Emerging Trends & Technologies in the Virtual K-12 Classroom

First of all, I would like to wish everyone a happy winter solstice and hope that you will be enjoying quality bonding time with family today.

In this blog post, I want to share the recent online course by Coursera which I have completed successfully. The course title is Emerging Trends & Technologies in the Virtual K-12 Classroom. Although this course is meant for teachers, my institution also made it compulsory for administrative staff especially those in the IT department to aware of the various technologies which could be used for teaching. The completion of this online course is another small achievement for me as we come to the end of 2016 and the beginning of my new job.

About this Course
Emerging technologies are quickly gaining momentum in the field of virtual K-12 instruction. In this course, we will explore how the latest trends in the use of technology affect student learning and engagement. What innovative learning spaces and tools are available to instructors?  How can instructors best utilize free and open resources to more deeply engage students in their learning? What impact can the use of emerging technologies have on student retention and performance?  We will discuss the possibilities and challenges of using technology in fully online environments, although many of the ideas can be applied to blended and traditional environments as well. Learners will compare and contrast tools for use in K-12 virtual instruction, as well as examine best practices for implementing and managing these tools.

Lesson Plan & Assessment 
The entire course is conducted over 5 weeks with video lessons and a short quiz (consisting of 5 multiple choice questions) for each week for week 1 to 4. Trainees are also required to complete a written assignment which will be reviewed and graded by 3 fellow trainees. Each trainee will be reviewing and grading the written assignment submitted by 3 other fellow trainees. For week 5, there is a video lesson on final course reflection and a final quiz consisting of 35 questions. The multiple choice questions are rather tricky and some require the candidate to select one or more correct answers. To complete the course, trainees are required to obtain a score of 80% or above for all quizzes and the written assignment. In addition, trainees must have reviewed and graded the written assignment submitted by 3 other fellow trainees.

My submissions for the assignment are described below. As the target audience for this course are teachers, I attempted this assignment in the context of a secondary 3 English teacher. There are 3 questions for this assignment as follows. My answers to these questions are written in blue color.

1. Briefly describe the particular activity or lesson you would like to create, improve, or change. Include the following information. Your response should be no more than two pages of text long.

• Grade level (or age of students) and subject
• Overview of the activity
• Up to three student learning outcomes this activity will address. If your institution is required to meet specific government-established standards, please also note them accordingly.
• Reason for creating, improving, or changing the activity

English, being the official language in many countries is estimated to be used by over 2 billion people in the world. In Singapore, English is the language of administration and is mandatory for all students who are grade 12 or below to pass its examination in order to advance to the next grade in education. The English language examination consists of essay writing which is a critical aspect in assessing the students' proficiency in using the language. As an English teacher in a secondary (middle) school, it is crucial for me to find ways to enhance my secondary 3 (equivalent to grade 9 in the United States) students' writing skill.

My class of 40 students are required to submit hard copy essay to me for review and grading on a fortnightly basis. The length of the essay is expected to be between 350 to 500 words. There are specific topics (either short stories or general issues) for the essay each fortnight. Some examples of the topic include "A Supernatural Encounter" and "Challenges Faced by Teenagers". After reviewing and grading the essays, I would return them to my students for their perusal. Only if time permits, I would share with my class during lesson some of the interesting essays or common mistakes made by the students in their essay writing.

There are 3 learning outcomes for this essay writing activity. Firstly, my students will be able to improve their grammar and build up their vocabulary which are the essential elements for writing. Secondly, writing essay facilitates the development of critical and analytical thinking skills through breaking down the topic into several subordinate ones in order to gain a better understanding. Thirdly, this activity fosters active reading by making my students do some research on the topic before writing.

As the essay writing portion of the English language examination has been amended to include a section that requires candidates to identify and then edit grammatical errors for a given text of continuous prose of not more than 250 words, it is now necessary to incorporate peer review of essay into my lesson plan. Moreover, with the introduction of the "teach less learn more" policy in Singapore, up to 20 per cent of content has been reduced from syllabuses. The shift of paradigm from feeding excessive knowledge to students directly to the students themselves learning through participation in innovative projects or activities allows teachers to devote more time to engage students in this area.

