TPACK, creativity and friends @ Singapore

by | Friday, June 03, 2011

I have been in Singapore the past few days at the invitation of Mike Thiruman and his team at Educare. Educare is a co-operative of the Singapore Teachers’ Union and sees itself as serving “teachers and schools so as to enhance the quality of teaching.” I had two sessions with them on June 1 and 2 on Harnessing ICT towards transformative teaching and learning in the 21st Century. The first day was a presentation and the next day I presented a full day workshop to 35+ educators.

The sessions went really well and I have included below (for the record) the slides from both my presentations as well as some photographs I took both at the event and after. I would like to take a moment to thank Mike and his team (including Dr. Aksir Kumar and Richard Singh among others) for both inviting me to Singapore and hosting me for the past couple of days.

I also got to catch up with a couple of friends when I was here. One of them, Alfred Low, is someone I had never met, though we have known each other for a few years now. Alfred had contacted me a while back regarding his interest in TPACK and we have stayed connected by email and Facebook for a while. It was great to finally meet up with him. Here are the two of us catching up over a couple of beers.

I also met up with Aurobindo Ghosh a faculty member at Singapore Management University. Aurobindo (and his wife) were also at Urbana-Champaign when I was there as a graduate student. We met up again after 13 years… a lot of water has passed below the bridge in the meanwhile (my son was just two years old when I left UIUC). What was great how easily we picked up pretty much from where we had left off, 13 years ago!

Finally, a slideshow of photographs I took during my few days here.

A few randomly selected blog posts…

Rich TPACK Cases: Great Resource Book

Rich TPACK Cases: Great Resource Book

The TPACK framework is a theoretical framework that seeks to influence practice. And most gratifyingly (for Matt Koehler and myself) it appears to have had a significant impact in that area. That said, the field lacked concrete, rich examples of TPACK in...

Design is for life

Quote for the day: Parents look at their children today when they are 3 years old and say "Oh god!, He doesn't know how to operate the computer! How is he going to go ahead like this?" They should instead be worried if their child doesn’t know design. They should say,...

Slumdog night (and Rahman)

Slumdog rolled into the Oscars tonight. More important to me were the two Oscars for A. R. Rahman for original score and song. It is time that the world recognized his genius. Here is a cartoon by Kaladhar Bapu from his site Point Blank A.R. Rahman by Kaladhar Bapu

Meta Poetry: I and II

Meta Poetry: I and II

This sentence refers to itself. This sentence declares that this blog post is about 2 poems I wrote recently. Both these poems are self-referential to some degree, namely both poems are about poetry. I have been interested in self-reference for along time—and this...

Welcome…

...to my new website. It has taken a while, but it is finally here. Of course, as in all things web, this is still a work in progress, but it is getting there. I will be phasing out my old site gradually. The most significant change has been a shift from static HTML...

Teaching design, some ideas

I recently received an email from a teacher in Poland, seeking advice for a curriculum outline for their Design Technology Section. They said, and I quote: Unfortunately, I have minimal experience with the subject as a teacher or as a student in my younger years,...

Blogging for the iPhone

I have been playing with an iTouch for the past few days and have have been quite impressed. What bothered me somewhat though was that my website (something I have spent hours designing) didn't morph itself as gracefully as I would have liked into this new interface....

Rainbows in your backyard, how scary

We have been talking about misconceptions in my summer MAET classes and one of my students sent me this hilarious link. There is really nothing much to say... just see it for yourself. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3qFdbUEq5s[/youtube] Another video that I...

TPACK Newsletter #40, March 2019

TPACK Newsletter #40, March 2019

Here is the Special Spring 2019 Conference Issue of the TPACK Newsletter (#40, March 2019), as curated and shared by Judi Harris and her team. (Previous issues are archived here.) This special issue include all the TPACK-related papers/sessions that...

1 Comment

  1. Alexa

    I came across lots of lecturers and teachers that do not use technology to leverage knowledge for students. Your post made me realized that even if we are in an advance technological era, some people really do not want to change and move forward. Very insightful article. Do you conduct seminars? please send me an email with details thanks

    Reply

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