Looking back, I must say I have a lot to share on what HS has given to me and me to HS for the last 7 years. I joined HS in 2002 and I must say I enjoyed working with wonderful colleagues like Kwai Hoong, Fahizal, Jasmine, Shirley, Yee Tyng and many more. Over the past few years, I must say I have helped the students to achieve in many competitions which I will be writing here.
Quoting something which I just read from the Straits Times:
“Perhaps, if we are able to put away the notion of a paper certificate being the means to all ends, we will be able to appreciate and treasure formal education for what it should be: The symbolic start of a lifelong learning journey, with lessons from everywhere, and anybody in one's life."
By Goh Wen Zhong in Straits Times
Indeed preparing the students to achieve academically is my greatest aim. However, knowing that they have learnt something useful for their life and that they will continue to learn in life is my greatest achievement. I suppose that's why I also take joy in enrolling students in competitions and guiding them to achieve. I think that through competitions, they learnt additional skills and definitely gain more confidence and the achievements add to their portfolio which will benefit them in life.
"Grades only open doors, it takes much more to walk through them and survive the path you choose."
The very first competition which I am proud to share is when I enrolled 5 teams in the Northeast Virtual Heritage Competition organised by the Temasek Information Technology School and the Northeast Community Development Council (NECDC) in 2004.
The students had to conduct research, organise the information collected and create a website to preserve the rich heritage of the Northeast District. A total of 132 students from 13 secondary schools registered for the competition. We took part in a 1-day briefing and training workshop and learnt useful skills such as information search, organisation and webpage design were taught. This was also the first formal training I had in webpage design and since then I have been learning how to use Macromedia Dreamweaver, Firework and Flash on my own, putting them in practice as the webmaster for the HS internet webpage.
It was indeed a proud moment for us when they announced that two of our teams won both the 1st and 3rd prize after their presentations at the award ceremony.In 2005 we participated in the Toa Payoh Heritage Trail Design Competition organised by the Central CDC in 2005. I must say that we are indeed proud to clinch both the 1st and 3rd prize.
It was not an easy competition and we actually had to visit Toa Payoh 3 times to plan for the trail! We attended a briefing and training workshop on how to prepare a business proposal, how to plan for an itinerary as well as oral history. For this competition, the students had to interview the resident of Toa Payoh to find out more about its history as well as to present to a panel of judges their business proposal for a heritage trail. I am sure the students have benefited as t hey had a head start in learning how to prepare a business proposal.
Another competition which I would like to highlight is the New Media Challenge which started off as the first National Blogging Competition in Singapore.
In the first National Blogging Competition organised by Singtel in 2006, our students won the 3rd prize with $1000 cash and handphones.
We won the 2nd prize with $2000 cash and handphones in the New Media Challenge in 2007 and 2008. The students had to blog on given themes at campusmoblog and in 2007 the students had to add in media such as video clips and photographs to their blog via their handphones. The competition got tougher in 2008 as we had to work out the storyboard and script on the blog as well as filming and editing in a single day on our story and upload them to our blog.
Our students were also the proud winner of the first National Word Power organised by Reader’s Digest in 2007. The students took the challenge online and they qualified for the finals being one of the 6 top scorers. The Finals was held in Mediacorps (live recording) and the team had the strong support of their peers in the studio recording. Many of the supporters feedback to me later that this has been an enriching experience for them as they never knew that live recording is so tough – the emcee had to retake quite a number of times when he made some mistakes. The team was really impressive as they beat top schools to secure the 2nd prize in the finals. They were later interviewed by the press and the radio station.
This year we are third in the learn@1°N Climate Herald Competition 2008. This is quite a feat as there were more than 160 secondary schools in round 1 and 40 schools in the qualifying round. The team had impressed the panel of judges (representatives from ETD, icell and the Science Centre) with their presentation at MOE HQ. Our team also won in the learn@SingaporeRiverTrail competition in 2005 but I must say that the competition is getting tougher with more rounds of judging.
Of course there are many more competitions which I could not list in detail such as the NYAA Middle-east webpage design competition in 2005. Our student, Cailing, was the only secondary student who won the 3rd prize as the 1st and 2nd prize were won by JC students. She also got the opportunity to present her work to the Egypt and UAE ambassadors at the award ceremony.
Last but not least, I must say that our Red Cross had made tremendous achievements over the year. I volunteered to take over the unit in 2003 as I used to be the teacher-in-charge of St John Ambulance Brigade in my former school. The unit has grown to become one of the top units in Singapore with double Gold in the Excellent Unit Award and the Community Service Award. I must say it is a lot of hard work managing the unit but it is always heartening to see that the cadets have grown to be leaders and that many had excel with their achievements in the various Red Cross and National competitions.
I have set up many websites and blogs for the updates in Geography and Economics for the last few years. In doing so, I have created many resources for the students as well as keeping the students in the know for current updates in Geography and Economics. I received mails from teachers and students from other schools who had chanced upon my websites and blogs and they had found them useful too. I even received an email from a professor from US requesting that I put a link to their department’s map resources on my website. My personal blog is also an avenue for ex-students to keep in touch with me.
I am also quite fortunate to have the opportunity to teach the pioneer group of Economics students at O level in 2007. Though I was trained to teach Economics in 1991 - that was like almost 17 years ago and I had to go through a refresher course. I had a hard time looking for resources and had to prepare notes for the students from scratch. Like what I had mentioned, I also had to get them to relate what they had learnt to current issues in Economics on the blog which I started. I am proud to say that the students attained 100% passes and 57.1% distinction which was indeed an achievement as they were not from the top classes.
I have always been an active advocate in the use of ICT in learning. I have created many e-lessons in our HS portal and also EzIT – a platform for the sharing of IT resources and IT tips for teachers. This year, as part of our innowits project, I have also created HSnBeyond – an online guide to post secondary education. I sincerely hope that the students will benefit from this as like what I had mentioned earlier –
"Grades only open doors, it takes much more to walk through them and survive the path you choose."
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