2. Identify the technology or trend you would like to apply to the lesson. In no more than two pages of text, answer the following questions:

• Why did you choose the technology?
• How will the technology enable your students to accomplish the stated learning outcomes?
• What challenges do you foresee in employing the technology?

In order to facilitate sharing and peer review of essays, a blog is certainly the best technology to leverage on since it supports long paragraphs of text. First of all, every teacher including me in my school is assigned a laptop computer which we can bring to classroom to conduct our lessons. Every classroom is equipped with a projector and Wi-Fi connection is available to teachers and students within the school premises. Majority (or in fact all) of the students own a smartphone and laptop or desktop computers at home. There are also several computer laboratories with high speed Internet connection in my school which can be used to conduct lessons. My students themselves have access to the Internet at home and also on their smartphones or tablets. There are in fact more than sufficient infrastructure to support our blogging activity. 

After considering a few blogging sites, Google Blogger was chosen due to cost, usability, popularity, accessibility and privacy. Without the need to pay a fee to use this blogging site eliminates the hassle and lengthy process of seeking the principal and parents' approval for funds. In terms of usability, Google Blogger provides an easy-to-use Rich-Text editor which the usage is similar to typing and formatting a document with Microsoft Word, the software which my students are already using to create documents for their project. One of the advantage of choosing Google Blogger is the fact that many people including some of my students already own a Google account and are able to start blogging without signing up. Google Blogger is also an asynchronous application which users can access anytime and anywhere using multiple platforms such as laptop and desktop computers, tablets and smartphones. High Internet bandwidth is not required by Google Blogger unless the blogger chooses to upload large-sized images or videos which should not be the case for our blogging activity. With the built-in privacy settings, my students may choose to grant viewing access to their blog posts only to authorised personnel like me and their fellow classmates.

With Google Blogger, my students can post their essays directly to this blogging site for me and fellow classmates to review and comment. The blogging tools enable them to include hyperlinks (useful for making access to additional information convenient to readers), pictures or even videos to make the content more interesting and appealing. My students will be more motivated to write essays if they are able to make use of technology to showcase their creativity. Naturally, their grammar and vocabulary improves after writing more essays. The ability to include hyperlinks, pictures and videos encourages my students to research on the topic and share their findings. Having the essays available online enables all students to have access and opportunity to review one another's essays without passing the hard copy around. This practice saves paper and in turn spare me the hassle of carrying them to classroom.
      
The biggest challenge I foresee is students spending enormous amount of time to decorate their blog. Although the design of the blog will not be taken into consideration when grading their essays, my students will insist on making their blog look as beautiful as possible in front of their fellow classmates. This will result in my students spending time to focus on the blog design rather than the quality of the essay. The way to overcome this challenge is to set a simple standard layout and design for my students to follow when writing their blog. Another major challenge I foresee is students who are weak in English or writing may not be willing to share their essay with everyone. In this case, the privacy settings can be used to control who can access the blog.

3. Identify how you will assess your students' work in the activity and the activity itself in no more than one page of text.

Every fortnight, I will give my students a choice of 3 or 4 essay topics to write by publishing the topics on my blog together with some keys points. Over the next few days, they will do their own research, write the essay on their blog and comment on fellow classmates' essays written on the previous fortnight while I review, comment and grade the essays which they had written on the previous fortnight. At the end of every fortnight, the students will be able to view comments (from me and other fellow classmates) of their essay in their blog. However, the grade I gave to their essays will be communicated to them privately. As the essays would remain in my students' blogs as long as they are not removed by the student, everyone can still continue to view and comment on one another's essay even after the essay has been reviewed and graded by me.

My submissions were reviewed by 3 guys. Based on their names, I could tell that the first reviewer (Reviewer A) is from Hong Kong while the the other 2 (Reviewer B and C) are from Singapore and in fact I found out that both of them are in the same institution as me (i.e. fellow colleagues) but from different departments as I could find their names on the MS Outlook address book. All 3 reviewers awarded full marks for my submissions. Their general feedback are as follows:

Reviewer A: Excellent!

