On the last day of spring break

On the last day of spring break, this is what the wife and I did:

Ate ourselves silly at Itacho. Don't be fooled, this little platter of sushi was just the appetizer.

Used up our last complimentary coupon for two to watch The Lorax which was an ok animation with catchy musical numbers, though I found it too overbearingly preachy and used cute animals to up the guilt factor to the point of exploitation.

We went shopping for new footwear to replace the wife's worn-out treads; and got a staff discount on a pair of berms to replace my embarrassingly holey ones.

And just when we thought we were all shopped out, the wife succumbs to the dark side. It wasn't difficult to fall, though, because the acolyte attending to her was so attentive it was like the wife was the only customer of the evening, though there were others waiting in the queue. I don't know if it is standard service provided by M1, but Ms Acolyte went to the extent of slowly and patiently applying the screen protector on both sides, making sure it stuck perfectly -- no dust particles, no air bubbles. Beautiful job!

That's what we do on the last day of spring break.

Mass Effect 3: the Reapers are here!

The galaxy faces the biggest ever threat to organic life, yet the disparate galactic races are more interested in tearing each other's faces off than deal with the mechanical menace of the Reapers. Once again, the human Spectre, Shepard, has to rally his troops and save the galaxy... but first he has to escape the burning wreck of his home planet, Earth.

The Mass Effect story is truly breathtaking in scope. It encompasses timelines counted in stellar cycles and the spatial breadth of the Milky Way. The enemies, the Reapers are each "skyscraper sized" and each requires a fleet of warships to bring down. There are thousands of Reapers actively harvesting the galaxy of organic life. Against such odds, it's surprising what one charmed person can do to salvage the situation. It's in the dogged determination of doing the smallest of things that may have the widest implications; "for want of a nail", as it were.

Among the smallest of things are Shepard scouring both shops and planets for spare parts to fix this and that here and there. Any advantage is better than no advantage against an enemy of this scale. Thankfully, that's not all he/she (player's choice) does. The Shepard's main mission is to unite the galactic races to join the common cause of ridding the galaxy of the Reapers once and for all.

The meat and potatoes of ME3, as with the previous installments, is the boots on the ground fighting in third-person. Whether against "indoctrinated" aliens or rouge human factions, you have the choice of fighting style which you build your Shepard to exploit. Whether it's up close and personal with melee or shotgun, or my preference of sniping heads off via a zoomed scope at a distance, the idea is to find cover (of which there is plenty) to hide behind while being shot at, and taking your shots as opportunity presents itself. At the same time, you have to guard against having your position flanked, which usually results in disaster.

You also have a choice of two squad members per operation from a range of possibles. It's best to mix strengths, preferred fighting styles and support powers in order to make the best use of coordinated attacks. And because teamwork is vital to survival, much of the game also involves a lot of talking and making nice with your colleagues on board your starship, Normandy II. Talk nice enough with one preferred crew member (comprising a jumble of human and alien races -- it's an equal opportunity starship) and there also appears the opportunity to start or rekindle an on-board romance. Emotions are universal... and apparently biology is too. Ahem.

And there is the heart of the Mass Effect franchise. The storytelling is emotionally involving, especially since choices and mistakes made in the previous two installments linger throughout and have an impact on #3. The name wall on the crew deck of the Normandy lists fallen comrades, and it's sobering to see how many familiar names appear there. It's a testament to the depth of the story when for nearly every name you can recall a backstory and also the circumstances of their demise.

And even in this last episode, the message rings home: in war, friends die. For Shepard, and for you the player, the objective is to minimize the casualty list, save as many as you can. Though often, the choice either isn't yours to make, or it's a choice you have to make.

ME is less of a game and more of an interactive theatrical experience. The animated actors deliver enough pathos to make you feel their hopes and anxieties and mourn their loss if it comes to that. The soundtrack is well-orchestrated to create the appropriate moods: stirring space battles or the piano solo that is so emotive when Shepard gets the "best seats in the house" while watching the Earth burn and waiting for the cavalry to arrive.

Since different choices lead down different paths, there are multiple endings to be experienced. Regardless, for my run, I believe I have experienced the most logical and satisfying one. It effectively guarantees that an ME4 is impossible, that the story has finally played itself out, and I can get back to my life again. Phew!

Content with Content but value in Values

The industry has set some new targets. We've been so focused on academic goals, it's time to bring back values. That's what I've been saying all along. In the practical sense, it's the way to go because what is abundant is cheap, and what is scarce is treasured. Today, Content (information/knowledge) is so abundant it's virtually free. What we've grown so scarce of is Values, and if we casually scan our immediate environment, it's clear how lacking we are in this basic human trait. So people who chase after Content, hoard it, and seek to capitalize on it are going to be disappointed in how little return they are going to get out of it. Those who will benefit most in the near future are those who have cultivated the right Values that can guide them in putting the freely abundant resource of Content to the best use.

By the way, I'm referring to Content and Values within the context of my pet subject, GP, hence I am looking at the issue as an academic working in the industry, not as a layman. Lately, campus has been looking to add value to our year-end results. Not that it hasn't been a preoccupation before, but now that our intake has been attracting increasingly better performing candidates, it's been getting harder to add value to our students year after year, since by their 'O's they are already doing well in their academic subjects.

It's difficult for us, especially, because we once had students who were happy enough to pass their 'A's; but now our students are aiming for top grades. Our strategies have to change, not in little increments any longer; we have to take bigger and bolder steps. I can only speak for my subject, so I will venture to examine how our grade rubrics work in order to suggest what else we might be doing to squeeze out that extra value to meet and exceed our new expectations.

Remember that there is little value in abundant resources and a much higher value in that which is scarce? Since Content is abundant to the max given our electronic information access and retrieval capabilities today, providing more Content for the kids to study adds little value to their learning. Content makes the difference between outright pass and fail, though, so there is still a bunch of students whom we must feed Content to and they must be content to just scrape through. But if we examine the GP rubric, the higher grades are attainable by exhibiting good judgement in evaluating Content knowledge based on strong moral principles backed up with logical reasoning, communicated clearly and succinctly to others.

If we're wondering how we have the time to 'cover' so much Content and so much skills training in the slightly less than two years that we have with each cohort, I say we up the emphasis on the skills we are lacking in and downplay Content teaching (what most people are so worried about) which is so abundant, it's valueless. After all, in grading GP papers for so many years, it's clear that depth of content does not gain additional marks but instead distracts the candidate from responding to the main question who then fails to show evidence of thinking, reasoning, evaluating and communicating, thus resulting in mediocre to near-fail grades.

Let's be assured that knowing a little about many 'topics' makes a candidate more flexible in dealing with the tough moral questions that he or she will face at the 'A's than a candidate with a lot of knowledge about only a few pet topics. A daily scan of the news as a personal habit is much more beneficial to a student, because it allows him or her to participate in the up-to-the-minute global conversation, than a topical content package that provides a false sense of security. Such packages are more for assuaging guilt than they are useful in training young minds to become global citizens of the 21st century.

Since the JC timeline is two years duration, I think the first year we should train the kids to source Content for themselves, that is to plug themselves into the daily flow of news, to observe patterns of human interaction and to identify people, concerns and events that repeat themselves over time. It's throwing them into the pool at the deep end. It'll be chaotic as they flail about, struggle, curse and complain but most will get the hang of it, while those who are seriously going under are the ones we are watching out for with the rubber ring.

Second year, we push the kids out more to exercise their moral judgement, critical thinking and communication skills as a natural follow-up from their previous experience. Second year is not the time for Content drilling any longer since (ideally) they have already immersed themselves in the ebb and flow of global information currency. What they need now is to be able to pick a point on the Content map and navigate their own way there, and this is going to require more kids getting involved in classroom interaction and less of teacher-talk which just eats into valuable training-time for the kids.

