ABOUT US

In this page, you can read more about the team! Have fun!

Although all the team members are of the same nationality, team diversity is present in extensive ways like religion, family background, experiences of information technology. But most importantly (and what will be discussed below), the team had differing beliefs as to what is the objective of education.

One of us was raised in a traditional Chinese family and had a traditionalist mindset, placing a lot of emphasis on formality and having conservative opinions. His view of the School of the Future is that it should look back at the beginnings of education, when the inculcation of morals and values were a large part of education.

Another was raised in a competitive family environment, where relatives were often used for comparison, and education is not only viewed as a stepping stone to a good career; grades are often indicators of achievement themselves. Thus, his expectation of education was that of quick results and he also harboured a ‘survival of the fittest’ mindset.

Another team member, also born with a competitive family background, craved for recognition and pulls out all stops in his endeavours. He is willing to make sacrifices to achieve his goals. Nevertheless, he valued respect and does not override authority. His opinion of education is that it is a human right.

The rest of the team was raised with a more flexible family setting. Since young they have been in touch with technology and are most at ease with the latest technological gadgets. As a result they are the tech-savvy geeks of the team and think that technology will be the building block of the School of the Future.

Beside differences in our family backgrounds and beliefs, our team is made up of students with differing school structures. One of the schools is deemed by the Ministry of Education (Singapore) as a Future School. We were thus able to know more about the progress of future schools in Singapore in terms of infrastructure and information technology. This helped us in crafting our own school of the future.

One team member is not in the integrated programme (IP) whereas the rest are in IP. Being in IP means that one does not need to take ‘O’ levels before proceeding to pre-university. Also, there is more time for students in IP to pursue other interests such as community involvement projects.

In contrast, ‘O’ levels students are restricted to four years of rigorous academic training. With this difference in our school experiences, we are able to imagine our School of the Future to be one that will satisfy both academic and non-academic needs of students.

The team members of Shakers and Movers have different special abilities and talents. Some of us are good at designing banners and buildings while others are good at developing and writing story plot lines. Therefore, we have divided the tasks according to each others' strength.

"I am in charge of the part on infrastructure for our model of the School of the Future because I am interested in architecture and have experimented with Google SketchUp. This gave me an opportunity to try out some ideas I had in my mind prior to this project."

"My past experience of taking part in a Thinkquest Website competition has provided me with valuable knowledge on what would be expected of the Narration, helping out with the structure and the technical aspects. Content-wise, I did School Experience with Vincent as I thought that it would be easier for me to relate to it."

"I finally found a place to inject my creativity! I had in mind an imagined School of the Future and contributed some great ideas on how the school experience will change in the future."

"I did the Introduction and Education Systems. Being a fairly good story developer, I contributed to the story between SAM and Morpheus."

"Always thinking out of the box, I am in charge of writing the story between SAM and his teacher Mr Morpheus. I also did the part on Education Theories and the interviews with different philosophers."

There were many challenges that our group faced while doing the narrative. One of the challenges was to balance the commitments to the competition with our numerous commitments. It was like packing an additional morsel onto our plates, alongside with others, which was extremely taxing for all of us. Furthermore, all of us are in our final year of our pre-university education, with the GCE A Levels coming up at the end of the year, which is like the mother of all exams. Preparing for it involves months of lectures, practice and revision. A typical work day starts at around 0600h and ends at around 1745h.

Homework, tests, coupled with other commitments such as co-curriculum activities that span at least thrice a week, mentoring our Juniors and managing external projects made it hard for us to find any free to work on our narrative. Hence, we had to utilize our time-management skills to the very fullest and had to forgo precious sleep. Brain-storming sessions were held online and during the weekends, when we could come together to discuss.

For our group, we had the slight advantage of residing in the same country, which made the likelihood of us meeting up to work much higher, which was more productive. For subsequent meetings, we decided to fix a day where most of us were free to have a face-to-face meeting, thus allowing us to know each other better and comment on each other’s great ideas. Despite residing in the same country, we live at the extreme ends of Singapore, namely the East and West, which was rather inconvenient. In order to solve the problem, we had to compromise by meeting at Singapore’s National Library which is located in the central area.

Another problem that some of us faced was the lack of IT skills. Furthermore, it was the first time using online productive tools such as Google Docs for some of us. Hence, we had to take the time to learn and familiarize ourselves. Some of us were virtually uncontactable, thus resulting in a breakdown of communication along the way. However, we managed to overcome this problem through hours of editing and distribution of workload, which allowed us to upload all of our contents to the website before the deadline.

In conclusion, while the whole experience was quite taxing for all of us, we enjoyed ourselves during the process, especially the occasional debates over what goes to the site and certainly learned from it. What makes Shaker and Mover a strong team is our tenacity and “never say die” spirit when faced with challenges.

Participating in the narrative competition is indeeed a totally new experience for me because it is the first time I am working with students from other school for a competition. I was worried at first because I was afraid that we might not get along well. However, as time goes by, I find that the rest of the team members are nice and friendly.

I am interested in stories that are meaningful, especially those I can emotionally connect to. That is why I chose to write a story about SAM and his teacher Mr Laurence to highlight how our team feel about current schools and how we envision the school of future will be like.

There were times when I feel like procrastinating because there were simply too much things to do. With heavy academic work load and outside school activities, it was indeed hard to find time to discuss the narrative. However, I am glad that everyone played their part despite their heavy workload.