Reviewer B: well done

Reviewer C: Clever use of blogs for student to post their work and allow a community to form within the class itself for the activity

As for me, I had reviewed and graded the submissions from Reviewer A (the guy from Hong Kong as I mentioned above), Reviewer B (also being mentioned above) and an Italian lady. From the submissions, I found out that Reviewer A is teaching Physics to 18 years old students and the Italian lady is a private tutor for students with dyslexia condition. Reviewer B is an administrative staff like me who is being forced to sign up for this course. He had attempted the assignment in the context of 18 years old students working on final year project in the institution we worked for. I had also awarded full marks for all 3 fellow trainees as they had really put in effort to produce clear and concise contents.

Overall, I achieved a final grade of 86.3% for this course.

Feel free to give me feedback on my submissions too. I would love to hear from you too especially if you are a teacher!

Sharing Session: My Western Europe Trip (May 2016)

For the annual get-together event in my company, employees have been asked to share fun things such as vacation, movie, new hobby or skill that we enjoyed this time round. As I am not a fan of movies, had no new hobby or skill, the only thing I could share is my vacation in end May this year. Since I had not blog about my vacation, it would be great to share what I had prepared for the sharing session as mentioned below.

I like to talk about some interesting encounters for my trip to Western Europe in May this year.

For this trip, I flew to London and proceeded to Southampton to embark on my cruise. The cruise itinerary consist of places in France, Spain and Portugal as shown in the map.

A TV channel showing the ship's navigational information such as its current position.

Many people are unaware that Southampton is the port which Titanic was docked before its fatal maiden voyage. Before the trip, I searched online for information and the exact location of berth 44 which is where Titanic was docked. Unfortunately, berth 44 is no longer accessible to the public today as it has been transformed into a berth for cargo vessels. As a mark of respect to the victims of Titanic, berth 44 has not been made a tourist attraction. Nevertheless, I managed to take a photo of berth 44 when my cruise ship sailed past. At the time I took the photo, a cargo vessel was docked there and it was easy to identify berth 44 as one of the bollard which Titanic was tied to was painted bright orange.

Berth 44 can be easily identified by its bright orange bollard and the cruise terminal beside it.

The first port of call, Le Harve in France had to be skipped due to a nation wide strike. Fortunately, this did not affect me since I visited Paris after the cruise. If you are planning a trip to Western Europe, you really need to be aware of labour strike.

Letter explaining that Le Harve port had to be skipped.

At some places, tourists like me are having difficulty differentiating between male and female toilet. I recalled when I was in Lisbon, toilet signs showed "HOMEM" and "SENHORA". As I entered the one showing "HOMEM", I was glad to see the urinal which was an indication that I entered the correct toilet. The hilarious part was to see a lady (probably an American) coming out of this "HOMEM" toilet before I entered. You can imagine how much confusion the toilet signs caused.

Which is Male and which is Female toilet?

I find the most interesting place for this cruise is Lisbon as Portugal is a less popular destination compared to U.K., France and Spain. Although Lisbon is a laid back city, there are still things to explore there. As my ship enters downtown Lisbon, the 2 icons were clearly visible. The first icon is the statue of Jesus Christ which is similar to the one in Brazil. The second icon is the Golden Gate Bridge which is similar to the one in San Francisco as both were built by the same contractor. Perhaps the most famous thing about this country which we know is the tarts. Portuguese tarts contain custard while the ones eaten here in Asia are egg tarts. If you have not been there, you wouldn't be aware of the difference.

Lisbon - a laid back city	Golden Gate Bridge & Jesus Christ Statue
Portuguese Tarts (Custard) v.s. Macau Tarts (Egg)

After the end of my cruise, I toured London for 2 days before heading to Paris. There aren't many things to mention about these 2 cities as most of us are already familiar with the attractions they have. However, something I feel worth mentioning is the Paris Opera House which is definitely a place to visit if you are a fan of the Phantom Of The Opera musical. There are some true elements in this opera house that inspired the author to write this story and it is not completely frictional as what we believe. One example is the underground lake that really existed in the Paris Opera House. In fact, the underground lake is so suitable for inhabitants that it really makes people wonder if the Phantom really existed.

The underground lake that exists underneath the Paris Opera House indicates that the Phantom story was much more than a fairy tale.

