My fellow colleagues

My fellow colleagues from the school that i taught for contract teaching before going to NIE. Who says teachers can't have fun!

Apparently our usual hangouts are the boardgames cafe.

And according to them we usually eat Japanese food too.

And it all started with singing....

The start of a new year

Just a decade ago, i was taking my O' level. At the turn of the new decade, i am in NIE (National Institute of Education) training to teach at secondary level. I have not been talking much about my teaching experience in my blog, but i guess now since i am in NIE, i could probably post some reflections about what i have learned.

Today is my first day of class, 2 hours in Educational Psychology, which is supposed to teach us about the learning process and how students learn. One of the articles that i have to read so far is about thinking positively. Plainly speaking, it is about whether the cup is half-filled or half empty. In this article, i found some rather encouraging and interesting food for thoughts.

"whoever retains the capacity to appreciate beauty will never grow old"

"beauty and ugliness as such do not exist, rather it is our thoughts and attitudes that make something beautiful or ugly"

"we should not use up all our energy in trying to change those aspects of our lives that cannot be altered but rather work hard to change our attitude to them"

At the start of this new decade, i just hope that i can too think more positively about life. I need to clearly sort out what is required and what is wanted.

Invigilation

Today is my first day and first time doing exam invigilation. This week is the common test week for secondary 1 to 3, which kind of reminded me of my times doing tests and exams in school. Exams were always boring for me, largely due to me being able to finish the paper before the allocated time. This resulted in lots of waiting and being a rather impatient boy back then, waiting is really a chore. Until i got into university, the exams were normally less boring, because more often than not, i do the paper until the end of the given time, and probably still got 20% of the questions blank.

Giving exam instructions to the students have been the topic between all the contract teachers, because most of us just came out from university, so we tend to recap the instructions given during our exams and tell them to the students. This kind of made me try to remember what i was told during my own secondary school exams, which obviously i cannot recall as well. But i guess the essences of what is being said should be similar.

Other than the boredom of doing exams, i can't really remember how my test or exam schedule went. The subjects which i am taking, physics and maths are all on Friday, which means that even though i might be slack for the next two days, i have no paper to mark, which kind of suck because i might actually need to use my weekend to mark (if i need to mark that is). At far as possible, now i am still trying not to bring work back, which i have been successful thus far.

The flaws of man

During my spare time i have been watching documentaries about the rise and fall of Rome and history of Britannia. Coupled with my few weeks of teaching in school, somehow i came to observe certain flaws of man.

Firstly, the resultant force of a group of people is not the summation of the individual forces of the people inside. A group has the energy to booster one confidence to do something that he/she might not dare to do as an individual, which may not necessarily be good. Of course team work is beneficial, but rioting as a group is truly hard to handle. This applies to students too, because a class of 40 has the power to bully the lone teacher, but if the class is reduced to maybe a class of 10, the class is like a tiger with decaying teeth and could hardly bite. Thus, the flaw of man is when man gather, it serves as a double-edged sword.

Secondly, society on the whole is irreconcilable. The elites will never forgone their power and influence so that the poor will a better life. And the poor will remain poor because they have no capital to earn more money, and the elites would probably come up with some reasons to justify why the poor remain poor. Moreover, every groups of people has their own interests and to align their interests such that it could possibly become a common interest is truly impossible. It is kind of just like how teachers think that students are getting worse these days, while students think that teachers are so boring and full of crap (generalizing and stereotyping which may or may not necessary be true).

Lastly, man probably has the eyes for the best and the worst, often overlooking the ordinary. We want the best, so we look out for the best. In our search for the best, we know the worst so that we can avoid them. Ordinary means normal, which is often equates to not good enough. Why am i ranting about such random stuffs? Because today in class i realize that i only notice the 'famous' students, be it for the good or bad reasons. But the point is, when i tell this to anyone, most of them will tell me it is normal. Which made me think, what is normal? Normal to overlook the normal people? Or is it normal to overlook the ordinary students just because they are not out to give you any trouble.

Weird thinking on my part, not to mention rather lousy English i reckon, but my mind is not functioning properly at the moment. I think i should blog more about my experiences and my thoughts in school.

Convocation

My convocation is finally over! It was a rather boring ceremony and lots of waiting. I think i was quite high that day because i have officially graduated and like taking photos with my friends (despite i think my face was so oily that light literally reflects off my face). The crowd was a killer as usual, but photos from the commencement, courtesy of Eric who brought his camera.

Thanks to all my friends who came, Eric, Zhoujing and Sini. And to Ailian and Cailing who congrats me for my commencement hah.

Me and Sini.

Me and Zhoujing.

Me and Eric.

I have not uploaded the photos i took with my exchange friends, so probably will post them in a later post. Also went to school to some graduation photos with my friend yesterday, with his friend as our photographer. Hopefully i will get some decent photos because apparently i was told that when i smile, i look rather aunty! */rolleyes*

Anyway hopefully this will be my last week of work at my dad's place, a week break followed by the start of my contract teaching. Up till now i have not receive my school posting yet, probably too many teachers for MOE to post. I read in the newspaper today that MOE has already recruited pass their quota for teachers for 2009 last month, which kind of true that during recession a lot of people really apply for teaching. But how many of this numbers actually stay on after the recession is a question. I do hope that after my contract teaching i would actually like teaching and would stay on.

