same affordances to help students appropriate dispositions and literacies aligned with fluent operation as global citizens in the 21st century."--executive summary.

This project describes the trialling of a new form of cooperative learning strategy, in the form of a game known as EcoRangers. EcoRangers is a multi-player game, designed to run on handphones, written specifically for education. EcoRangers is one of the first, if not the world’s first, instances of this totally new genre of pedagogical tools (ie, collaborative handheld educational games). In its current iteration, EcoRangers is designed to help pupils practise skills of relevance to the Upper Secondary Social Studies syllabus, specifically through the pedagogical strategy known as the Structured Academic Controversy, in which learners debate an open-ended problem from a variety of perspectives. The trialling was done in Fuchun Secondary School, among twenty Secondary Three pupils from the Express stream. These pupils were taken through two distinct fieldwork tasks in March and April 2004, with the game being introduced as part of a post-fieldwork activity.

This article considers some of the unique affordances that Multi-User Virtual Environments-in particular, Second Life-present to the design of learning environments. Drawing upon some preliminary experiences of acquainting teachers in several schools in Singapore with Second Life, specific attention is paid to the inherent spatiality of the Second Life grid, and the implications the consequent sense of place imparts on traditional notions of the content of any given subject domain, as well as on how the understanding of learners can be facilitated and subsequently assessed.

The diffusion of innovation is critical to societal progression. In the field of education, such diffusion takes on added significance because of the many stakeholders and accountabilities involved. This article presents the argument that efforts at diffusion which are designed from a top-down perspective are not sustainable over the long term because such a perspective does not sufficiently acknowledge the importance of tacit knowledge in the successful adoption and adaptation of innovations. Using examples drawn from the trialing and implementation of a suite of research innovations in the Singapore education system, the argument is made that tacit understandings of any given innovation are attained through dialogue and embodied practice within authentic contexts, and that these very contexts and opportunities for dialogue are precisely the affordances of Communities of Practice. The article draws some tentative conclusions about systems-level moves and strategies which might nurture the dialectic of theory, practice, and epistemology by leveraging existing social structures.

This paper provides a reflection on the designing and enacting of an inclusive curriculum for a diverse group of students using a maker-centred learning approach, where students are empowered to have greater autonomy in the decision-making process and given accessibility to prototyping tools in their learning process for an undergraduate general elective course. Based on the student feedback, the finding suggests that students’ interest in learning was fostered when they were given greater autonomy in their learning. We recommend giving students more autonomy in choosing their project focus and exercising greater flexibility during the enactment of the curriculum, where students’ voices and decisions are considered.

This study describes data that was gathered in 2004 from fieldwork conducted by students from four schools in Singapore, around tasks of wayfinding and debate. The fieldwork tasks were designed specifically to permit participants to exercise their powers of observation, as opposed to more traditional tasks of collection of empirical data.

To this end, the study was constructed such that students were given opportunities to collaboratively explore and navigate unfamiliar environments using text- and picture-messaging, as well as to engage in debate, and use multimedia evidence recorded in the field to defend their positions both to peers in the field and in the classroom, regarding various issues of concern to these environments, with specific links being made to their studies in geography.

The data was used to shed light on those elements in urban and suburban environments which adolescents in Singapore find geographically meaningful, as well as to determine the extent to which such interventions might augment students’ spatial intelligence, with a view to informing a more effective geography education programme in schools. The nature of the collaborative discourse which emerged as participants engaged in the intervention was also investigated, using a proprietary taxonomy of discourse types.

This thesis is grounded in neo-Vygotskyian socio-cultural activity theory. Primary findings include the suggestion that key elements in adolescents’ local environments used to orientate and to convey spatial information are axial lines and buildings. The data also reveals differences between the genders in their preference for text over pictures in conveying such information. Adolescents who are more successful in participating in and applying spatial discourse also tend to exhibit certain habits of mind, such as perseverance, as well as to scaffold their exchanges more. Finally, the study suggests that certain fieldwork interventions can indeed augment spatial intelligence and mapping skills.

According to a group of Stanford scientists, mealworms, the larva of darkling beetles, can digest Styrofoam, a type of polystyrene, and break it down into carbon dioxide. This paper investigates the plastic-digesting property of mealworms on different types of plastic, namely polystyrene (PS), low- density polyethylene (LDPE) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Since mealworms breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. To measure the extent of plastic intake, we explored an alternative method to measure the extent of plastic digestion - using Arduino carbon dioxide sensors instead of calculating the difference in weight of plastic. As the increase in the exhalation of carbon dioxide is indicative of the amount of plastic consumed, the authors measured the change in carbon dioxide concentration of the mealworms' environment as they consume plastic. This is put into comparison with when the mealworms respire without food. The results show that mealworms consume Styrofoam to a certain extent. However, they are mostly unable to digest polyethylene and polyvinyl chloride, likely due to their elasticity and high density respectively.

This paper describes an intervention piloted in secondary schools in Singapore in the second half of 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The intervention aims to afford learners more authentic understandings of the need to invest effort and self-discipline in nurturing the new habit of practicing safe-distancing, beyond just doing so because of public exhortation. It seeks to achieve this objective through two complementary halves, the first being an activity within a virtual environment during which a (virtual) virus is diffusing, and the second being dialogue and discussion around students’ decision-making and behaviours, as informed from an analysis of data of interaction from the first half, via a web-based interface. In this way, the Socially Responsible Behaviour through Embodied Thinking (SORBET) Project represents not only an intervention designed to meet the challenges to learning imposed by COVID-19, but also one of the current few which attempt to do so by leveraging students’ evolving conceptions about the diffusion of a virus amongst a population. Understood thusly, the intervention has potential curricular applications in a number of disciplinary domains, such as in mathematics, geography, biology and citizenship education.