References

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/article3213127.ece

https://www.inspireddiversions.com/article.php?id_art=118

Truth behind The Phantom of the Opera

As I took a scroll inside my school library after having lunch, I happened to chance upon this renowned novel placed at a quiet corner of this library consisting of several levels. It was indeed surprising to find novels and comics in the library of a tertiary institution where there are no arts/literature related schools or courses. As an avid West-End musical lover and a fan of this novel, I borrowed the book without hesitation. One of the benefits which I enjoyed as a staff of this wonderful institution is having the privilege to loan items from the library for a period of 28 days. I have heard that the students themselves could only loan library items for about 2 or 3 weeks.

Reading this novel from the book directly is indeed boring without the sights and sounds that the audience enjoyed in a film or musical. Although the publisher of the book claimed that with these movies and stage musicals of this novel, nothing can arouse such mounting dread as the original novel, I doubt anyone in modern day would be interested to read from the book. As I read the first 2 chapters, I noticed that the author used long sentences to describe the appearances, sights and sounds of the various settings. In some instances, I even had problem understanding what the author was trying to convey. Perhaps the reason for these poor clarity sentences is the result of the difficulties in translating from French to English. It was after-all a French novel and the true meaning could probably only be understood in French context. You may have wondered why I wanted to torture myself to read this novel when I had actually seen the musical. My original intention of reading this novel was to compare the differences in the story-line between the novel and musical version. However, the thing that really aroused my attention comes from the Prologue section of the book. In fact, the first 2 sentences in the Prologue was "The opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers, the cloak-room attendants or the concierge. ". All the while, we all believe that the story of the Phantom of the Opera is a friction and none of the characters including the Phantom himself existed. Why did the author strongly insisted that the Phantom existed even at his death-bed? Could he had written the story based on some facts and imaginations? If this was the case, which are the facts and which are his imaginations? This are the things I am interested to find out. Upon doing some research by searching on Google, I had found sufficient information to clear my doubts.

The story of the Phantom of the Opera was written by Gaston Leroux (a French journalist and author of detective friction). When it was first published in 1911. it was so unpopular that it went out of print. Only after this novel was made into films and rode on the success of the popular Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1986 musical, it became so well-known not only to the English speaking world but many parts of the world. Experts who researched into this subject found several aspects of the story ( as mentioned below) are true.

The Place

The setting of the story took place in the Paris Garnier, an majestic opera house built between 1861 to 1875. It was believed that before the construction, a seemingly endless flow of water bubbled up from the swampy, newly cleared ground. Since the construction team failed to pump the site dry, a huge, stone water tank (know as the "lake") had to be built underneath the opera house. The weight of this water tank helps to stabilise the building. The opera house underground consists of alcoves, arches and passageways which joins up with other watery cellars under the street of Paris. Experts believed that Leroux had probably used this underground network of drainage (below the opera house) as an inspiration for the place which the Phantom lived in. People who had visited the place were convinced that someone could have lived there. This is a logical conclusion since it was not surprising to find many homeless people in Paris during those days. The mishap of a chandelier in the opera house that fell and killed a construction worker gave Leroux further inspiration to have the Phantom causing chandelier to fall and kill an audience.

The Phantom

The word "Phantom" is a term for French ghost. However, there were probably no ghost existed in the Paris Garnier. The Phantom is based upon a man named Erik who was born with a horribly disfigured face. Erik was abandoned by his parents at a young age. He eventually became an architect’s assistant which gave him the opportunity to design and built several harems. He was later appointed as one of the contractors of the Paris Garnier where he earned enough money to lead a comfortable life. Just as in the story, Erik wore a dress suit, a cloak, a large felt hat and a mask to hide his deformed face. Erik also had a personal "Box 5" at the opera house. He indeed fell in love with one of the opera singers but was rejected by her. Erik kidnapped the opera singer and eventually became so heartbroken that he locked himself up and died of starvation in his underground home.

In his book, Leroux mentioned in the prologue about that a corpse was uncovered when the opera house cellar was being prepared to house phonographic recordings and the corpse was believed to be Erik because of the gold ring which he was known to wear. There was no evidence to support the discovery of the corpse but the burying of recording indeed took place in 1907. In 2007, these records were dug up and digitised by EMI.

