A drama Saturday

Mengs and I were at SPoly in the morning attending a dialogue session about Arts Education in schools. It was quite useful listening to other schools share their aesthetics programmes with us. If we are working something similar for ourselves, the groundwork has to start now.

Integrating the four separate drama groups into a coherent college-wide plan should make resource allocation more efficient, but more importantly it would bring in the minority groups -- which are currently operating like drifting satellites -- back into the fold. There's a lot we could learn from each other but because of our discreet programmes we've not been even thinking about coming together to offer a more streamlined, focused and purposeful approach that would benefit the college as a whole. That would be a start anyway.

But the highlight of the morning was the rescue of a little terrier that was clearly lost and panicking on Dover Road tailed by a patient bus driver who gave him a chance to run into the SP parking lot, out of harm's way. I quickly parked and set off with Mengs in tow to look for the little fella. I soon had him in my arms and fortunately he was tagged with his name, address and a phone number which I got Mengs to call. Turned out Netty's owner lived just across the road. It took only a couple of minutes for her to meet us where we were and reclaim her wayward doggie.

My vision of a tearful reunion between a little girl and her lost dog were dashed instantly. The owner (a cute, young expat lady) didn't even know Netty had gone missing and was surprised to hear her dog reported as such. Oh well, at least we averted an unnecessary tragedy for both owner and dog.

Drama rehearsals in the afternoon. RodO came back with a completely rewritten ending to his earlier script. The comedy that we once had has now taken on more serious overtones. Wonder what P is going to make of Drama Night now with all the morbidity and mayhem going on when he was expressly looking forward to laughing his head off the whole night. Um... no answers about that right now.

Evening we went to exercise our new membership rights. Our trainers took us on an intro tour of the different weight machines and ran some preliminary tests on our fitness levels. After the tests and the first two machine stations, Uncle here found himself flat on his back staring at several anxious faces and the flourescent light overhead. My heart is so weak, blood wasn't going into my brain after even that initial exertion.

So now apart from paying for membership, I'm also paying for a personal instructor to help design my body back into shape -- in the personal fitness sense, not the yummylicious vanity sense. Best to take care of the ol' ticker now while I still can, not wait until it's too late to do anything about it. And since I've put down quite a pretty penny on the whole thing, that in itself is the motivation to keep going. Hmm... maybe I can make a claim with the company to subsidise my expenses...? No harm asking.

White Cloud Gang comes to town

Tonight was the annual meeting of Our White Cloud Gang. A sordid, crime-ridden affair it was. We witnessed a Kafka-esque human-to-mouse metamorphosis as the result of a series of betrayals. In the second half, there were several vignettes of other forms of crime such as (deep breath...) gun-running, slave trading (or maid hiring, I couldn't really tell), drug trafficking, sexual harassment, gambling, organized charity, all montaged together from the point of view of a tourist seeing the less touristy parts of town... or a channel surfer clicking through the TV Guide at random (I really couldn't tell).

This year I was unexpectedly bereft of subtitles, so the above was what I could surmise from interpreting movement and set, but the dialogue was way too inaccessible to make sense of, given my grasp of the language. But I guess that was the main problem I had with the proceedings. Everything else seemed to work well: music, dance, costumes, lighting and white-face makeup. Most of all, over the years, they finally learned the value of brisk, precise scene-changing avoiding long blackouts.

One thing I got quite annoyed with was the audience. The house was buzzing with a constant low rumble of distracted chatting. Looking ahead to our own Drama Night, it looks like we'll be facing a similar tough crowd that will not be quiet unless what's going onstage can truly catch its attention and hold it throughout.

A challenge, then!

Such drama

Wow!Pow!Bow! is starting to take shape. We have three short plays so far. Two are angst-ridden teen tearjerkers. The third is a farcical spy movie spoof. Still on the lookout for a couple more plays that might lend a little balance to the evening -- otherwise P's apprehensions might come true: as in every competition year, Drama Night 2010 will be yet another dramatic, dreary, and depressing affair. Competitions seem to bring out the intensity of our deeply buried emotions. Maybe we could benefit from the therapy?

