Tag: reflections

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visit to central library

thanks 8bro R for establishing the connections and making our visit to central library possible. it’s been a while since my last visit to national library (aka central library, or officially central public library). eye-opening to see how a brick and motar library (of yesteryears) is renewing itself relevant in this digital era, where pple consume, if not overwhelmed by, multimedia more than words-only media. and my theory behind this sight – the power of mission (aka v&m).

so what’s the takeaways from the visit to personal l&d? well, it’s not new but more of a reminder perhaps, that connecting mission (& vision) for your pple (from a leadership perspective) is key/critical. what’s the meaning of ‘library’ today or tomorrow? how does that laying one brick contributes to the building of a skyscraper. how many pple look at a building and think of the individual bricks (or blocks)? cos it doesn’t really matter. but to the worker, it may mean something (aside than the salary $ of cos).

mission gives meaning to who are we? why are we ‘here’. and leaders remind pple of meaning with the mission (it’s part of their job). otherwise, it’s easy for individuals to forget why they are doing what they’re doing (forgetting is human nature; possibly neuroscience evidence too). say, looking ard us now, it’s the mission clearly articulated (and regularly reminded)?

(image credit: https://nus.edu.sg/osa/keviihall/open-house-2024)

a final random thought that pops up — even when i was a hostelite, we had a ‘mission’ – “we are full-time hostelites, part-time students”.

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a reflection on “芸芸众生，日日忙忙碌碌何为？”

there’s only one certainty in life since birth — death.
but the time in-between birth to death is unknown to the individual (while some pple may argue that some higher beings/deities know/control/pre-determined it).
what would then one need to do to pass the time in-between?
ironically, the first thing is to find sustenance, to sustain the ever-dying shell; regardless if you are humans or prokaryotes, you do the same. in the grown up world context, it would mean “earning a living”, for most is to find a job(s) to earn an income to find sustenance and obtain things, to prevent the shell from dying too fast.
when one is able to find sustenance, and there’s still energy and time and not yet time to rest/sleep to regain energy for finding sustenance, pple begin to choose things to do (e.g., entertainment, interests, hobbies).

and life goes on like that, day in day out, excluding ‘sudden death’ events, the shell slowly crawls towards the certainty.

so back to the question, 芸芸众生，日日忙忙碌碌何为？the answer is perhaps 为了不死，或知道会死但不要想太多？
so what’s death? would death means ‘nothing’ at t+1? i wouldnt know for sure, but perhaps ‘nothing’ is the conception for those who seek early ‘termination’ on the journey to certainty?

different religions (generally defined as a set of beliefs, practices, and moral codes that relate to the nature of the universe and the place of individuals within it) would have shed different lights on the question of “芸芸众生，日日忙忙碌碌何为？”. from a buddhist perspective, one is trapped in the worldly cycle of death and rebirth (aka samsara). and one truth in this trap is suffering (dukkha), which can refer to “direct suffering, being liable to suffering, a bodily painful feeling, or unsatisfactoriness, deficiency, insufficiency.” not sure if there’s another religion where suffering is absent, not there at all?

how to attain the end of suffering, the end of the cycle, and thus the 芸芸众生，日日忙忙碌碌? it would be to work towards enlightenment through eliminating ignorance and craving. the method is to follow the eightfold path (八正道): right understanding, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

so if you are a 芸芸众生 like me reading this in the midst of 日日忙忙碌碌, perhaps you can find a way in your (religious) beliefs to explain the purpose of your 日日忙忙碌碌 and if there’s a way to seek an end to it, of cos unless you love work so much and also there’s no ‘suffering’ in life. for me, the eightfold path (八正道) would be a good start, if not a reminder (:

references:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Buddhism/The-Four-Noble-Truths
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zg7297h/revision/3
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zyhmk2p/revision/1

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first biweekly reflection piece of the year

school has decided to encourage teachers to perform biweekly reflection (in an pre-assigned google sheet) this year, and below’s my piece posted to the YI PD Lounge @workplace instead:

two weeks of teaching (& learning) have passed, and as we consolidate our experiences and pen some reflections, there are two possible avenues to do this. the first convenient way is to use the assigned Gsheet template, which is good for those of us who believes reflection is private or perhaps we’re “shy” abt it. the second way is to post it here in our PD Lounge; this is suitable and encouraged if you (too) believe that professional learning is a social phenomenon. after all, all ideas are good and improvable, and therefore, all reflections are good reflections that can only become good-er through our social discourse.

in this reflection, i’ll write abt a phenomenon instead of focusing on a specific lesson (you could do the same too, for freedom of choice is key in adult learning). the phenomenon is that of “sec 1 students”. having only taught sec 1s during my practicum and first year as a bt, it’s absolutely refreshing to get to teach sec 1 again after 20 years. compared to the sec 3-5s that i had been teaching (and graduating), the sec 1s are extremely high in energy level, highly enthusiastic, and highly impressionistic. this is the first time in my career that on just the second teaching day (i.e. T1W2D2), two students walking passed said “陈老师，我们喜欢你(的课)”, and i was caught off-guard and didn’t know how to react to this evidence of the 3-highs.