Final Year Project

Today is the release of my FYP result, and the project that i got is ................. Social computing: understanding social interaction and networking in games! Although i cannot remember if this is my first choice, total there is 1 student who put this as first choice, 3 students as second and 1 student as third choice, so with my lousy cap, i think it might just be my first choice.

So the first thing i have done after knowing the result, is to reread what is the description of the project. The description is as follows:

Playing game becomes one of popular activities nowadays. There are many different motivations for gamers to play game. One of the reasons is people like to get together socially especially for massively multi-players online role playing game (MMORPG). The project aims to use engineering tools to understand gamers’ latent behaviors in terms of spatial and temporal factors. The students will develop programs to parsing gamers’ data from one of existing commercial games (World of Warcraft). Social networking and in game behaviors will be analyzed after data collection. The students will work closely with other social scientists in MXR*.

*The Mixed Reality Lab, one of IDMI Lab, is aiming to push the boundaries of research into interactive new media technologies through the combination of technology, art, and creativity.

It is suppose to be a software based project, and the pre-requisite is script based programing language (eg. XML, LUA), hmm... actually i am not really familiar with either of these :/

While i was thinking of sending a email to my supervisor asking for any details for the project or any thing i just like start studying or learning now, i decided to google a bit about him.

My supervisor apparently is a new comer in NUS, Dr. Henry Been-Lirn Duh. Some facts about him from what i found out on his website which apparently is done by dreamweaver because his website is titled dreamweaver template, he graduated from Human Interface Technology Laboratory in Washington, and went to NASA-Johnson Space Centre as a postdoctoral fellow involving in virtual reality training project (quoted from his website). He is also a serious gamer and was listed in the ladder of Diablo II and Age of Empire (quoted too).

Woah quite impressive i think, and his discipline is quite broad with all the listed research, courses he taught and the publications he participated in.

Guess i better email and ask for more details, since i feel like i am lacking in some knowledge.

ARGHHH SLEEP

So tired, must be out of my mind to be in school at 7am, bad sleep + waking up early = horrible day. Must attempt to brush away everything and get home to sleep.... *struggle struggle*....

OMG Newsflash!

Though I cannot S/U some taken modules, but i guess this new policy is not bad either.

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NUSSU NEWSFLASH

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Dear fellow students,

New S/U Policy

Thank you for your patience, understanding and support so far in our negotiations with the University on the S/U policy.

After the submission of our policy recommendations, we presented our case again to the University Committee of Educational Policy (UCEP). I am pleased to announce the outcome of our meeting.

UCEP has agreed to accept the essence of NUSSU EXCO’s recommendations. Subject to the final approval of the NUS Senate, both freshmen and seniors will now come under a new S/U policy. This policy will allow for:

• All undergraduates, regardless of cohort, to exercise S/U options after the release of results. This includes those in their graduating semester

• A one-off exercise where seniors will be able to see the grades of their previously exercised SU options under the old policy and retract them for use for modules you are currently pursuing or intend to pursue under the new policy

However, all prizes and awards already decided will not be changed even if the CAP may change as a result of this exercise. Modules that are graded on a compulsory pass/fail (or what is now called “CS/CU”) basis do not come under this policy, of course. If a student has repeated a module on an SU basis, understandably only the second attempt may come under this policy.

Let me elaborate on the rationale behind this new policy.

The objective of the SU options is to encourage you to pursue courses of your interest, which may not be your forte, without the worry that it may adversely affect your CAP score.

The new policy of allowing you to S/U after viewing of results is aimed at further reducing your risk and reassuring you that pursuing your interests will not compromise your results.

Taking into consideration that many of you may have already expended some or all of your S/U options in the previous system (S/U before release of results), the one-off retraction of exercised S/U options will give you the opportunity to benefit from the new S/U system (S/U after release of results). We hope this will level the playing field for everyone.

S/U-ing of previously not-S/Ued modules cannot be allowed as seniors will be able to take into account a greater number of modules when reconsidering their S/U options and hence putting the freshmen at a disadvantage. Most importantly, the University wishes to emphasize that the S/U option is designed for an educational purpose and not as a way to erase a poor grade. We should be responsible for the choices we make.

The administrative process for the University to arrange for this one-off exercise, if Senate approves, is very complex and time-consuming. They will need time to come up with the system. Therefore specific details will only be released at a later date.

Finally, I wish to stress that the Union exists to uphold and protect the interests of all undergraduates we represent. This incident has shown that the University does value our input. However, we will need your help to better our roles as your representatives for this is a task we cannot do alone. The Union will only be as strong as you wish for it to be.

Projects projects projects

In return for the lacks of tutorials to do, I have more projects to handle. Out of 4 projects, 1 is moving underway, 1 has topic chosen, 1 is still waiting for topic while another is moving rather slow because my other project mates are busy with their final year project.

For my project for Electronic Gaming I am supposed to submit a proposal for a new game, but when i asked 1 of my project mates for comments, I was shocked to realize that he hardly plays any games. What an irony, that someone who took Electronic Gaming but is not interested in games. Really suck thumb on this .....