Fortunately, our main feature is an absurdist comedy, heavily adapted from an existing Japanese script with lots of opportunities to exploit for gags galore. But "funny" depends on timing and delivery, and we're making the kids work really hard on that. Comedy is serious business as the kids are finding out right now.

But anyway, it's been good to work with RodO. I can see the gags and I can choreograph them into the blocking, but he knows how to realize them onstage and make them work. It will help a lot when the kids get their scripts out of their hands. When they stop worrying about their lines and stage directions, then we can work on the polish. The sooner, the better.

There's nothing better than ice cream

There's nothing better than ice cream. Except free ice cream! Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry's.

Free ice cream was a fantastic prelude to my new fitness routine which I decided would begin today. June and I were going to ask for a free trial class in low-impact callisthenics, but we had such a long chat with the manager of the establishment that the class started without us. We could only content ourselves with staring at the fully-packed dance studio and gape at the speed at which the students were going through their motions.

Undeterred, I signed up for a package anyway, postponing class till the weekend. We're determined to arrive earlier next time. So much for today's fitness routine. We chomped on Kenny Roger's chix and ribs immediately after our most intense ocular workout. What an auspicious beginning to the first day of taking care of our health.

Dropped in on kid bro at the hospital later. He's been in this past weekend with a fever and irregularities in his blood count. He's already been run through a battery of tests but nothing conclusive so far. When we met him this evening, he was lounging around in the hospital Starbucks looking none the worse for wear. So far, the professional advice he's been getting is to watch his diet. Guess there's nothing to worry too much over for now.

Gift of fish

It's the third week and back to Gift of Love with a new dish to thrill the palates of the aged sick. Actually, it was all June's show today, cooking up a fish curry that drew rave reviews from the crowd. While she was soaking up the adoration, I was back at M2 feverishly grading essays in time for Term 2.

And that pretty sums up the events of this week. Usually, I find ways and means to make the most of the mid-term break. This week, however, was one agenda item after another and I still haven't got everything done that I needed to do.

I doubt I'm alone feeling like this. Everyone I know is scrambling for some deadline or another; everyone is thankful for the week's break because it's a fantastic opportunity to get work done without being interrupted by the normal workday chaos of term time.

Everybody, chorus with me, "I need a vacation...!" OK, enough self-indulgence. Back to work!

House calls

We continued the tradition of our quarterly library book delivery to the disabled folks in our community. Head office knows us by face and name already, so we were spared the usual rookie briefing. Destination: Woodlands.

Veterans we may be, but still making rookie mistakes. Navigation is always a problem. Turn left, turn right, go straight, didn't you see the arrow back there, where the h*ll are we now? Yep, those and the "I thought YOU had the checklist?" "No... didn't YOU hand it to the lady to sign at the last house?" "Oh, yeah. Crap." variety too.

One of our drops was to a minor celeb of sorts. He was the friend of another young disabled chap with MD featured on an episode of Life Transformers. We'll be getting a chance to appear on TV ourselves. Some Middle Eastern film crew wants to interview some of us volunteers, possibly next weekend. We'll see how that goes.

Josh and Jan hosted dinner for us. June wanted to learn some Thai cuisine from Jan and together they whipped up a creditable green curry, prawn tom yum, stir-fried mixed veg combo. Mango sticky-rice for dessert. Jan's a good teacher, June's a good student and their hubbies are becoming quite well-rounded as a result.

While the ladies were busy in the kitchen Josh and I rented Tropic Thunder to entertain ourselves with. It's quite a work of metafiction being a film about a film with a character actor, a method actor and a clown cast as the main stars of the film within the film. Amidst the action and things blowing up, there are lots of commentaries about film genres, acting styles, and a behind-the-scenes look at the dirty business that goes on behind a Hollywood blockbuster production. Loads of fun to watch.

But I am kinda' regretful renting it too because with its profanity-rich dialogue, I'm pretty sure Josh's house has never endured such colourful language since they moved in. Wouldn't be surprised if he's put "spiritual cleansing" on his to-do list for tomorrow.