harnessing the 3-highs, with the vision of developing Leaders for Tmr, i have invested considerable time to teach and negotiate classroom routines, lesson expectations, and what learning is about, including possible habits of becoming a more effective learner (cf. syllabus contents). take my IQ form class students as an example, i have (attempted to) impressed upon them the importance of asking “Why” from day 1 and reinforcing it (through teacher modelling, which is a powerful approach) on different days for the past two weeks. Asking Why is not only in-line with the Inquisitiveness spirit, but more importantly, it activates the mind to think deeper, even if the Whys are not verbalised (oh yes, when to verbalise and ask, and when not to verbalise and ask during lessons, is something to be taught in the future; communication is after all an art). in the meantime, i must apologise if you are teaching 1IQ students and they are disturbing you with Whys more often than expected. so how well my “investment” would return is gonna be a longitudinal study. will monitor and report back as time goes.

how’s your experience with our pioneer sec 1s? are they the same, different, or same-same-but-different in the first two weeks? feel free to leave comment(s) to interact and share/add-on your experiences, for learning is in the discourse 🙂 thanks for reading!

permalink: https://onepublicservice.workplace.com/groups/yipdloungewp/posts/4151763408259981

#biweeklyreflections #4ideaimprovement

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western medicine and chinese medicine

正巧今天在家吃western medicine养病，在ST上看到一则由kishore mahbubani教授所写的一则名为”take holistic approach to public policy”的专栏，内容主要借western medicine来比喻我国在50年内取得骄人的成就，其实就是因为我们有各种措施能对症下药，同西药般的有效，能头痛医头，脚痛医脚（去除贬义）。但是国家若要更进步，或许是时候带入中医的方法，将整个行政体制视作一个共通holistic的系统进行，吃中药使各部分互相协调运作。

我觉得这段话是最一针见血的：

“when we do a holistic analysis (of our public policies), we have to factor in non-material considerations of ethics and values, as well as social considerations. simply relying on economic principles or on the forces of the market would be incomplete, if not downright wrong. hence, in our public policies, we must give increasing weight to the intangible.”

教育如同上述，西药的治法是头痛医头脚痛医脚药到病除；中药虽非能立竿见影，却或许是十年树木，百年树人之方也。

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Reflection on 5 K-12 Technology Trends for 2010

found this THE Journal article via TuckSoon’s blog, and thought perhaps i can write some thoughts as well. haven been able to post much meaningful things to this space for a long while … the five (5) trends:

1. eBooks Will Continue to Proliferate
i’m not sure how popular eBooks are with our youth or in our classrooms. personally i dont own one, nor like to own one at this point in time. staring at a monitor/screen whole day long a work is enough for me, no more screen per se; plus an eBook is still not built for quick browsing; reliant on power source is always an issue for any electronic device. if u’re like me who likes to use a pen/pencil/highlighters to draw/scribble in a (text)book, or even to fold pages of a book as bookmarks, an eBook doesnt seem to be able to meet my needs. last but not least, i’m worried for our world-class myopia rate among youth.

improving presentation aside, as mentioned in the article, i think an eBook will really be of value and not just electronic paper, if any content in the book will seamlessly link me to the larger community, as large as the internet, as close as my study mates. ideas can be exchanged, explored and clarified while one reads from an eBook. perhaps the eBook techonology has reached this stage and i’m totally unaware of it? utterly possible. if so, i would like to play with one and explore its capabilities for learning and teaching in the classroom.

2. Netbook Functionality Will Grow
we juz gotten ourselves an acer aspireone recently, as the price was too attractive to be missed on a purchase-with-purchase deal. after using so many different laptops all these years, i only like three things abt a netbook (1) lightweight (2) long battery life (3) relatively cheap full-capability computing device (not suitable for CPU or graphics intensive application though). i’m not quite sure what other functionality the author hopes to see, but personally if a netbook can be turned into a TabletPC with stylus input (not touchscreen type, e.g. kohjinsha, asus t91; but TC1100 for e.g.). if the true tabletPC stylus input capability is extended to the netbook, it would allow for an additional way for students to interact with the device.

3. More Teachers Will Use Interactive Whiteboards
anyone who’s been into a classroom can testify the importance of a black/whiteboard. however, the ‘light speed’ development of ICT doesnt seem to quite catch up with this one single piece of ‘educational technology’ in our classroom. personally, i would be most happy if more teachers have the chance to access and use an IWB in his/her classroom. though some may argue that an IWB promotes mostly frontal teaching, well, i would say frontal teaching wont go away even if there isnt the IWB. it’s a change in the pedagogy of the teacher that should be looked into, and i believe an IWB will be able to find it’s place for any methodology/pedagogy a teacher chooses to adopt. here’s a lesson i had cooked while imagining i had an IWB in the classroom. yes, the sad fact is i have never had the chance to teach in a classroom with IWB.

4. Personal Devices Will Infiltrate the Classroom
this would be true if it’s not already been so. once again, the key question here is how a school and/or a teacher would harness the positive impact of such a trend. if i recall, most, if not all telcos, are allowing unlimited smses for their student plans. if only i can cheaply and easily acquire a device attached to my laptop that can receive sms responses from students, assessment for learning would be made an instantaneous reality. how nice (:

5. Technology Will Enable Tailored Curricula
reading from the article, i do not doubt the capability of our LMS vendors to further enhance their capabilities to track students’ performances. i think the difficulty for a teacher would be how can i manage these wealth of data (that’s a nice way to say data OVERLOADING). our teacher to student ratio is still far from the day (if this day will ever come) when a teacher can comfortably tailor his/her instructions to recognise the diverse capabilities and learning needs of individual students. it’s not a technological issue here, but a human plus a larger systemic and reality issue that we’re looking at over here.

…. it’s getting late … time to sleep … (:

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