The reason why I've brought up this discussion on values education is because the industry, bless the top management, has clear and good intentions for the needs of our nation but, like the bureaucrats that they are, their only solution for encouraging schools to embark on Values education is to throw money at it. People have the wrong idea that Values education is a separate entity from Subject education. It's not. In fact, Values education is integral to subject mastery (at least it is for GP) and to reward it with money and certificates gives the very wrong impression that a person's values can be exploited for personal gain, and that values are used to differentiate people from one another instead of integrating everyone inclusively through the sharing of the same values in common with one another.

All the more so that we send out the right message of Values education because we are finding ourselves living in an increasingly diverse society, where tension between people groups is running alarmingly high.

Parking lot with a view

Dropped in on the lawyer who's handling the refinancing of our home loan. This is a periodic necessity as every couple of years or so, depending on the loan contract, the bank will increase the interest charged to a ridiculous level.

I don't know why it will do this because what happens is that we will go shopping around for another bank to take over the loan at a more reasonable rate. The formalities are now complete, and now we owe a new bank everything we have -- and everything we are likely to earn in this lifetime -- for the roof over our heads.

The pix represents the view from the parking lot of the lawyer's building. This is another exciting downtown parking facility, accessible only by car elevator. It costs only $5 per entry to park here from 1800 hrs to 2200 hrs on weekdays. Useful to know.

Sleep deprived

That was brilliant. After two straight nights of less than 4 hours sleep due to grading assignments, I overcompensate and have yet another less than 4 hour sleep entirely hooked on ME3.

Am a walking zombie right now... and I still have one more class to get through. Thankfully, I am prepped and ready to deliver. Afternoon classes are the worst to stay awake in, though. Urgh.

Will stick head in bin for food

Momo! I so did not raise you to be a dustbin cat! Just because the packaging we threw out still smells good doesn't mean that your dignity has to go out the window!

The other reason why I took this shot was because she reminded me of a raccoon foraging in the urban landscape. Can't think why.

Perforated pirate

I don't know what's up with Maui, but lately his favourite game is 'Pirate'. The rules: jump as high as possible on owner; climb up T-shirt; perch on shoulder; survey territory. If owner walks around, grab tight with claws and hold on for the ride, just like a pirate's parrot.

It was kinda' cute when he was a kitten, but now he's a full-grown tom. With his combined weight and adamantium talons, my home shirts have become well-ventilated; my epidermis well-lacerated. I'm even afraid of being ambushed in the dark now. It's happened before, stabbed in the back by my own cat.

Tonight, the feline identity crisis is getting both a manicure and a pedicure. Here, Maui-boy... come and get your nice treat...!

(Photo posed to simulate actual events. No animal was harmed in the posting of this entry).

Normandy ready for boarding

How lazy can one get? I'm not shopping for PC games anymore; not at the mall, anyway. I downloaded my copy of Mass Effect 3 N7 Deluxe Digital Edition direct off Origin, the online games manager EA is using these days.

Which is probably why the Challenger that used to be just down the road has packed up and disappeared. Brick-and-mortar, meet digital... wait, where are you going?


ME3 is now installed and ready to play (so much for Skyrim); but I'm still 24 hours off from the official launch date and the game's locked until then. No early preview for early birds, then? Feh!

24 hours left to complete grading all assignments! I'll never make it!!!

Plus one other thing; I believe I lost the save game I've been keeping over the past 2 installments! Not looking forward to starting with a clean slate all over again. *grumble, grumble...

Dinner with a friend

Dinner at PS Cafe with June's colleague who will soon be departing for England. On the menu we have a mixed grill assiette. Comprises a hunk of lovely fatty lamb, bratwurst sausage and a blackened king prawn served on a bed of zucchini, asparagus and ratatouille.

The yellowtail kingfish. The oozy green stuff is Romesco sauce which was probably there for the aesthetic 'cos it didn't do all that much to add to the flavour of the fish.

Just in case we didn't order enough to fill the three of us, we called in reinforcements in the form of this pork pie served with a side of couscous and a veggie kebab. It didn't matter that Jen was part-vegetarian; we finished the lot, garnish and all, including a side salad and a slice of carrot cake. Good? Yes, and we were hungry.

And here is the reason for our evening. I can say we had dinner with quite a remarkable lady in both intelligence and life experience. Retirement for her simply means an opportunity to dump the corporate world and try her hand at something meaningful, like education.

I vant to bite you

Rehearsals for Drama Night go on. Hmm, are we working on a vampire storyline?

Or 'Teen Wolf', maybe...? Strangeness is afoot.

Slow burn

Never, ever place your precious fruit-of-the-week anywhere near the exhaust vent of your laptop PC. This poor mango got cooked by the discharge of hot air over the workday and is now oozing horrible liquids from its third-degree burn. Sadly, it's become quite inedible.

Never gonna give you up

It's odd that I'm commiserating with Sirius about our ageing pets; it's usually all business with her. Her cat is a lot more advanced in age than mine, but I have been in to look after Mimi while the Wongs were in BKK, so I am quite familiar with the ageing pet issue.

Mimi was lively, vivacious, noisy and chased the big dogs around if she saw one unattended. But over the years, her sight and hearing have been failing and lately she's hobbling stiffly, like it's a pain to move around. She'd find herself in a corner and just stand there, like she can't figure a way out. She sleeps a lot and doesn't even notice my presence until I stroke her or pick her up. I wouldn't be surprised if she can't tell dream from reality any more, at least not until we make tangible contact, keeping her literally "in touch" with the world.

There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with her sense of taste and smell, though. She's onto her food as soon as I bring her near enough. It's clear she is still hanging on to life for as long as she is able, regardless of her present condition.

That's a lot of courage for a little dog. We human beings tell ourselves we don't want to get old. We want to avoid the pain and difficulties that ageing brings. But the little dog knows that life happens only once, and there's no sense in giving it up just because it's become inconvenient. I learned a life lesson from Mimi in just one week caring for her most basic needs. She may now be old and frail, but she's not going anywhere just yet.

When she does go, as they inevitably do, I hope the decision was hers and not ours in haste; and that we will continue to nurture and care for her as long as she needs us, right up until the end.

Double redundancy

Why have I been so tired lately? Silly me! Been running myself ragged doing classroom teaching in the morning and creating online content at night for the same students. The big problem was in feeling neglected, unloved and unappreciated when nobody seemed to be going into the online stuff I've been painstakingly putting together. (And before you ask, even though you are dying to access this massive library of GP-related material, it's hosted on a closed system so I couldn't invite you unless we share the same workplace).

Don't know why it took so long, but I've only just realized that effectively, I'm working two jobs, but only being paid for one. If I bring what I've put online to use in class the next day, the kids would have a reason to access the stuff the night before, wouldn't they? And I wouldn't have to prepare lessons using different material to use in class, although that's what I've been doing since term started. Duh! AND they would come to class better prepared, without feeling like fish out of water so much when I launch into realms of argumentative writing theory and ramble on till past lunchtime.

Have to credit Tami J Eggleston for this insight that should have been obvious, but passed me by completely. Comes from being brain dead from self-inflicted wounds.

Time out

Think I've been working too hard and getting abnormally stressed over it. But not just me, apparently. Everyone's been having a tough week for different reasons. Whether it's the quagmire of dealing with a new subject, or bulk supply orders going awry, or kids acting up, we've been fighting lots of little fires all over the place. And it's only Week 9. :p

Am sincerely grateful for short coffee breaks and little impromptu birthday celebrations with friends. That's always kept me sane, though I don't recall seeing it on this list of stress relieving tips. I think it should be #1 on the list. Maybe people generally don't make friends at work?

Pushing all the wrong buttons

It's been a troubling week on the whole. Upon reflection, I'm starting to see a pattern emerging that I am not comfortable with. The kids and I are approaching our tutorials with very different expectations and from very different perspectives. They want playscripts, I'm teaching them the rules of improv. Complete mismatch.