High strung

I can't shake this odd sensation I've been experiencing all morning. I'm feeling all excited, but can't tell if it's the excitement that comes with the anticipation of something wonderful about to happen or if it's the fear of some great horror that's fast approaching. The odd thing is, I have no reason to expect any such thing, either way. Weird.

I wonder if it's the result of the two consecutive cups of coffee I had for breakfast? Caffeine doesn't usually affect me that way, but maybe McD's is using a blend that's more potent than any other I've had so far?

First timers at Resorts World Sentosa

Happens that a special occasion falls on today's date. We decide to celebrate at the newly opened Resorts World Sentosa. Here we're at the Brazilian themed Fiesta Restaurant. Expect lots of meat!

Fiesta features a four-course set: soup, appetizer, salad and the main course. There are lots of options per course, but you get all the salads listed including the salad of the day. Salads are quite exotic with ingredients such as baby beets and heart of palm. Thought I would hate beets, but these ones didn't kill me.

June's option was pork ribs for the main course. This portion was way more meat than she could handle. She ate one-third and donated the rest to her dining companion.

He was busy with his own Churrasco, a mixed grill of sausage, sirloin steak and spring chix. The meats were done beautifully, especially the sirloin that was delightfully pink inside. All this on one plate would have sufficed for a meal, but with June's donation of pork practically melting off its rib bones, I became a gorging carnivore, eating like I'd marked tomorrow's asteroid impact on my appointment calender.

One item not listed on the menu is dessert. Today, they served two kinds; on the left is a sweet-sour passion fruit pudding, on the right a sweet-bland port-soaked rice pudding. Exotic and surprising.

Tea and coffee to wash it all down. Overall, the meal was well-balanced. Lots of veggie-salads to complement lots of meat. Each dish was light and fresh, in just-right portions. I believe if we had asked for more salads and sides we would have been obliged. As it was, we were already stuffed without having to ask for more. How much per pax? A very reasonable $39+++, really not bad for a special occasion.

Sadly, we couldn't get tix into Universal Studios, so this is the closest we could get, standing forlornly at the turnstiles. Never mind, we'll plan an outing soon, I'm sure of it!

But when it comes to parking in the massive underground parking complex, please don't be an idiot and park anywhere you please. They're serious about enforcing proper etiquette and they will clamp your wheels if you try to get creative. Don't worry, this isn't M2. There's enough parking for everybody plus there's a free tram service around the parking lots too. So any lot is as near your intended destination as another -- there's no reason to park like this.

Gambling on a dream

Goodness! My old boss is in the news today. Should have known he was the one behind it all 'cos he was already talking about it way back then. So glad to know that his dreams have come true, especially since they said he was just living in a fantasy world. Major hospitality resort (check), on Sentosa (check), US franchised theme park operation (check), superstar concerts on a regular basis (check), casino (um, he never actually discussed this in my presence -- maybe I wasn't in his inner-circle of trust, but check). Article says it took him 35 years. I say if anyone was going to get it to work, he would.

Congrats, Ron! You've proven your critics wrong, and I'm really happy for you! Now comes the really tough part -- keeping it all alive! You the man!

According to Me

According to you
I'm difficult
Hard to please
Forever changing my mind
I'm a mess in a dress
Can't show up on time
Even if it would save my life
According to you
According to you

But according to him
I'm beautiful, incredible
He can't get me out of his head
According to him
I'm funny, irresistible
Everything he ever wanted
Everything is opposite
I don't feel like stopping it
So baby tell me what I got to lose
He's into me for everything I'm not
According to you

Sorry, Orianthi, but According to Me,
assuming you've been in the relationship long enough, the one who truly loves you is Mr "you". Mr "him" is only out to exploit your gullibility and cheat you of your money, your goodwill, and anything else you might have of value. And that's all.

