Team

XiaoHengHwa Chong Institution, Singapore

DominicHwa Chong Institution, Singapore

TianyuHwa Chong Institution, Singapore

Zhao FengHwa Chong Institution, Singapore

Ho FaiHwa Chong Institution, Singapore

ChilingHwa Chong Institution, Singapore

Age Range

19 & under

Coaches

Nicholas MercerHwa Chong Institution, Singapore

Galvin SngHwa Chong Institution, Singapore

Category

Social Sciences & Culture

Audience

Ages 15 and up

Language

English

Site Features

Online Activity / Game

Science / Lab Experiment

Quiz

Teacher Resources (Lesson Plans, Worksheets)

Photo Gallery

Video / Sound

Team Collaboration

All hailing from Hwa Chong Institution of Singapore, what our team lacked in diversity, we made up with personality. Consisting of film enthusiasts (Tianyu and Zhao Feng), literature fan (Chilling) gaming fanatic (Dominic) art designer(Hofai), and programming expert (Xiaoheng), our motley crew was united by the mere fact we all couldn't survive a day without technology. This project was launched by Tianyu and Zhao Feng, who were both fascinated by the technocratic apocalypse films such as Terminator, The matrix and blade runner.

The project expanded to include literature in the same vein and after Chiling joined our project, we began writing our own novella to localize the theme of technocracy. Seeing that gaming was gaining notoriety as a force of corruption to youths, we decided to capitalize on this issue and Dominic Teo was recruited. Dominic provided much personal insight on this issue and his access to the gaming community was invaluable to our data collection.

The potential of our project led us to participate in the Thinkquest Website Design Competition. Hofai and Xiaoheng were welcomed into the group to help with the interactive elements and website design. Despite being schoolmates, communication was not always easy due to clashing timetables and our commitment to various extra-curriculum activities. With school in full swing when we began our project, we barely had time to focus on the project.

Ironically, our discussion of technocracy was mainly done with technology itself, with cyberspace as the main platform for group meetings. The skills of different members were fully utilized such that we not only performed efficiently but also enjoyed our work. Chiling was a fan-fiction author so writing was her natural forte. Zhao Feng and Tianyu have always been critically reviewing films in their spare time while game design and web design were the respective hobbies of Xiaoheng and Hofai.

While each member was allocated a specific research area, we did not keep to our designated job scope and shared our opinions openly with one another. Much of our content was the fruits of such discussion sessions. Over time, we learned to appreciate both comments and criticisms and acted on them appropriately. Furthermore, we picked up skills from our members and were able to aid them in their respective areas.

Once our research was completed, we all pitched in to complete the novella and it turned out to be a splendid crystallization of our findings. All in all, Thinkquest was a rewarding process that helped us learn as students and bond as teammates.

Team Diversity

While first appearances may say otherwise, our team is a blend of dedicated students from different religions and socio-economic backgrounds. Zhao Feng is a humanities student who has great passion for social sciences and film art. His extensive knowledge of cinema and popular culture was a great asset to the team as he was not only able to identify the key ideas in the movie but also link them to the real world context. Sharing Zhao Feng's fervor for film was Tianyu, a philosophy student. His critical thinking led the team to dissect the topic from different angles, adding much innovation to our otherwise bland topic. His leadership qualities developed from his scouting experience also ensured the team was well organized and work was evenly distributed among the members. Next on the list is Dominic, a self-confessed gaming fanatic, whose joyful personality added much cheer to our team and contributed many original ideas in our team discussions. Chiling, on the hand, was the more solemn type who helped us stay on track in our brainstorming sessions. Being both a Christian and a bookworm, she suggested the multi-perspective narrative for our novella and explained the alternative reading of "science and ethics" for Frankenstein to us, a concept that formed the basis for half of our content. Hofai, an arts student, was mainly in charge of web aesthetics and graphics for our novella. In line with our theme and novella, he proposed a gothic and ominous theme, the result of which is plainly evident on our website while his artwork managed to capture the key elements of our novella. Last but not least, we have Xiaoheng, a science student from China who programmed our interactive games and was responsible for debugging our website. Xiaoheng, who was foreign to western pop culture, took some time to understand our project. However, once he was familiar with our topic, his methodical approach dug up much invaluable information for our project.

Due to our differences, there were many healthy arguments over our content. In one instance, Dominic was displeased with the way we portrayed gamers in negative light and so he came up with a counterargument, which provided a fresh perspective on the subject. Another point of contention was the storyline of the novella. Xiaoheng wanted science-fiction, Zhao Feng and Tianyu wanted drama while Chiling wanted gothic. In the end, we incorporated the ideas of all the members and made gaming a central theme as Dominic suggested. The end product you see here is a result of various revisions, editing and much intellectual debate.