I've come to realize that the kids have no confidence answering questions if they haven't been taught what the answers were beforehand. It doesn't matter that I'm teaching them to answer questions through logic and problem-solving techniques. Skills that have to do with question deconstruction and response reconstruction are completely going over their heads, and it all makes no sense to them.

They simply won't try to figure things out on their own because they haven't got a model or a pre-approved answer to match and plug-in. No wonder group-work is something they dread, 'cos everybody feels stupid in a group. How can they contribute if they haven't already got an assured answer to the problem? And when they realize an answer is not forthcoming, they get upset, they rebel, and think the worst of the one trying to lead the discussion. You know who you are.

The kids often complain of being treated like human Xerox machines. I wonder, at this age, whether we can turn them back into human beings again, or if it's already too late? As it is, I seem to be pushing all the wrong buttons these days and, like actual Xerox machines, they're breaking down all too easily.

But whatever could have made our teenagers this dense by the time they reach JC? I think we can make some inferences looking at the letters in the ST Forum page of this morning, such as this one and the rest (minus the roadkill ones, although they do tell us something of our operate-to-instruction culture as well).

Now then... Education is rotting the brains of our young. Discuss.

Unplug and engage

I still want to believe in the hype about all these newfangled methods of engaging students in the classroom. Whether it's by using infocomm tools; or peer teaching; or new methods to engage the "21st Century learner"; or this discovery approach (it's not a bad way of looking at the TLLM stuff we keep hearing about, actually); I'm grateful for them all. I cannot imagine how I could possibly do my job if I were a teacher 20-30 years ago with no reliable access to the 'net.

But there are times when you really have to get medieval. Whatever we believe of the "guide on the side", always leave the door open for the sage to take back the stage. Rawr!

Un-friended

Whoa, sounds like a kindred spirit has marked one too many deplorable GP essays and is venting on the ST forum. Yeah! Right on, babe! The kids are so not reading enough and are becoming so, like, y'know... what she said.

I was with Ms Ng right up until she started blaming computer games. -_- Y U NO like Skyrim??? Don't think I'm gonna look her up on Facebook any more. :'(

New wine into old wineskin

As we grapple with ideas of how to encourage self-directed learning and foster collaborative learning, two unrelated studies are revealing that the necessary trigger mechanism still eluding us is a combination of biology and psychology.

Biology encodes in us human beings a natural tendency to collaborate. We are social animals (some more so than others, it seems) and our success as a species is directly related to our heightened abilities to organize ourselves and work together for our common good. Compassion for the less able (to contribute) is also hard-wired within us, so by right there should be no difficulty in creating social networks of mutual assistance and partnership from within the microcosm of the classroom.

And yet in my discussion with the 'expert' and in the classroom experience I had yesterday; the expert said that the classroom as it exists today is not ready for such a pedagogical paradigm shift, and the debacle that ensued in the classroom confirmed it (yes, I was trying out another experiment which again failed miserably).

So something else is happening in the classroom that is subverting our natural biological impulses. I believe I've identified what it is: the psychological side-effect of our current teaching-and-learning model itself. Though Haidt is not specifically writing about classroom practices, we can scale down his national politico-economic analysis and see how it operates in small communities (of say 20-40 kids).

In the experiment he draws his conclusions from, there is a machine that rewards the subjects for their effort. In short, the subjects are more likely to equalize their rewards (i.e., act in a more egalitarian manner towards each other) if the mechanism rewarded collaborative effort. Even if the rewards between two subjects were unequal, as long as it was obvious that without working together neither would have been rewarded, the subjects were more likely to even out the reward between themselves.

But the willingness to share the reward significantly diminishes when 1) the two subjects start out with an unequal distribution of reward even before any effort is made, and 2) when individual effort determines the reward allocation (i.e., work harder, get more; work less, get less).

This is all starting to sound familiar. The motivation for being in the classroom for practically all our students is a reflection of condition 1. What each student brings to class in terms of economic wealth and cultural capital is a lunchbox that isn't meant to be shared with others, but a personal advantage to capitalize on and get ahead of the pack.

The idea of working for what we deserve is condition 2. The end-of-year exam is seen purely as the result of individual effort. We promise the kids who work the hardest and sacrifice themselves the most the 'A' grade; sucks to be everybody else.

Although we encourage collaboration in Project Work, we all know the exercise is problematic because it, likewise, is graded competitively as an end-of-process exam. So although we say the process is more important, we still end up assessing the product anyway.

We failed to see this scenario when we went on course a couple of weeks ago. We collaborated nicely and had some fun working with our group members, and we thought it would be the same when we tried it out in class. Nope. We collaborated because we knew we could gain something from each other, and we didn't have to take an end-of-course exam. The kids, however, do.

As one of the ICT guys on campus, I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. We're working towards two opposing ends and our job is to make East and West meet in the middle. We desperately need to figure out how to turn our flat world into a globe. What have we gotten ourselves into now?

One step forward, two steps back

Days like this are when I'm facing brick walls of resistance and yet being unable to prove myself due to the utter failure of silly things like wi-fi in the classroom despite boasting of costly upgrades galore. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the highest level of technology our schools would ever reach is the trusty biro and fooslcap pad.

Why won't I just be like everybody else and not try so hard to be different?

Whatever. Enjoy the music.

The 'now' moment

One of the reasons why Singaporeans tend to be so dissatisfied with life is because we think too much of the future. The worries and anxieties that we have are not about today, but tomorrow. And mostly about not having enough money to survive, let alone enjoy tomorrow.

So we work ourselves to the bone. We fret and we stock up what we can get, like squirrels preparing for winter. Some of the more enterprising of us invest, in hopes of bringing a windfall sometime down the road, but until then our hearts sink as we watch our stock values plummet.

Perhaps our parents and teachers and our government have been telling us the same grasshopper vs ant story too often. It's become the driving force behind Singaporean thought and action. Work hard now, because the winter is coming and when it arrives, no one will help you if you haven't stocked up enough for yourself. We are taught to look down on the grasshopper and accept that he deserves his fate because he enjoyed summer too much.

But life isn't lived in the future. We live life in the here and now. What will sustain us is not the money we've accumulated per se, but rather the wealth of experiences we have been able to gather as we live life from day to day, moment to moment. Work is important, but so is every other aspect of life; and our generation is fortunate enough, affluent enough, to enrich ourselves in so many ways. Question is, are we willing to spend our time building up a variety of life experiences, or are we just going to fritter it all away chasing the money?

Sometimes, a different perspective of life can help us see the beauty and value of the 'now' moment. Meet Joel Cooper who writes for The Ex-Pat Files, Sunday Times: "Tea, cats and a new hunger", 19 Feb 2012.

Too late to regret

Wow. And now we have a father of three who writes to the press about his regrets for having children. He says of his kids that when he and his spouse "chose to have more than two children... [they, i.e., Mr and Mrs] were young and reckless". Interesting word, "reckless", suggesting making significant decisions without factoring in the costs.

Read: Dollars and sense

But as much as I am a penny-pinching miser when it comes to thinking about raising kids, I have to tell Mr Law that since he already has kids he does not have the time or the luxury to regret his decision. Now his "decision" has become a Responsibility that he can not run away from. His problem has moved to a different scale altogether. Although he wails over how current population boosting policies have "hoodwinked" him into thinking he can continue to depend on government handouts forever, the reality is that they are his kids and not the government's.

You can't have your cake and eat it. More dependents sharing your slice of economic pie means taking a crimp in your lifestyle aspirations. The more dependents, the smaller a slice everyone gets. It's mathematics.

Ok, I may sound callous and heartless and indifferent to Mr Law's plight. I would be more sympathetic if he had asked for help with employment, or something practical; but to ask for a major public housing policy change? Based on factoring his own difficulties? Overnight? Hello, let's deal with what we CAN control rather than wring hands over things that we can't.

The bottom-line of Mr Lam's argument is that he wants mo' money; and who doesn't want that? But all I'm saying is, you can't expect to get any more than you already have. Singapore is trying to operate on a budget based on what it can earn balanced against what is needs to spend on in the coming year. Mr Law should try to be more realistic and do likewise.