There's nothing like being taken well and truly for granted to know that your relationship is secure. See, when "you" complains about you, it's because "you" is prepared to see you for what you really are -- and what you are not. "You" no longer needs to pretend to be head-over-heels in love (that's a tough act to maintain for long, anyway). Likewise, there's no more pressure on you to keep hiding your flaws from "you", yet "you" is still by your side, still your man.

The only thing that's going for "him" is a sweet tongue -- and most likely a sweet tooth to go with it. Once he's got past your wrapper, he'll just suck you dry and spit you out when all the sweetness has gone.

So, Orianthi, ma'am, catchy song, but Me isn't buying your little tantrum.

Blindly into the future

First term is over. Time for a little reflection on the tumultuous couple of months that have just passed. Big realization comes hot on the heels of the iCTLT: what the heck are we trying to do, preparing the kids for a future neither they nor we nor the experts have a clue about? We're the blind leading the blind, and where we're going, nobody knows.

We're better off simply preparing the kids for a much more certain here and now. If you don't do your homework, if you don't practice this past exam paper, you will fail your end-of-year exams. That's pretty certain.

Why go all the way out of our depth about this? We should let go, and let the kids discover their future for themselves. That's their destiny, and they will embrace it, and adapt themselves to it when it becomes relevant to them. For now, their only future lies 7-8 months ahead of them. That's as far as they can see, and in reality, our crystal ball only scries within the same limits.

School isn't about preparing kids for the future. Never was. School is about teaching kids the wisdom of their elders, their traditions and their roots. Let's continue to do what we've always done best: ground kids in the skills and techniques that have worked well for us, and let them figure out how to innovate around what we've taught them in order to get around the problems they will face in the future. It's up to us to give them the base of our past knowledge and up to them to inscribe the knowledge they acquire from the future to pass on to their subsequent generations.

If they don't learn their past from school, they won't learn it anywhere else.

Talking in class

Improving the proficiency of our spoken languages is a step in the right direction. People learned to speak first, and only when they discovered that what some people were saying was meaningful then we developed the skill to record speech through writing. What our schools have been doing is putting the cart before the horse and making written language a priority over spoken language because its easier to mark to a standard.

About time they fixed things. I've always believed that as you talk, so shall you write -- so it's pointless to teach people to write before they can talk. If drama and story-telling are truly coming to the fore with today's Parliamentary recommendations, I guess yours truly has a reason to stay employed for a while longer. Apart from needing to eat, of course.

But no exams, please. Some things have to be taught for their utility alone. When you stick in an exam, as soon as the exam is over there's no further motivation to use it ever again. Keep the exams on the written papers, let the oral component just support the written component. That'll be the best deal for everyone.

Universally within our means

Jim Simon takes issue with Universal Studios Singapore for charging its unlimited all-year pass with special privileges at an exorbitant S$1098. That's much like someone craving a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost when he can only afford a Kia Picanto. For most of us, a Picanto's good enough. It's cheap, gets us to places we wanna go, and most of all, it's available to anyone who wants one.

Dude, open your eyes. There's a S$66 option for those of us who can't afford better and are prepared to rough it just for a day in our lives. The 'Annual Superstar Pass' is meant for people who can hang out and live at Universal Studios the whole year 'round. That kinda' assumes they don't work for a living. And if they don't work for a living, then they probably are the sort who think S$1098 is a mere frivolity to their daily expenses.

In the free market, there's things affordable to the workaday masses like us, and there's the luxuries for the few who aren't us. Let's learn to live within our means and not be in such a huff that we can't exercise our sense of entitlement if we aren't willing to pay for it.

Drink with me

Wow! Great news for womenfolk, right after International Women's Day even. Avoid getting fat by drinking alcohol! Did I die and wake up in women's heaven? See article here for how you can booze away the bulge.

Construction noises in the background

9 pages from an NYT article, "Building a Better Teacher." Today is for listening, not talking.

COMFORT goes co-op

We generally revile taxi drivers as a profession. They drive too fast, they drive too slow, they cut other drivers off abruptly and slam on their brakes at the last second to pick up a fare.

Must be a cut-throat business with so many cab drivers plying the streets competing for a dwindling number of potential passengers. With so many strange fare surcharges these days, people are starting to consider owning their own vehicles as a cheaper option for getting around town.