At the time when Leroux was writing the story, the Paris Garnier was believed to be haunted probably because people mistook Erik as a ghost due to the way he dressed and his discreet behaviour or because of the death of Erik after the kidnap incident.

Christine Daae

The lead character of Christine Daae in the story was believed to be based on a famous soprano singer, Christina Nilsson who inspired Leroux due to her incredible vocal range, lovely figure and clear blue eyes. Christina Nilsson's background had many similarities with Christine Daae that supported this claim.

Raoul

Another lead character, Raoul together with his romance with Christine Daae appears to be purely frictional. Leroux mentioned about the disappearance of Vicomte (French term for a noble of varying status) de Chagny and the death of his brother, Count Philippe whose body was found on the bank of the lake that exist in the lower cellars of the Paris Garnier. The magistrate that investigated this case believed that the two brothers had tried to kill each other and there was nothing related to Erik's kidnapping of the soprano singer. There was also no evidence to suggest that the two brothers were related to the Phantom or Paris Garnier in any way. The famous Chagny case had probably led Leroux to include the fantasy of the romance between Christine and Raoul in the story to make it more interesting.

-------------------------------------------------

If you are an avid fan of the Phantom like me, I recommend you to visit Paris Garnier and watch a performance in Box 5 where the Phantom used to occupy. Only after you have an experience of the view from Box 5, you probably could understand why the Phantom chose this box.

References

https://seeksghosts.blogspot.sg/2014/01/the-phantom-of-opera-fact-or-fiction.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/7244338/Where-the-Phantom-was-born-the-Palais-Garnier.html

http://www.messynessychic.com/2014/08/26/unmasking-the-parisian-phantom-of-the-opera/

Internet of Things (IoT)

It has been reported extensively in the news that Singapore is striving towards being a Smart Nation where people are empowered by technology to lead meaningful and fulfilled lives. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept of linking things (devices) through network connectivity in order to support this Smart Nation initiative. This post shall give you a rough idea on IoT.

Introduction (What is IoT?)
•    Inclusion of a microchip into devices to enable connection to a network.
•    Allows such devices to collect and exchange data over the network.
•    Objective is to achieve little or no human intervention.
•    Devices are uniquely identified by Internet Protocol version 6 (IP v6) which is able to scale large number of devices.

Examples of Technologies that enable IoT
1.    Ethernet – General purpose networking standard for fibre network links.
2.    HomePlug – Networking standard for home or building’s power lines.
3.    Bluetooth – Enables mobile devices in close proximity to communicate with one another.
4.    Near Field Communication (NFC) – Incorporated into smartphones for access to public transportation.

Examples of Applications of IoT

1.  Consumer Appliances
•    Enables the owner to control the appliances without being in close proximity (e.g. turning on the air-conditioner to cool the room before reaching home).

2.  Medical & Healthcare
•    Enables remote health monitoring & emergency notification (e.g. pacemakers having the ability to inform the hospital automatically in the event of cardiac arrest).

3.  Transportation
•    Enables communications, control, and information processing across transportation systems (e.g. smart parking system that guides the vehicle driver to the nearest available parking lot).

4.  Environmental Monitoring
•    Assist in environmental protection through monitoring.
•    Ideal for mobility and monitoring large geographic areas (e.g. earthquake & tsunami warning systems) due to wireless sensing.

Challenges of IoT

1.  Precision
•    Inaccurate location or timing causes failure and sometimes danger (e.g. in a vehicle-to-vehicle communication system, inaccurate location causes failure to apply the brakes in time to prevent collision).

2.  Adaptability & Scalability
•    Must be adaptable and scalable through software or added functionality that integrates with the overall solution (e.g. the air-conditioner having the capability to be turned on/off remotely, it should be able to integrate with another application that turns on/off the air-conditioner and other devices at pre-determined timings).

3.  Security
•    Connected to network increases the risk of unauthorised access and attacks (e.g. hacking into the vehicle communication system to disable the brakes as a form of sabotage).

4.  Maintenance & Updates
•    Systems need to be continually modified or updated to meet changing requirements (e.g. a mobile app for communication need to be updated to include a new feature to enable video chatting).