Whatever happened to "proactive and resourceful"?

One week ago, I thought the movement to save the Houses was quite touching. A gallant, last-ditch tilt at a windmill is still an effort and a symbol to remember and get behind...

But what we got instead was a sad display of roll-over-and-die.

Kids, in a fight for your lives, you have to show in a practical way how your existence is worth preserving. Appeals on moral grounds aren't going to stop the swing of the executioner's axe. Neither is pleading for mercy, for another chance if you haven't already got a bargaining chip to place on the table. Doe eyes and tears may avail you a hanky and a pat on the shoulder, but that's all. If you have no idea what to do to save your own neck, don't expect the guillotine to advise you on that account.

And now, we bid farewell to Gus, Nix, D'gon and Griff. You had so much potential, but we only used you for sport. Those of us who dreamed you into existence will regret your passing.

No human eyeballs

I believe I am quite accommodating with animals. My house, for one, is a zoo; and today I had to be peer pressured into taking on the staff project of clearing invasive water snails from a local canal over the project to remove invasive tree species from a local secondary forest. Yes, I know both projects will involve killing living things, but snails are a step up from plants. I happen to be more biased towards self-animated lifeforms, that's me. Oh, well, escargot steamed in garlic and butter is nice, too.

But I wouldn't go so far as to anthropomorphize animals. Dressing Q-tip and Pebbles up in cute t-shirts for photos is one thing, but DogTV? A "24/7 digital TV channel with programing scientifically developed to provide the right company for dogs when left alone" (quoted from website) is irrational, to say the least.

I can't even begin to think of a business model that would support such an enterprise. No human eyeballs means no ad revenue, period. The dog, smart as it may be, isn't likely to pick up the phone and dial for a nifty chew-toy. Besides, it's only a lucky few dogs who can randomly punch the numbers on a phone keypad and ring up a valid credit card number.

Financing will have to be done by subscription only. But how many dog owners could be gullible enough to pay US$4.99 a month, to keep the TV on all day for Poochie?

Anyway, I was curious as to what Q-tip would make of DogTV. I recorded a sample video from the website and set it to play on loop. I put Q-tip on the couch, effectively immobilizing her 'cos she won't jump down. While she was stuck there, I hid behind a room divider where I could keep an eye on my poor, unstimulated, captive canine. Did she get hooked to the goggle box in her state of aloneness? Not a chance. Eyeballs everywhere except the TV, even at max volume. Nope. No sale from this household.

In effect, $5 and a significant jump in power bills a month only soothes a salaried dog owner's conscience. The dog couldn't care less, and will probably appreciate peace and quiet more.

'Koping' and hoping

Since I'm big about collaborative learning and the importance of the sharing of resources, I applaud Back To School for its attempt to aggregate good lesson plans contributed by our local teachers. This effort intends to build up a repository of classroom materials and activities that 'busy' teachers can reach into and pull out to use when pressed for time.

I just can't help thinking, though, that this effort doesn't really solve the problem of teachers being too busy to properly plan their own lessons. A plug-and-play modular approach may be dandy for mechanical systems, but dealing with a bunch of 40 screaming human beings held in confinement might need just a bit more than 'koping' somebody else's ideas and hoping for the best.

Besides, we know it's a bad situation and hence should be looking for much bigger fixes than slapping a band-aid on a hemorrhaging wound.

Yes, I know... I should be more appreciative of well-intended help; but somehow I'm not sure this is a step in the right direction.

Caffeine fix

I've never had a coffee maker in all my life. This one showed up as an awesome V-day gift from June. It's a Krups-Nescafe Dolce Gusto, reasonably priced and available from some of the more upmarket supermarkets in the neighbourhood. The unit comes in brighter colours than what you see here, but June chose a sober titanium to give the coffee dispensed some dignity.

What makes this an easy impulse buy is how simple it is to operate. There's a wide range of different coffee blends to choose from, as you can see from the sample box (above). The correct proportions for each blend are already measured out in those handy capsules which you stick into the machine. In seconds either a steaming or chilled(!) stream of java comes out to fill a mugful of perky goodness.

Of course, there is still a slight learning curve to deal with. This here is my maiden cuppa what's supposed to be cappuccino. It's practically turned out pure espresso O_o In order to make the proper blend, you have to estimate how much coffee to fill your mug and stop the machine right there. Switch the coffee capsule for a milk capsule then restart the machine to fill up the rest of the mug. Different blends require you to watch your mug carefully in order to stop-reload-restart at optimum levels as prescribed by the handy proportions guide printed on every box of capsule refills. 

Oh, yes, refill boxes come from the supermarkets too. At my rate of caffeine consumption, I should get through maybe a box a week. Some cynics are going to scoff at how they're ripping us off having to buy refills, but really each mug of coffee costs about as much as a kopitiam kopi. Not too bad for a machine-brew.

Minor inconveniences are the quick rinsing of the nozzle with every capsule change, and a little wiping down of dispensing splash; but nothing to get excited about. Also, it'll take a while for the eyes to see mugs in fractions, but it should come with practice.

Now I shall reinstate a nighttime ritual I thought I had lost forever: a coffee before bedtime. Mmm...

You've come a long way, baby (but not very)

Kids were discussing Schumpeter's "Womenomics", the key question being whether women have to adopt male traits in order to successfully compete in today's workplace, or can they rely on their own 'feminine' traits without having to grow a pair of ba**s in order to get ahead at work?

In localizing the question, the kids had to look at successful women in S'pore and decide if they were successful because they were essentially 'one of the guys', or if they were successful and could still look and behave like women in their workplaces.

I admit it was a very shallow pool of candidates to scrutinize as case studies, but eventually we concluded that it was still essentially a man's world out there. Man-traits still rule the corporate world in S'pore. From our ridiculously small sample of successful women, we noted common traits such as hyper-competitiveness, bull-headedness, and a high propensity for risk-taking; all of which Schumpeter identifies as characteristics of men in the workplace. To be fair, S'pore men aren't really known to be risk-taking either, so there you are!

We also examined S'porean attitudes towards women in leadership roles. The most telling case study was in comparing two prominent candidates in the recent General Elections: Nicole and TPL. Why they are the basis of a good case study is because they stood directly opposite each other in the elections. Voting for one meant the ouster of the other...

And now I deviate from class discussion to extrapolate implications on my own:

Disregarding the actual outcome of the election -- which was subject to its own quirks -- in terms of the popular vote, it can almost be undisputed who was the preferred candidate. But if you look at how they presented themselves in public, one was clearly more masculine in comparison to the other. It seems to the electorate that between the two, the more Alpha-male one (the one who emphatically told us what to do) easily gathered our support, while we excoriated the other for being such a woman: in behaviour, demeanor, and personal taste.

To test our gender bias, swap the candidates and their parties. See what I mean? It wouldn't matter which party either stood for. If "Bluto" stood with the incumbents, we would still have given her our resounding support. If "Olive" stood for oppo, she would still have been flayed alive, thus prompting instant replacement with someone exuding more testosterone. Oppo is very sensitive to what's popular.

By this thought experiment, our popular choice appears not to be as politically driven as it is prejudiced by gender. Schumpeter would not be surprised.

And by now a whole bunch of people is going to tell me how in so many ways my conclusion is wrong. 3... 2... 1... Go!

Edit 01:
One thing I'm definitely wrong about is assuming that Schumpeter was the author of the article. The name "Schumpeter" refers to a column in The Economist written by anonymous contributors. So, author, unstated.

God's preferred dress code

I sympathize with the lady who got kicked off church premises due to wearing 'inappropriate' attire: a samfoo with accompanying 3/4 pants. The horror! The scandal!