I still remember some of the occasional arguments we had during our discussions, which I found them to be extremely intellectual and meaningful. One of the arguments I remember the most is about the exterior and interior. While discussing the infrastructure, one of my team mates argued that there should not be a difference between the exterior and interior because the interior influence the exterior and the exterior affects the interior. I spent a long time arguing with him that the exterior and interior are two different things, just like style versus substance. In the end, we reached a compromise that though both influence one another, they are independent on one another( P(A n B)= P(A) P(B), where A= exterior and B=interior )

What spurred me on to do Thinkquest? I like dealing with systems. The need to understand how a system works, explore it after understanding, and to tinker with it and contribute to it is overwhelming. I felt this need the moment I learned about Thinkquest, a System of collaboration between teachers and students, creation of websites for students, by students.

I knew it was going to be tough to take on Thinkquest, because I already had various commitments in and out of school. I was an Editor-in-Chief for a school magazine, an active participant in community projects, and an ardent student of archery. I was also going to be an 'A' levels candidate in half a year's time, having both classes and revision lessons five days per week, often from 7 in the morning to 5 or 6 in the evening, and continuing self-revision till 11 or 12 at night.

But it was important not to view my appointments or activities as a schedule. If I did, I would seem to have an extremely packed schedule, and a mundane life filled with routines. I treated them as "Things I Like To Do", and put every effort into making things work. I then had a very coherent idea of what I was doing with my life, for I had a strong grasp on the many little things that make up my life.

It was a grueling process creating this website. Brainstorming, choosing of ideas and backing them up were just the few things we did. I hope readers will appreciate this effort and most important of all, understand the need for a School of the Future.

The decision to take up ThinkQuest Narrative competition was not an easy one to make. Like all human beings (and other creatures) I only have 24 hours a day, and time was something dear and precious to me. When I had to make this decision, my life (which is also my time) was centered on school work and intensified basketball practice for an upcoming tournament. When Mervyn invited me to join the team, my first thoughts were: “No way! This’ll take up too much time!” I had to take the A’ levels (an exam that will determine my future) at the end of this year, and I wanted my team to go far and win the tournament. I didn’t want another “time-stealer” in my schedule! But I’m glad that I changed my mind.

Here’s why I changed my mind. I questioned further and found out more information on the competition. The word “narrative” made me stop and consider, as I have always loved writing. After attending a few brainstorming sessions with the group, I realized that we did have some meaningful and really interesting stuff to write and share with fellow students around the world. The idea of imagining a school of the future really caught my attention (and the group’s attention too) as it was related to something very close to our lives-school. Besides, the opportunity to share my ideas on how the future school should be like (the design, lifestyle of students, learning, etc) was just too good for me to miss! I wanted in!

An apt description of my project experience would be a roller-coaster ride. We encountered ups and downs so frequently, that I have become accustomed to them (and even learnt how to handle them!). But, just like a passenger in the car, I had fun all the time! There were times when we completed a whole page, only to realize (from comments by our Coach) that what we had written was irrelevant to our question. No doubt my initial reaction to such situations was disappointment filled with anger (how could we not have noticed our error!). But the excitement to ratify the error and set things straight soon took over and I would be back working at the computer. This one thing that I have learnt, never to let the fear and disappointment of failure win over the excitement of success, I will take with me through my life.

I know that getting myself involved in Thinkquest would probably take up much of my free time. I have participated in the website competition before, and remembered the many sleepless nights. And there are times when I question my decision of taking up this again.

I gave it some thought and I came to the conclusion that I wanted to challenge myself again. To see whether if I can perform better with the experience that I have had.

The other thing that came to mind was that I wanted to share my ideas with the world. I am not much of a web designer, but I do have lots to share about my views on world issues with youths and maybe make a difference, however small it maybe. The narrative competition seems to provide me with the perfect platform to do so.

It has been a wonderful learning experience. I dug up facts and information that I did not know about before, and gained a greater insight into building designs, schools system, and how culture shapes education.

I am one who always leaps at any available opportunities to try many new things, to broaden my perspective and often try to make opportunities when they are lacking. Hence, I jumped at the chance to take part in this inaugural ThinkQuest Narrative Competition, which is something fresh and new. Of course, this competition requires great teamwork and demands of a group with good cohesion, and I had to spend some time asking around and gathering group members. I am proud that everyone has played their part and has contributed meaningfully to the making of this narrative.

I strongly believe that being the first is not everything in life, but it is the unique experience that no one else can feel for you that counts, the ups and downs, the frustration and satisfaction, the disappointment and jubilation, the internal struggles and the eternal, ever-hopeful waiting.

This experience has certainly been a unique one, having to adapt to the given tools to try to get around the limitations, and having to juggle many different commitments such as tests, external projects and SAT, especially during this trying global economic crisis. However, I have certainly learned from it, especially from some of my group mates, and can proudly walk away from this competition, already a winner in my own ways.

Sadly, this will probably be my last time participating as an Under – 19 as I’m not getting any younger. I hope everyone viewing this site will enjoy their stay here and take something away from it!

Having said that, interested readers can continue reading more if they wish to do so. While I enjoy tinkering around with technology-related things, be it electronics, software or hardware, I definitely do not belong to the human category known as “Geek”. At least, that is what I would like to tell myself. I enjoy all-forms of cycling, be it cycling around Singapore (ie around neighbourhoods) or long distance cycling or just doing plain stupid things as I believe they teach people different things. In short, the first teaches you to be more responsible and not do anything rash (such as dash across roads or along bus-stops) as you have to look out for others (especially small children, who tend to go in every direction but straight), trains balance, especially when cycling those narrow paths or at a very, very slow pace, the second teaches you to focus and gives you a sense of freedom while the third just teaches to stop doing them.