But look! In order to obtain a bigger slice of pie per cab driver, instead of competing each other off the roads, they're building a communication network to share information with each other.

Expanding market share by killing competition: Bad. Expanding market opportunities by sharing information: Good. Cooperation is the name of the game, people! Sesame Street may have had it right all along.

Fluff

As before, while immersed in iCTLT mania there's the tendency to get over-hyped with all the new concepts and ideas buzzing around and the temptation to turn this platform into a pulpit preaching change, innovate, move! There's the appeal to start participating in discussions with people who know so much more, have so much more experience, and actually know what they're talking about.

But sooner or later the reality hits home that there's no place in that discussion for Xmac's idealist fantasies and techno fetishes. Especially not when he is still unable to reconcile technical methodology with pen-and-paper results.

Xmac has no credibility discussing matters beyond his ken. So he will continue to talk about his dog, and his friends, and other random things fluffy and inconsequential instead:

Yesterday, Q-tip had the time of her life being petted and fussed over by many hands and one giant golden retriever at the college Sports Carny. After, we together with the usual suspects, feasted on meat at Brewerkz -- cool, another dog-friendly place to spend an afternoon. Dinner we celebrated with more meat catered by the Botak one in celebration of FLY-girl's, um, "21st" birthday.

Goodnight, dear diary.

iCTLT 2010, Day 2

iCTLT 2010 Day 2

This morning's keynote speaker, Jenny Lewis, reminded us that our students' success depends on a whole-school commitment to producing an end-product that is contextually relevant to market needs. Make 'em employable, then they can carve out whatever future they want for themselves. Towards this end, she showed us impressive stats and studies that made it painfully clear that student performance can be consistently tracked and measured against a standard benchmark in order to identify which kids require what forms of intervention when. Technology applied with bottom-line in mind.

Other factors of school success is teacher quality, not just across the board but also in maintaining an atmosphere of openness and a sense of mission such that teachers freely collaborate with each other within and across departments and levels because everyone has an interest in the total learning potential of every child, rather than keep the learning experience into subject-specific domains dominions limited to the individual teacher's personal sphere of influence.

That makes sense. Often there's the tendency to protect the subject or department without considering the kids' total development. Homework, remedials, assessments and research are all imposed on the kids by subject. Hence, every subject competes for the kids' time, effort and concentration. We make the kids prioritize between one subject or another, and there's probably a spiralling cycle of guilt when a choice is made. That choice is usually on the basis on which teacher the kid likes the most or which teacher has the loudest shouting voice or is the most creative (or ruthless) in meting out punishment. That's not really a good way to develop a well-rounded student, but it happens all too often.

Thus, a whole-school approach can be a very simple exercise of having all the different subjects coordinate the kids' workload evenly so that five assignments, two tests, several tutorials and a lab assessment don't all collide on the same week for them. The sooner we teachers stop competing against each other, the sooner we can have saner kids. Well, maybe easier said than done.

Lewis is also a firm believer in Authoritative pedagogies underlying all teaching and learning activities: school-wide, and personal. Um, 'k.

David Warlick's back to discuss personal learning networks. What I learned wasn't so much about how those are supposed to work for the kids but rather the mistakes I have been making as a blogger. Although I keep reminding my kids that essays are mostly commentaries on other people's essays and little else, I realise I'm not following my own advice. Blogs are little more than commentaries on other people's blogs. They are meant to contribute to an extended conversation that's going on in the blogosphere, but because I don't like butting in on other people's conversations my blog's been feeling like the lone voice in the wilderness. Long-winded one at that. So, time to go see what other people are writing about. I'm sure there are nice people out there. Yes.

Finally, Terry Freedman broached a topic that I'd so taken for granted that I didn't even realise was a topic of discussion: Reputation Management on the Internet. But he's right. I admit I've been releasing all kinds of skeletons from my closet and letting them collaborate freely all over cyberspace. I'm sure they'll all come back and haunt me again someday. But if savvy ol' me could be so careless with his rep online, the kids really need to be guided in this area or exam results might just be the least of their worries.

