Award
2009 19 and Under: 2nd place
Team
Kai Yan VincentDunman High School, Singapore
Huiquan JoshuaDunman High School, Singapore
Wee Kiat MervynDunman High School, Singapore
Guo XiangDunman High School, Singapore
WillyHwa Chong Institution, Singapore
Age Range
19 & under
Coaches
Keng Hian ChiaHwa Chong Institution, Singapore
Soong Chee GiDunman High School, Singapore
Audience
All ages
Language
English
Team Collaboration
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.
Guo Xiang did the part on infrastructure for our model of school of the future because he knows how to design with Google Sketchup and had some ideas in his mind.
Mervyn, with his past experience of taking part in ThinkQuest website competition, has provided us with valuable knowledge on ThinkQuest requirements and team dynamics. He did the part on school experience with Vincent.
Vincent is a creative guy who also had great ideas on how the school experience will change in the future. He also designed the banners for the various sections of the site.
Joshua did the introduction and education system. A good story developer, Joshua had contributed to the story between SAM and Morpheus.
Always thinking out the box, Willy was in charge of writing the story between SAM and his teacher Mr Laurence which links up the entire project. He also wrote the part on education theories and the interviews with different philosophers.
We set off by having our very first brainstorming session to discuss our sitemap. We held many online meetings and corresponded via emails and instant messaging. We created a set of documents on Google Docs which is easily accessible to everyone in the team anywhere, anytime. That is where we share our resources. These supplement the face-to-face meetings which we occasionally held.
Team Diversity
Although all the team members are of same nationality, team diversity is present in extensive ways like religion, family background, experiences of information and technology. But most importantly, 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 inculcating 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 means of being a high achiever; grades are often indicators of achievement themselves. Thus, his expectation of education was that of quick results and he also harbored 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 endeavors. He is willing to make sacrifices to achieve his goals. Nevertheless, he values 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, experiences and beliefs, we have different school experience. One of us is from different school from the others. His school is deemed by the Ministry of Education as a Future School. We are able to know more about the progress of Future School in Singapore in terms of infrastructure and information technology. This helps us in crafting our own school of the future.
Furthermore, he is not in the integrated programme(IP) whereas the rest are in IP. Being in IP means that one do not need to take O level before proceeding to junior college. Also, there are more time for students in IP to pursue other interests such as community involvement or projects. O level 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 future to be one that will satisfy both academic and non-academic needs of students.
