PBL Project Roots (the Singaporean context)

I am currently working for the British Council (BC) in Singapore. The British Council is the United Kingdom’s cultural branch, a kind of a ministry of culture under another name. In most of the countries in which they operate, their main order of business is to teach English as a foreign language, as well as to promote cooperation between Britain’s cultural institutions and those of the host country.

In Singapore, because the language of instruction in public and most private schools is English, the British Council’s remit is to support the national curriculum in English in an ESL context. Tuition is paid here for young learners in order to give them extra support in acquiring standard English (as opposed to the local patois, referred to affectionately as Singlish), but also to help them succeed in their final exams. Singaporean parents are, to put it quite mildly, very highly focused on getting good grades.

Five years ago, the government adopted a “new” English curriculum that focused on critical thinking, innovation, and authentic texts, while introducing and  stressing the importance of visual literacy. These “new” skills were billed 21st century skills, and threw many Singaporeans for one heck of a loop.

I will be working in coordination with the head middle and high school education for the BC, to design a project that is suitable to this Singaporean context, i.e., to students who need support in succeeding in this new curriculum that, theoretically, is refractory to rote learning, and seems to lend itself so well to project-based learning.

The goal, therefore, is to design a project that includes does the following:

• Helps students improve literacy with regards to a variety of different text types, e.g., brochures, articles, architectural and interior design, 2-d visuals from a variety of sources, etc.
• Helps students improve their ability to write about, speak about, and represent the above text types.
• Includes field work in order for students to experience those text types in authentic circumstances.
• Allows students to revisit, review and revise their final presentations numerous times, and from several different perspectives, in order to reinforce newly acquired language skills.
• Be directly and strongly connected to Singapore’s social and historical context.

Digital Divide/ Digital Inequality

After some research, I have used Google Slides to prepare a presentation on the digital divide.

Digital Divide Presentation

This was my first experience making a slide presentation, and I enjoyed it a lot. Finding images that supported my message, without necessarily repeating my message, was fun and challenging. One of the things that surprised me, though, was how few images (relatively speaking) are available via creative commons. I used Google Images to find my images, using a non-commercial use creative commons filter. I wonder if there is a place to look for a wider selection of rights-free images.

The topic itself is one that I’ve thought about in the past, but doing the research helped me to insert it into a wider perspective. Technology is a horse with rotten teeth, which we have been trained not to look in the mouth, because we’re so happy to be able to get on and ride.

I’m not sure I can say what I plan to do with this knowledge, because the most important thing I learned is that technology issues, including the digital divide, are ethical questions. The only way to deal with ethical questions, I think, is to avoid setting rigid guidelines for yourself, but rather to make yourself into a generally more ethical person. By expanding one’s points of view, practicing compassion, and questioning oneself, one can become better skilled at making the right ethical choices. This is what I intend, and have long intended to do.

If I had more time, I would put images into one of the slides that currently doesn’t have any images in it at all. I skipped ahead when I got to that slide because I was stuck, and forgot about it, until I had almost finished recording my Voicethread. I think I would have had to start all over in order to modify that slide, and I was out of time at that point.

I would also find a way to connect my presentation to the AECT standards. I’m still confused about this requirement. The AECT doesn’t say anything at all worth mentioning about the digital divide. How can we link them together?