Speeches
Speech by Dr Ng Eng Hen, Minister for Education and Second Minister for Defence, at MOE ExCEL Fest 2008 at Suntec Convention Centre, on Friday, 4th July 2008, 3.00pm
Good afternoon, colleagues.
It is my pleasure to join you this afternoon. The ExCEL Fest was started in 1997. It started modestly, with only about 200 HQ staff, as a platform to showcase our WITS projects. Subsequently, it included school-based innovations in teaching and learning. Last year, the five polytechnics and Institute of Technical Education (ITE) came onboard. This year, I have been told that we are expecting nearly 70,000 people who will visit the event.
The growth, success and momentum of the MOE ExCEL Fest tell us a few things. First, that educators in our schools and IHLs are engaged in wanting to be more effective. This is a good sign as it reflects that as teachers we should never be satisfied with status quo and be willing to try new ways of doing things to get a better outcome. Second, that we have so many visitors indicates a high level of interest of teachers to want to pick good ideas, to apply to their own unique classroom settings. This sharing creates a virtuous cycle as both interest and the quality of projects have grown in terms of innovativeness, sophistication, reach, scale and impact.
This year’s theme is “Nurturing Every Child For The Future”. Under this broad theme, we have identified 5 areas of focus:
- Engaging Students
- Harnessing Technology
- Embracing Every Child
- Shaping Character
- Inculcating Global Outlook
Singapore has the ability to be in the forefront in the area of harnessing technology to engage students. We have many examples in this festival of those who use IT creatively to create experiential and interactive learning that can ignite our students’ interest in a variety of subjects. Besides bringing alive good content, IT can help in the 3 “I”s: Impart values, Inspire interest, and Invigorate the learner.
Education must be student centric. We should embrace every child by accepting his inherent traits, strengths and limitations. For each, we must help shape their character and provide them with a global outlook. This will give them that confidence to achieve success in their own terms and on their own merit.
The five areas of focus represent some of the key goals that we have set for ourselves for teaching and learning. These are important concepts but let me use a few examples to illustrate in flesh and blood what they mean in the daily lives of our schools
Our young play video games and are certainly more enthralled and engaged doing so compared to their studies. So, Anglo-Chinese School (Barker Road) developed a customized game-based program to supplement the teaching of Mathematics, Science and Geography. Together with NIE’s Learning Sciences Lab, they used an international open-source research project—Quest Atlantis, developed by Indiana University. In this project, students and teachers exist as avatars to solve and learn from a variety of missions and quests. These efforts build on a set of 6 games developed by one of the teachers and which won the Lenovo Innovation Award last year. For example, in the game titled “Investment Guru”, students assume the role of a trader in the stock market and build up their investment portfolio. Applying concepts such as profit and loss, percentage, and graphs, students have to analyze data and decide on the choice of investments. Other interesting tasks conceived in the game includes that of a Civil Engineer who needs to position columns and beams, and Football Club managers who need to manage their club. The results have been positive—teachers too find it enjoyable and even have to attend gaming workshops once a term to keep up with their students.
Pei Hwa Presbyterian Primary School wanted to improve creative writing for their Primary 4 students in English. They used familiar stories like Cinderella as the starting point. But students were allowed to change the characters, the setting and the plot. They were also taught how to animate their new fairy tales through a range of tools such as video gaming and editing software to more graphically tell the student’s story. As expected, it unleashed the creative energies of many closet script writers and directors. I was told that the approach is now being tested in Chinese composition lessons. This approach has received an international endorsement- the UNESCO ICT in Education Innovation Awards 2007-8.
In Greenridge Secondary School, Ms Pan Xuequn, used drama to help students learn English and Literature. Instead of just reading texts, the students have to act out their lessons. They also created spin-off storylines from characters in their literature text through drama exercises, storyboarding, and casting of actors and crew.
This innovative acting method can also be used for young students. In Yio Chu Kang Primary School, Ms Ariyanti Sukaimi uses “BACA”, a Malay acronym for “Colourful, Authentic & Fun for the Child” and text is taught through songs, dance, and skits. Parents can reinforce the learning at home through a resource package developed by Ms Ariyanti, which includes notes, brochures and toy cards to help their children read more effectively.
You can also help students learn by using day-to-day issues that they face. In Nanyang Primary School, students learn key mathematical concepts by tracking traffic statistics, putting together a menu with an allocated budget, and drafting pie charts of how they used their time and money. Students are then asked to reflect on abstract concepts such as data integrity. At the same time, teachers use “teachable moments” to reinforce the school’s core values—Respect, Responsibility, Resilience, Integrity, Care and Harmony.
MOE did not “instruct” you as educators to come up with these ideas. Even if we did, I doubt we would have much success. Good teachers are personally committed, and impact most students around them. If we have enough of these ground-up initiatives, collectively it will result in a great impact on the learning experiences of our children. What MOE will do is to continue to strengthen and enhance the structures and platforms we have in place to support, celebrate, recognise and fund innovations in the classroom. Our efforts are gaining momentum. Under the Teach Less Learn More Ignite! Framework, I am told that we have 106 on-going school-based curriculum innovation projects from 100 schools. This augurs well for our system as a whole.
Conclusion
I extend my heartiest congratulations to today’s award recipients. Your achievements exemplify the commitment and contributions made by school leaders, teachers and staff to create an engaging environment that can help our students learn.
I wish all of you an enjoyable and memorable day at MOE ExCEL Fest 2008 where we seek to “Nurture Every Child For The Future”.
Thank you.