People have got the idea of dress-code in church all messed up. They think dressing to the nines and covering every square-inch of skin is reverent and worshipful. They couldn't be more wrong. For just trying to wear a fig leaf over their sensitive bits our Apocryphal ancestors, Adam and Eve, got themselves unceremoniously dumped out of the Garden of Eden.

Wanna really worship God, I say do it in the buff. Else, back off with the holier-than-thou attitude.

Mascot picket line

The closest thing we have to a students' protest. The kids are hoping to save their beloved House system from imminent closure. Like the sweet kids they are, their argument of this banner display takes the 'don't kill us; we're cute!' approach.

Apart from raising the banners, the kids also activated everyone on their social networks with this 'viral' meme (cringeworthy copy, but the intention is crystal clear) calling for everyone to wear their House tees today. To the J2s' credit, the majority did... which is odd because in the past it was like pulling teeth to raise representatives for their respective houses in sporting events and contests of skill. Guess it's another case of  you-don't-miss-it-till-it's-gone.

Today's subdued little protest does show something of a school spirit within the student body. Today's student voice may not have been a yawp but a squeak. Still, at least they took a stand on something they believed in and made us believe that they believed. Call me a softie but I am sincerely moved. :'(

Oh, the Humanities!

Can it be true? Is the industry really taking a step away from assembly-line QC checks that used to be done on pen-and-paper? For a society banking on acing exams as the prime achievement of our education policy, this looks like quite a bold step -- to quit the familiar and start a new assessment mode from scratch.

Guess the Bosses are serious about developing self-directedness, and collaborative learning in our students to prepare them for 'life' instead of just exams. It's exactly what our last three days of training had been all about. I am cautiously excited.

Today's surprise announcement also answers a question that's been bugging me through this week's Infocomm Tech training: with all the technology we're expected to train the kids to use, when it comes to the pen-and-paper final assessment, won't the kids be handicapped if they haven't got their networked systems to play with and work together on?

Also, there will be trust issues. Parents, institutes of higher learning and the employment market would need assurances that the graduating kids are still competitive with their peers from elsewhere. We, as trainers and assessors would want a rubric that is fair and empowering, and not demoralizing like the previous exam-based curriculum eventually became.

Believe me, it'll get worse before it gets better. I've been pretty hard on the alternative assessment we call 'Project Work' (which we also unofficially call by more colourful aliases), and I take any opportunity I can to deride the way it is being implemented. In reality, I still believe that it's a step in the right direction. But as we muddle our way through uncharted waters, we're bound to hit rough seas (and probably lose not a few men overboard) before we finally get the hang of it. Until then, it's going to be a long, harrowing ride while we pull through this transition phase.

It'll be that way for lower sec Humanities too. Why experiment with the Humanities in the lower secondary grades? Because, pragmatically speaking, they aren't high-stakes subjects. Nobody in our science/math-mad society is going to complain too much if we mess with exams there. And, who knows? An investigative, project-based approach might be the best way to make these hugely underrated subjects relevant and stimulating to a new batch of young learners.

Benefits of S'pore-US education partnership

I hope that with our employer's new understanding to collaborate with the US on education, we'll get to see more student projects being less hypothetical and 'safe', and more daring and tangible, like this 14 year-old's Marshmallow Projectile Cannon (above) which the PotUS himself couldn't resist taking a pot shot from. How soon can we get this kid over to supervise a project team?

Short circuits in the e-classroom

First day of Infocomm Tech in Education course. Thought I'd be excited about all the new stuff I'd be getting my hands on (free, public domain web-based productivity and info-sharing tools, btw, not commercial samples or taxpayer purchased software suites), but for today's sampling I'm completely underwhelmed.

Not that the tools aren't fun to use and useful to play with in the classroom, but I'm approaching this whole thing with a lot more caution now. Just because there is a tool doesn't necessarily mean there is a use for it.

Most of the apps we tried out were rather like chat boards that collated the audience's typed comments 'live' while a talk or lesson was going on, cork board backgrounds for students to 'pin' comments and reflections on and see others' at the same time, collaborative graphic organizers that assist group knowledge construction, and many activities primarily guided by Google Forms, which will definitely save money Xeroxing worksheets, while aggregating all responses into a handy document, again for all to see.

The apps were all colourful and relatively easy-to-use, but I'm not convinced that they offer my students the opportunity to explore ideas in depth like they need to. Many of these apps will only accept short off-the-cuff shoutouts, so expression is terse, abrupt and may encourage L337speak as the lingua franca of classroom chat *growls

Besides, when I picture my kids trying to sit through a lesson using these tools, I foresee a very long day ahead. You'd think, like I once did, that the kids would be eating out of my hand if they got some 'computer time'. But, oddly enough, unlike their predecessors of, say the '03 batch, my current kids are comparative Luddites. I can only guess that they qualified for JC by studying from textBOOKS and working through assessment BOOKS. Hence, they still trust in BOOKS, and pen-and-paper exercises. Electronic media -- including the Internet -- are merely channels from which they absorb entertainment (not information and certainly not knowledge), and they have not yet discovered that creating is as rewarding (if not moreso) as downloading; funny cat videos notwithstanding.

So, my problem for today is quite unique for someone tasked with what I have been tasked. My biggest obstacle to creating ICT-based lessons is not staff buy-in, not infrastructure support, not skills or training deficiencies, but in convincing my students that they stand to learn more from the networked computer than from their scrolls and quills. In that, I wonder, between us who really is the smarter?

With great power

Superhero overload at the movies? Tired of storylines in which ordinary people gaining extraordinary abilities suddenly feel obliged to save the world? Reality check: chances are, if I was to somehow inexplicably gain powers beyond mortal ken, I'd probably use them to screw around and entertain myself all day long. Wearing tights and a cape is really entertaining other people at my own expense, anyway.

So when three high school buddies develop powers when exploring an unnatural phenomenon together, let's just say great power + juvenile irresponsibility = tragedy + citywide collateral damage. Throw in a video camera the kids use to record all their superpowered shenanegans and you have "Chronicle", a story of human falliability and hyper hubris.

I was a bit worried about how a 90 minute movie shot on a handheld cam would turn out. Fortunately, apart from some abrupt pans and jump cuts to suggest amateur shooting and editing, the shots remained stable. No Blair Witch syndrome here. The shots from the main handheld cam were montaged together with footage from other cameras: news and security cams, mostly, so there is a closeness and intimacy to the characters which emphasizes the 'reality' of what we're watching.

My first movie of the year, and though it anticipates a whole new crop of  men in tights movies yet to come this summer, this one reminds us that maybe the 'Superhuman Registration Act' might not be such a bad idea after all.

And if you're wondering why I'm still watching movies after my call to boycott Hollywood, I bought my tix with complementary vouchers. So there.

More sacred cows

Hi Gary
You have very specific sacred cows you wish to see slain: the recruitment of high-calibre statespeople to justify high ministerial salaries; the continuing dominance of the old man (a very sacred cow, indeed) in our local political scene; the Confucian style(?) perpetuation of public dependance on the government; and the withholding of our CPF as State capital for our national reserves.

I guess you want to hear my thoughts on these specific issues, which I am happy to oblige. I believe in sharing ideas, but I'm not in this discussion to rehash old debates. My interest is in writing as a craft, taking this opportunity you are presenting me with to weave stories, not perpetuate ideologies. Having said that, let's address your concerns:

1) High ministerial salaries: when they first decided to pay themselves huge amounts of money, I did not feel any poorer. When they reduced their payscales after the recent round of reviews, I did not feel any richer. I work for what I have earned and I can sleep soundly at night. I don't worry about whether they can do the same.

2) The old man did talk to us like children. Why did we listen to him as if we were children? Because, I suppose, we respected him for what he and his party did before. He tried to talk to us like children again, this past election. We didn't listen, did we? Who's standing in the corner now?

