Title: Singapore Tourism
Project URL: http://webdav.thinkquest.org/05aug/00213/
Category: Geography & Travel

5 students, ages 14-16 worked together to complete this Thinkquest project on March 21, 2006.

Teachers: Mr. Alvin You, Mr James Ho, Ms Wendy Yap, Mrs Foo Jia Wen

E-Mail contact: itclub@vs.moe.edu.sg

School: Victoria School

Our School's Web Site: http://vs.moe.edu.sg

 

1. Description of "Our Community"

The Republic of Singapore , an island state on the southern tip of Peninsular Malaysia, is undoubtedly the central strategic location in Southeast Asia . Singapore is known for one of the busiest seaports in the world and her world-class international airport, Changi Airport . As Singapore has no natural resources, her only resource is her citizens. Being a small island state with a mere 692.7 sq km land area, it has a very high population density with a large population of 4.4 million. Our local community is made up of a multi-racial harmonious society. There are four main races in Singapore , namely, the Chinese (76.7%), Malays (14%), Indians (7.9%), and others including Eurasians (1.4%). This also implies that there are many religions in Singapore , such as Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism, Taoism and Confucianism. The diverse cultures that exist in Singapore have thus led to a variety of local and foreign delicacies, traditions and festivals. The racial harmony that exists in Singapore shows how united Singaporeans are.

Singapore , despite being a small country, has a rich history. The Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts, together with the National Heritage Board and its arm of Museums, constantly promote our national heritage through educational outreach programmes. Also, the Ministry of Education included Social Studies as a compulsory subject in schools as part of our education curriculum, allowing students to better understands the roots of Singapore . The National Education programme instils loyalty in students and allows students learn more about the importance of Singapore ’s history.

2. Summary of Our Project

Our project is about the many ways Singapore Tourism Board (STB) has aggressively promoted Singapore as an exciting tourist destination with its many programs. We have also included the many tourist attractions in Singapore in our website, like Historical Landmarks, and other prominent landmarks in Singapore . Our project describes the brief outlook and history of each and every attraction in Singapore .

Our project aims to help the younger generations of Singaporeans in Singapore , working class adults and foreigners to better understand and be familiar with the Singapore ’s tourism. In doing so, students will be able to understand Singapore ’s key sector, the tourism sector better. They will also get to know more about Singapore ’s tourism sites and about the Singapore Tourism Board, together with it’s many programs. Singaporeans would get to know and be proud of the unique tourist attractions in Singapore and also to learn more about the Singapore Tourism Board efficient programs.

3. Our Computers and Internet Access

 We use self–customized computers in our IT Clubroom to finalise and design the layout of the website. Content and other add-ons to our website were organized in the IT Clubroom and also taken back home to edit. Availability of internet access proved to be a major factor in our project. As we had to transfer the information of the website onto our server, we needed internet access to be available for testing of the website and also for the research of information. We did not have internet access in the IT Clubroom and had to make constant trips down to the IT Labs available in our school and also back up to our Clubroom.

 

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

We had to take time off our busy school lives to work on this Thinkquest project. Firstly, we had trouble deciding on the category as each of us had different opinion on the categories. We had some arguments and initially, we actually decided on Civilisations of the world. However, after some consideration on what to do for the project and some deep thinking, some of us compromised and gave way to the rest, and finally we decided on our final category – Tourism in Singapore.

Initially, we had problems on the collection of information for our website. Even after taking down information from the many websites that we have browsed through, we had to paraphrase the information that we had to keep the information original. This took long periods of time and we almost burned our entire March Holidays for this project.

Also, the different members of the team had different schedules and hence we were busy with different activities everyday. Thus we had trouble getting all of us together for a meeting. However we managed to solve the problem by distributing the work and meeting up later to compile our work for the website.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

The project has allowed our students to see the hard work, dedication, and commitment to the project and this has allowed our school and community to become more aware of the Singapore ’s tourism industry. Furthermore, it teaches us co-operation, responsibility and teamwork, and without it we would not have completed the project.

6. How did your activities and research for this Thinkquest 2006 Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?

Our project focused on the programs that the Singapore Tourism Board carries out and the many attractions found in Singapore . We were also fortunate to have our Social Studies knowledge to help us on the topic of Singapore ’s tourism.

However, our project goes beyond the contextual knowledge that we have learnt and talks about Singapore ’s tourism in detail. Through this project, we have learnt a lot about Singapore as a tourist destination, enriching our Social Studies lessons. We realised that there are a lot of interesting facts about the tourism in Singapore in which we never knew.

In creating this project, we learnt a lot of life skills such as teamwork, co-operation and accountability. We realised that it is necessary to reflect on what we have done in order to process our ideas and work, and to make changes to what is necessary. In doing so, we used our creative thinking skills and Information Technology.

When researching information for the project, we realised that our educational system is very broad and extensive, providing a wide range of subjects like Social Studies which touch on different aspects of Humanities. Our website hopes to serve as enrichment to these subjects and we hope that students will find the information on our website useful.

The Internet has been a very useful for research as there is a wide variety of information from various sources. Thus, it has made our traditional methods of education more enriching and interesting, as we have outsides sources of information that helps us better understand the curriculum.

 

Project Elements

1) What information tools & technologies did you used to complete your Thinkquest project?

We used the following tools in our project:

Software

1. Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 - to create and compile our website
2. Macromedia Flash 8 - to program the Guestbook and Poll for the Interact! section
3. MSN Messenger - to have e-conversations amongst us and the community to get information and views from them
4. Mozilla Firefox - to test the website
5. Adobe Photoshop CS – to edit the designs

Hardware

1. Canon Ixus V2 Digital Camera - to take photographs for images on the website
2. Scanners - to scan in the photographs and documents that are useful for the website
3. Self-customized computers running Intel Pentium 4 and Windows XP - to work on our website
4. Books and resources from school library - to help us in the research for information in our project
5. Brochures of the various attractions - as a source of information for our project

The technologies used in the Thinkquest project are equally important as they all played a crucial role in the development of our website, each playing their own part. The tools that we used are either owned by us or loaned from the school, and thus we have the opportunity to handle new technologies.

The Internet was the most helpful technology as it was our main source of information. Thus the materials for our research are readily available and thus it was very efficient.

3) How did your project involve other members of your community as helpers and volunteers?

The teachers and other students have all been of great help to us in the process of the Thinkquest Project. We would to thank our teacher in-charge, Mr. Alvin You, for helping and supervising us during the creation of this website. Our School's Head of Department for Information Technology and Media Resource (HOD-IT & MR), Mr. Anuar Ikhwan, also provided valuable advice to us for the website. We would also like to thank schoolmates, friends and people from the public community who had also helped us in our research and participated in the initial investigations we conducted for our project.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises

We have discovered a lot about Singapore and it’s tourism industry. We found that we did not really know much about Singapore ’s tourism industry. We have actually learnt a lot through the research that we had done. Through this project, we learnt that as a team, we need to co-operate with each other in teamwork. We also learnt that we should always start to plan our project early in case there are unforeseen circumstances later in which we could not overcome.

We hope that students who are interested to find out more about the Singapore ’s tourism industry will visit our website for information.

PLP (& Project Narrative)