Unfortunately, I didn't stay for the final keynote speaker. I sensed dark clouds brewing on the horizon, and sure enough, there was trouble on the homefront. Not ready to release this skeleton into cyberspace yet. Some conversations are really not for public consumption.

Anyway, biggest takeaway for me from iCLT 2010: Whatever else you do with technology in education, please collaborate, socialize, share, converse. That's learning in the 21st Century.

iCTLT 2010, Day 1

iCTLT 2010

The iCTLT is back in town, presenting us with another opportunity to rub shoulders with prominent education te[a]ch-ies from around the world. I got overexcited the last time the circus came to town, and I did try some of the stunts at home. So I knew enough to look at things more realistically this time around.

My key question this time -- and I heard the speakers address bits and pieces of it -- was how do we stop teaching kids to write the perfect answer, but rather teach them to ask a better class of questions instead? And given that keynote speaker, David Warlick, reminded us time and again that we don't know what future we're preparing our kids for, it's clear they won't survive on our pat textbook answers any longer. They have to start asking useful questions and employ processes that help them find those answers on their own.

I may once have been blinded by technology, but if there's one thing that's coming clear from this year's conference, it's that the shiny toys and tools won't work on their own. Access is not a problem for us -- the tools are readily available at our fingertips. My biggest problem and disappointment so far has been in attempting to orchestrate a social learning environment among kids who view each other as competitors rather then collaborators. If I understand the psychology of my kids correctly, they'll distract and disrupt class so that no one can gain an advantage over anyone else, then frustrate themselves by trying to catch up with the lesson at home, away from prying eyes.

Good that Warlick pointed out that the most successful organizations are collaborative rather then competitive in nature. There's a story there I could use to bring the kids back online.

Elliot Soloway and Michael Furdyk were seriously gung ho about the collaborative learning potential of technology. Soloway was hot on mobile, anytime, anywhere, teacher-designed, student-centered learning platforms; though I imagine such programmes have to be... creatively funded. It would be best if such learning programmes could be accessed by every kid using the mobile phones they already own but because there's a multitude of software platforms, apps markets, service providers and indeed differing capabilities of mobile phones themselves, schools will have to shell out for a standard-issue device per child. That's a very expensive proposition for a school, so until every kid can afford an iPhone or a comparable competitor, I don't see that happening en masse just quite yet.

Furdyk is all about inspiring young people to get together through collaborative social networks to actually work on social entrepreneurship projects because they will have to put real learning into direct application towards real problems in order to achieve tangible results in real humanitarian causes. Makes sense. If the kids are worrying about bigger problems affecting people other than themselves, their exams will seem minor in comparison.

Currently, we're facing a vicious cycle. Kids worry about exams and they don't see the problems of others. They study to pass their exams, but they can't put their learning to real-life use. But because they can't apply what they're studying, they can't understand or appreciate what they're studying. They get bored, disconnected, frustrated and ultimately worry they can't pass their exams. Ad infinitum. It isn't that the kids are dumb or stupid, it's that they have to live outside of themselves in order to make the difference.

Providing the balance to today's session, Jason Trump reminded us that throwing technology at our problems isn't going to solve them for us. The potential for personalized learning is all there for us to harness, but a school must "have a clear vision for how, why and when to move" towards implementing tech as policy or it will either become a white elephant or, worse, counterproductive -- causing more problems than it solves.

I see the gaps in my approach in using technology, but I think I didn't see them before because I tend to work alone. If I start collaborating with others, I may yet figure this thing out. Question is, who will work with your friendly neighbourhood misanthrope? Yes, I have issues.

Inbox has (308,462) new messages

On the eve of iCTLT 2010, I discover that kids today don't check email any longer. That's so last century. No wonder all my important notifications have fallen on deaf ears. Kids want their messages now, not wait to get PC time then log into their email server. Want kids to respond, send SMS: a mobile, handheld, instant communication medium that's never far from their person. The old man learns something new today.