3) Confucius' analogy was that the emperor was the father of the kingdom. Unfortunately, that idea stayed with us, Chinese. We don't understand that democracy knocked this political concept out of the ballpark. In the emperor's day, the responsibility for the entire kingdom rested on his shoulders because he had the mandate of heaven. He decided everything for his subjects, who were free from the responsibility of taking care of themselves. Democracy took the mandate of heaven from the sole decision-maker and replaced it with the mandate of the people, and hence the responsibility of looking out for ourselves and each other fell squarely on our, the people's, shoulders. We have an unfortunate hybrid system now. But if we still depend on an elected Government for the sun and the rain to grow our crops, don't be surprised if all we get is fertilizer.

We must concede that the government has delivered the goods in all the big things. That's not what rankles our electorate. Where it's screwing up, and what we rail at it about, is its poor handling of domestic issues. Foreign workers arriving in droves, rising housing and living costs, breakdown of social mores and graces... do we really need policy from on-high to settle these household and neighbourhood affairs, or can't we just take some initiative and fix them ourselves? If we don't identify and take action on the things we can act on, then some dumb policy is going to drop from the sky because someone has to make some kind of decision before things get out of hand.

We're not disallowed from growing up. We have remarkably free media that allow us to air political dissent and satire (and a lot of embarrassingly childish prattle) openly, to a potentially massive audience, even though what we say can be easily traced back to us. Ironically, it's the American government that is proposing SOPA and PIPA and shutting down Megaupload. We are no longer a 'police state' either. In fact, we complain more now that our boys in blue would neither step in and solve our personal and domestic disputes for us, nor work to punish those we feel have slighted us somehow. Looks to me like we are the ones not willing to grow up.

4) CPF: my CPF is tied up in the monthly installments I have to pay for my HDB flat. Why does it cost so much? Well, it would have been cheaper if earlier generations of homeowners had been grateful for cheap housing, but instead they saw it as a way to make a quick buck. Who's the real estate genius who invented COV? Here's the official value of my flat: V. Here's what I have to pay to own my flat: CO + V. Instant and cumulative inflation with every resale. Now if I have to sell my flat at V (extreme cooling measures), I'll go bankrupt. As long as I want a roof over my head, I'm never going to see my CPF, let alone get it back. Whose fault is that?

Oh, btw, before I mislead you any further, I'm not -- as you have apparently assumed -- a woman. ;)

Sacred cows and OB markers

This is in response to Gary's stimulating comment in my previous entry. I have to create a new entry 'cos long-winded me wrote too much (as usual) and the comment box refused to accept it. So here goes:

Hi Gary
Sacred cows are figments of our imagination.They exist in both our minds and in the minds of our policy-makers. Slaughtering sacred cows is extremely difficult because although their time has come no one dares to wield the knife. Everyone is afraid of ghosts, of consequences. And since they've served us so well before, we're going to keep on preserving them because once they're gone, what would suffice to replace them?

The way forward is for everyone to realise that the term 'sacred cow' only describes a method that once resulted in success, hence the mistaken belief that it will continue to bring us success no matter what. Whoever told us to slaughter our sacred cows recognised that new times require new methods, but I believe we were just as guilty of holding on to them too tightly to want to see them go. The paper chase, the rat race, the 5'C's, the materialism and petty jealousies, they're all our own creation. They arose out of the opportunities that once gave us skilled jobs and commensurate prosperity, and the belief that we deserved what we earned because we worked hard for it. Nothing wrong there, but it made us selfish -- equating poverty with laziness or cannot-make-it-ness or otherwise not-one-of-us-ness. Meritocratic policy may have been the starting point, but our mindsets turned it into the monster that it is today.

So is it with our so-called 'OB' markers. What do we really have to do to be guilty of crossing an OB marker? You'd have to be a clear threat to civil society before anybody starts taking notice of you. Anyone who threatens not the leadership itself but society's trust in the legally elected leadership, or attempts to fragment our society to gain support for their cause can expect action to be taken against them. But for us normal, ordinary citizens who lead normal workaday lives, what could we possibly do so wrong that could result in detention or exile?

The electon 'threats'? The cajoling? They're just rhetoric, empty words from a parent to a rebellious child throwing a tantrum. We have to get away from this relationship as quickly as possible because it's toxic to both of us.

If our society is going to grow up, we have to stop defining our relationship with our Government as parent-child. While we persist with this view, it doesn't matter who makes up the ruling party. PAP or Opposition, we're simply replacing one parent for another, and we'll be just as dissatisfied and disillusioned with the outcome either way. As long as we expect the Government to do everything for us (which basically means let the good times roll) and not take responsibility for ourselves, for our own situations, in our own circumstances, and bloody well HELP one another in times of need, we're setting expectations that NO government could ever fulfil.

It is heartening to see that we are indeed growing up. We've reached our rebellious teenage years where we chafe at Authority and think that our almighty Parent is suppressing us and curtailing our pocket-money and personal freedoms. Believe me, the government wants us to grow up as quickly as possible and be less of a dependent (i.e., pest) and more of a working partner. The government's current drive is active citizenry, where we finally come out of our individual, darkened little bedrooms (with signs on the door that say "Private: Keep Out") and recognise that we have family huddling around the living room. That's our community. Whomever they are, how many there are, it is our job to look after one another, and not entirely the Government's.

So what do we need a government for? As far as possible, it provides the necessary but normally unprofitable public works for us to enjoy, maintains the integrity of our sovereignity within the global community, ensures that we can define a common identity for ourselves, upholds justice and public trust within our borders, maintains peace among our peoples, that sort of thing. These are the really big things that we can't do on our own, but we work with our elected representatives to bring about.

Governments deal with generalities, not specifics. Micromanagement is what a government is worst at. The faster we learn to wipe our butts for oursleves, the faster the government can get it's nose out of our business and get back to doing its real job, leaving us to lead our lives the way we want... together.

Driven the wrong way

Lack of drive in Singaporean students a worry

I'm not sure I agree that Singapore students lack 'drive'. Singaporean students are notorious 'muggers', burning the midnight oil with their study texts, tutorial sheets and homework assignments. So, no, Singapore students are driven enough. The problem is that in our society, everyone -- adults and school kids alike -- is negatively motivated.

What I mean is, we do what we do for the wrong reasons. We work to avoid negative consequences, rather than for positive feedback. Our society is motivated by fear and punishment, and the fear of punishment. Have you noticed that you work harder at classes taught by teachers you fear most? The ones with the loudest voices, sharpest tongues and most creative punishments are high on your priority list; while the ones who encourage you and try to understand your problems and issues, well, their tasks can be postponed to another day. 'cos they understand.

It's also true of the adult world. Our society is full of warnings that threaten fines for social infringements, our citizens call for summary dismissal when they perceive our civil servants and ministers have let them down somehow (flooding, train delays, and escaped terrorists come to mind), and our workforce keeps its nose to the grindstone fearing the next economic downturn resulting in another round of retrenchments. But when things go well, our citizenry thinks it is their due; hence no word of thanks, no gratitude expressed.

With this kind of attitude, who wants to work any harder? Who would risk his ricebowl trying anything new, that may or may not be an improvement over the old ways that have worked well enough before? Why step out of our comfort zones and face being ridiculed or pilloried when mistakes -- and there will be mistakes -- occur?

Our society believes in getting it right the first time, and since it was already done right once by someone else, let's just keep doing the same thing over and over again, 'cause then we can't go wrong. Yes, I'm looking at you with a baleful eye, so-called "Best Practices".

It would be well and good if Singapore somehow froze in a time capsule at about the period when Mr Goh Chok Tong once confidently declared "more good years", but it hasn't. We've moved on and our society, as has the globe around us, changed and keeps on changing. Singaporeans fear change because we once had it so good. And now, despite all our hard work, all the promises, we feel that doing things the way we used to do them will bring the good old days back.

Those days are well past us now. We need Singaporeans to recognize that we live in a new world. The old promises no longer hold true and we must look for new promises grounded in our new reality. We need to find the courage to sail the winds of change once again, and we need to rebuild a strong core of skilled sailors brave enough to tough out uncharted seas ahead. With that in mind, change must begin in our schools...