Artificial Intelligence
•    IoT produces sheer volume of data which must be analysed for continuous improvement to the business process.
•    Applying artificial intelligence is therefore necessary to improve the speed and accuracy of analysing IoT data.
•    Examples:
      - Robotic vacuum cleaner that remembers the home layout and determine the most efficient movement to clean the house.
      - Smart thermostat solution that controls energy usage based on the regular temperature preferences and work schedules of its users.
      - Self-driving vehicle that determines the most ideal route to the destination based on map and traffic conditions.

IoT Architecture

There are 4 major layers in the IoT architecture namely:

1. Sensors - Devices that collect and send data.
2. Infrastructure - Facilities that support storage and connectivity.
3. Platform - An application that integrates the various applications (i,e, system of systems).
4. Applications - Suite of applications that support a particular area (e.g. there are applications such as Fire Alarm System, Temperature Control System and Access Control System for Building Management).

The Sensors are connected to the Infrastructure via channels such as Mobile Data, WIFI and Bluetooth. As the objective of IoT is to achieve little or no human intervention, it is therefore necessary to integrate related applications together. Hence, the Platform layer is being introduced. The Platform (system of systems) layer is hosted on the Infrastructure itself and communicates with the various related Applications (such as Fire Alarm System, Temperature Control System and Access Control System) via interfacing protocols such as REST, SOAP and Web Services. With the introduction of the Platform layer, individual group of users that operate a single application are no longer required. Instead, there would be a single group of users that operate this Platform (system of systems) in the command centre.

The key challenges faced by integrating systems include:

1. Visualization - Due to the large number of functionalities that the Platform layer needs to support, presenting the user interface can be a major challenge. Nevertheless, the user interface must be intuitive in order for the system to be successful.
2. Performance - As multitasking (many background processes running concurrently) is highly possible in order to support the large number of functionalities, performance would be a possible issue. The infrastructure must be powerful and application codes must be written effectively to improve performance.
3. Workflow - When different applications are integrated together, there may be business rules that conflict with one another. A good example is the Temperature Control System that switches on the air-conditioner when the room temperature is above 27 degree Celsius. However, when the room temperature is above 50 degree Celsius, the Fire Alarm System would be activated as there is a high possibly of a fire outbreak. In this case, the Temperature Control System would also switch on the air-conditioner as the room temperature is above 27 degree Celsius. Hence, it may be necessary to adjust the business rules accordingly.
4. Analytic - A sheer volume of data would be produced when applications are integrated together. Applying artificial intelligence is therefore necessary to improve the speed and accuracy of analysing these data.

References

1.    Internet of things (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_things

2.    5 Key Challenges Facing the Industrial Internet of Things
http://www.cio.com/article/2872574/it-industry/5-key-challenges-facing-the-industrial-internet-of-things.html

3.    Artificial Intelligence Plus the Internet of Things (IoT) – 3 Examples Worth Learning From
http://techemergence.com/artificial-intelligence-plus-the-internet-of-things-iot-3-examples-worth-learning-from/

Watching Musical @ West End

As an avid fan of western musicals, it has always been my dream to watch musicals at West End theatres. Chanced upon this site while searching for my favourite Love Never Dies musical, I thought the dream of watching my favourite musical at West End could be fulfill.

https://www.londontheatredirect.com/musical/765/Love-Never-Dies-tickets.aspx

Since there was a chat feature in this website and I couldn't find any dates for this musical, I decided to use it to enquire about ticket bookings.

Here is how the chat went.

Theatre Staff A: Good evening, this is XXXXX. How can I help you?

Me: Good evening. May I know the dates which Love Never Dies will be shown at the Adelphi theatre?

Theatre Staff B: Good evening, that was shown 4 years ago. As far as we understand, Love Never Dies will not be coming back anytime soon. We are currently showing Kinky Boots at the Adelphi theatre.

Me (feeling disappointed): Oh OK. Thank you and have a nice day!

After checking on Google, I found out that Love Never Dies is currently showing in Hamburg, Germany and no signs of it coming to Singapore yet. However, its prequel, the all time favourite Phantom Of The Opera will be showing at London's Her Majesty Theatre till end of 2016. I could still consider catching this musical instead.