Your turn: how should schools change, and how will these changes be constructive in developing a local core workforce that is ready for tomorrow? Today.

The heretic

I shall horrify everyone in my profession by posting a link to an article that begins:

"Taking notes during class? Topic-focused study? A consistent learning environment? All are exactly opposite of the best strategies for learning."

Go on, brand me a heretic, but I stand by the quotation... especially with regard to the subject of GP. Yup, Everything You Thought You Knew About Learning Is Wrong.

Personal experience failing through high school reinforces my belief that our cherished methods of 'mugging' do not work, or maybe they don't work for everybody. It's not about being naturally lazy, but focused studying narrows the mind and compartmentalizes the learning.

I won't speak for other subjects, but for GP, there are clearly identifiable long-term lifeskill goals beyond the Cambridge exam at the end of the year. While Sundem gives the example of learning for tennis, it applies to GP as well.

Some colleagues of mine demand that the kids capture every word they speak as if every class was a dictation exercise. We all know teachers like that. In GP, the kids are learning to deal with myriad views in a multiciplicity of layers but taking notes of what-teacher-says confines the note-taker to one point of view as if only Teacher is spewing gospel truth. The note-taking mind is not the questioning mind, and kids need to question everything.

I don't agree with topic-based study either. Although I'm not coaching tennis, I do see that ultimately the kids are engaged in a singular activity with rules and boundaries that define it clearly: they are writers. They may be sitting for an exam, but it's an exam that examines written expression primarily, and only supported by loosely defined topical content.

As a tennis player practices a combination of serves, volleys, backhand smashes and the like, writers are also engaged in bringing many skills to bear on their writing task. The demands of such a complex task need lots of practice in a holistic work environment that engages all skills simultaneously. They have to access a milieu of information given as new material, process it together with their prior knowledge, choose a course of action, and systematically show how their minds have worked through the problem to arrive at the conclusion they are trying to convince us of. Their only means of communicating with us: writing -- hence they have to be trained as writers.

That means the kids, when faced with 12 essay question choices should be able to select any one and respond with confidence. Preparing for 'favourite' question topics and pre-selecting for the kids what topics they can and cannot write on puts them at a severe morale disadvantage even before they arrive at their exam venue. Instead of having open, questioning minds, they enter the exam hall with a narrow range of topics they are confident of and question only their own ability to rise to the challenge.

How are the kids supposed to gain content knowledge, then? It's not by setting topical limits on what is expected to 'come out' this year based on 'past year' trends. You'll have equivalent success reading tea leaves and a crystal ball. You have to set them loose where they can access information on current affairs at random, the way we adults read the newspapers. We don't absorb information topically in real life, so we shouldn't expect the kids to do so either.

The kids learn by making connections. Often their own connections may be wrong, but that is where we come in to guide them. A random selection of news articles invariably trace back to common themes, reinforced through discussion either in oral form within large or small groups or in written essays, shared blog entries, forum postings and wikis, among many other methods of communication available to us today. However, any suggestion of a GP 'textbook' will be an anathema to the subject. Kids, being kids, will take such a tome as the only thing they need to read, and cut themselves off from where the real learning is... in the wild.

If we want to ground the kids on a baseline, we should be grounding them with values, not topics. The test is ultimately about making decisions and standing by them. Regardless of topic, we expect the kids to make judgments based on upright principles based on common human decency. When kids have a handle on their personal yardsticks to tell right from wrong, and what is constructive from destructive; when kids can see what constitutes the 'greater good'; when kids can defend their positions from solid moral beliefs; then we will have done our jobs as GP tutors.

He shoots... he scores!

The kids don't understand the concept of a balanced argument. To them, it's a black and white world. Argue for one position, then flip over and argue for the other position, then arbitrarily pick their favourite position to conclude.

Kids, argumentative writing obeys the rules of soccer. Your team's goal is at the other end of the field. You score points when you score at that end. You lose points and enrage your supporters when you score goals at the end you are defending. There is no half-time switch over (in case any smart alec should raise that observation).

Always approach your argument with a single-minded purpose. Your audience needs to see the clash, the conflict and the eventual victory. True balance is in respecting the rules of engagement, and not in attacking both goalposts on the pitch.

Chasing happiness

Working on a Application Question exercise with the kids. That is, take two articles discussing a similar area of concern, extract relevant points from both from which to spin off a short essay in 20-25 minutes. It's a sort of hand-held practice for Term Paper research and writing. A US high-schooler should ace this test, no problem.

The two stimulus readings are abridged versions of the following:
Foley, Michael. "The Age of Absurdity". Chapter 1.
Cohen, Roger. "The Happynomics of life".

The question the kids had to respond to reads:
[Using the above two readings, blah, blah...] How much emphasis does your society place on the pursuit of happiness? Do you think this is beneficial?

[And, no, I didn't come up with the question, or select the articles either].

Often, the kids' responses show a huge misconception about the nature of the exercise. Without even looking at the question they simply tear into the two articles, looking for one to agree with and one to refute, using examples drawn from the kids' own local experiences.

But unless the question specifically asks for agreement with one author or another, there is no necessity for the kids to do so. And the exercise is meant for the kids to draw points from the articles to support their own observations of their local society expressed in an essay, not the other way around.

For a teaching guide, I came up with my own response to the question. I over-wrote (as usual) but under time pressure, the same as the kids would face under exam conditions. Caution: There is no standard author citation system, but the kids aren't expected to adhere to any due to time constraints -- a brief name-drop does the trick. I'm not entirely happy with it 'cos it turned into more of a rant than I intended; lots of loose ends too and an extremely forced conclusion due to timing-out. But it'll do to show the kids what they can do with focus and more importantly, an approach to the question with clear intent.

Guess what, kids? It's model essay time!

Intruder alert!

Gaaahhh! A creepy face at my window!

Dumb birdbrain is quite insistent on getting past the window pane and INTO MY ROOM!

Momo, the watchcat, scares off the intruder.

WANTED

for attempted housebreaking

Jimmy McPigeon

Reward: 1 pigeon pie

Lost in space

Let's see our PW committee approve this project: Canadian teens send Legonaut 15 miles into atmosphere. It's a conflict, isn't it? Elevation vs gravity. It's a risk, isn't it? OMG, so many risks involved, least of which is losing the investment of $400 worth of equipment if things didn't go as planned.

But all they'd ask is, "what's the point?" Fine. Let's go reinvent another hypothetical "Amazing Race", then.

Standing in a river

It feels strange that I been on campus long enough to watch about two generations of staff move on, and I'm still here. Is it inertia, gravity, or am I one o' them folks who don't see that the grass is greener over yonder?

Oh, what brought this on? Had dinner with colleagues. Such a lot of food, too, as Elim's pix (below) would attest:

And, as Liz remarked, that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Good to know that among us colleagues, our culture of feasting and making merry has remained constant throughout. But if you look at Liz's pix below...

apart from the dark, brooding figure hidden behind a pillar, these are all new faces representing the latest incarnation my rather fluid social circle.

"You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you" (Heraclitus). Word, ancient Greek philosopher dude, word.

Conversation starter

Today's GP session was aimed at shifting attention away from the most boring person in the classroom -- teacher -- and getting the kids stimulated enough to have a proper, focused, discussion in the form of a real conversation instead of the usual random picking of names from a list or a round-robin and forcing the poor, unlucky individual to blurt something before going right back to mental lala-land for the rest of the period.

We fall back on the ol' traditional methods because as teachers, we feel it's our responsibility to keep the information flowing. If there's a question to be answered and everyone is avoiding eye-contact with us, we prompt, cajole and finally give in and call the kid who looks most likely to be falling asleep from the whole leaden atmosphere. We keep our classes quiet only to be pressured into being the one making the most noise.

The kids, themselves, only feel obliged to respond when it's their turn (however that may be arranged) and once they've said their piece, they mentally check out of class with great relief. Wait for bell.

Teaching JC2, there is a unique circumstance I can leverage on to gear tutorials towards a more free-flowing, spontaneous exchange of ideas between different students, with most everyone engaged throughout the discussion. First, there is the time limit that is their final exam (as of today, nine months, tops). Second, we can always keep reminding them how little time we have left to get them ready for the finals -- that makes them really antsy. In physics, we call this 'potential energy'.

The switch transforming potential to kinetic energy is in me lowering my status by sitting down so that my head doesn't tower over anyone else's. I distribute the discussion material and tell them that I haven't prepared anything for the discussion, showing them a blank tutorial worksheet as evidence. It starts out as a painful silence. They might beg to revert to the old call-random-person routine again to break the tension but I refuse, remaining silent. Tick, tick, tick... kids, that's the sound of seconds ticking away to your final exams. Wanna learn something? Better venture something.

Now's the time to be sensitive. If there is a vibe of growing rebellion, order a reprieve and allow them to 'rehearse' their discussion in smaller groups first. Don't bother organizing, they can organize themselves. Otherwise, the bolder individuals would offer tentative stabs at the discussion material, and that's when I can swing into action. Take what they offer, rephrase it, contextualize it, focus it, encourage them and thank them for their contribution, and always throw the thought back for someone else to nibble. The next offering may be for a different thought, but that's fine, do the same as before and throw it back. It's important that it appears that I am listening intently to the speaker 'cos the other kids will feel more at ease to offer their thoughts and so it spreads.

It's important that the energy built up is passed on quickly between participants in the conversation. Speed keeps the discussion interesting, and the more participants there are, the less likely anyone is going to lose interest.

Will the discussion be monopolized by the more vocal kids? It's inevitable, but try often to encourage the more quiet kids to make an offer during lulls. Hopefully they'll pick up and join the crowd, or we just have to hope they're listening and taking notes 'cos they're not naturally the gregarious type.

Apart from the pain of awkward silences at first, it's a risky operation. Depending on how boisterous a tutorial group can get, it may look to others that classroom discipline has gone out the window. Kids may misinterpret your intentions and complain that you don't come to class prepared, or that you're not teaching the content in a systematic manner that they can understand, or that the lesson is not focused on the exam enough. Or you could have a really 'duh' class which takes the silence as an opportunity to catch up on some other fiercer teacher's homework or take a nap 'cos it seems like a better use of their time. Ah, all the hazards of student-centered learning, depending on how perverse the student centre can be.

But we ARE prepared, though we tell the kids we aren't. Nevertheless, improvising responses on the fly can be quite stressful for the I-must-know-all-the-answers kind of teacher. Thankfully I'm quite prepared to celebrate my ignorance, so that doesn't bother me in the least.

But it is difficult to learn subject content this way. Ideas keep moving faster than it takes to write them all down. So what's the point? In these discussions, the kids learn to listen to one another and view a focused topic of interest from a multitude of their own perspectives. They learn to share ideas with one another, and that shared ideas can be built upon to create bigger, better ideas. They learn to learn, and maybe that's the most important lesson of all. Once they've got that figured out, they're ready to take their finals, and free themselves of their dependence on teachers forever.

Whose Internet is it?

I am watching some watershed events unfolding now that may have long term repercussions on the Internet and how it is to be used to share information.Where once the online community freely traded, bartered and "appropriated" information, what we are looking at today is that suddenly the market has dropped in to regulate the chaos.

Although SOPA and PIPA were bloodied by an online revolt last week, they have in effect taken a time-out to regroup and figure out how to come out swinging again. But while we were distracted with the rhetoric, big business and the feds acted and took down Megaupload -- hardware, software, wetware and all. And, as the online rebels predicted would happen, similar file-sharing sites have opted to self-censor in order to evade the copyright avengers' threat radar.

The message is clear. Henceforth, no one will transact information with anyone else without the exchange of hard currency. The market has come to the 'net and, whether directly or indirectly, we will pay for what we wish to share and for what we wish to take. It may not have gone that far yet, but if the free users of the 'net don't make their voices heard, that will be the direction it'll go once we accept this incident as a legal precedent.

Here's the thing: who owns the interwebs and can hence act with impunity on it? Can we free users continue to flout legally established copyrights and enjoy others' works without paying them their due; or can big business take away what we claim is our right to share any kind of information as we please?

Sad to say, it is the latter to whom our digital playground belongs. Unless we have been able to build our Internet access infrastructure ourselves from scratch, our computers, operating systems, browsers and even our networks are store-bought (or subscribed to) from big business. While it served them to let us in and play for free, or at least cheap, they've decided that now we can't get enough of what we have, it's time to start making us pay for the privilege. Oldest marketing trick in the book.

'Revenge!' scream the hacks of Anonymous, who activate their LOIC to down the websites of the Authorities like the DOJ, MPAA and RIAA with DDoS attacks. Juvenile, and hurts no one that matters. No one visits those websites voluntarily, anyway. It's all just vandalism and venting.

There's one way we free users can take back the 'net, though. Last week's revolt showed us the way. But I doubt many of us would like it. If a 24-hour Internet strike worked well enough to make the legislative body rethink we'd sheepishly accept their hare-brained scheme to take away our freedom; think of what a whole summer's boycott of Hollywood blockbusters would do to make the moguls see what our freedom is worth.

Yes, I'm saying the heck with all the delicious, to salivate over, fanboy-orgasmic blockbusters! Though we may once have been frothing at the mouth downloading their trailers while waiting for opening day, now we won't even buy their pathetic 3D high-def Blu-Ray DVD releases after they bomb at the box-office.

But what will we do for entertainment then, you ask? I say, support all indie productions, all low-budget, freely-distributed online content made by amateurs who don't expect to be paid for their work but are happy enough just to be watched or heard. Lots of that around, since the Internet can make us media producers in one way or another. A few stalwarts still even blog text. Ahem.

So, Hollywood blockbuster boycott that will bankrupt the greedy major studios in 2012 and show them who the Internet really belongs to? Anyone?

Caveat emptor

The issue of high ministerial salaries for our government representatives is bound to hit a sour note among the electorate, but it seems to me that answering one bad argument with another does not help make the debate any more constructive.

'Chye tow kway' is a common breakfast dish sold cheaply in hawker centres in S'pore. The question is, what does it represent in the above cartoon? I think it stands for peace, prosperity, opportunities for all regardless of background and heritage, and a strong international standing in the global community. I don't know if it's because of high salaries for ministers that's how these enviable national qualities have come to be, but I do know that they are worth a lot more than a mere plate of chye tow kway, whether it costs $1.50 or $10.00.

But if the cartoonist is willing to consider what we have as cheaply obtainable, he's taking his life, comforts and freedoms for granted. What we have today, many people are still deprived of; many are still fighting and shedding blood for it; while some -- like us -- are finding it a constant struggle to maintain. I know of someone who gave away his birthright for a bowl of lentil soup. Don't give yours away for a plate of chye tow kway.

Property J-V

So much for my earlier protestations of financial prudence. The Wongs are determined to sink money in property... and we are now committed. In a three-way joint-venture, we've pooled our resources to purchase a SOHO unit in an upcoming waterfront development.

Location is easily accessible as it incorporates a public transport hub; offers immediate access to a mega shopping and entertainment complex; and proximity to outdoor recreation and watersports facilities. The inclusion of an additional 'shareholder' spreads the cost outlay and risk to a more bearable load. And because the unit is a SOHO, the rental pool opens up not just to tenants looking for a place to stay but also to businesses looking for office space as well. Or even a combination of both.

It also helps that the units in this development are selling fast. All the while we were looking at the showroom, the in-house announcements kept us up-to-date with unit numbers just sold. It wasn't long before a familiar number boomed over the in-house speakers, sealing the deal.

Here's hoping that at least our new piece of real estate can eventually pay for itself. Either way, it looks like voluntary retirement is still a long way off.