I am beginning to be interested in bringing OLPC to Singapore especially to the lower-income group. Of course I did my homework, and it's rather disappointing the way MOE has done its ICT. It's frankly speaking, bullshit that allows vendors to gain extra profits at no value-addedness to the kids. Its sad that our children have to withstand shit like that.
Oh well. lately I've written 2 essays about my life and how it has led to me where I am today, on the edge of everything. It's great that I have found a group of people to relate to, to talk to, people who have the dare and the courage to fight for their ideas and live every moment of their lives to see it becoming a reality. I don't know why, but I just don't have the guts yet, probably because there are too many things pulling me in different directions.
Things won't work out so well yet, I guess, and for now, my life is this mess that's struggling to self-organized.
Till another time.
Wednesday, 5 March 2008
olpc and some other stuff
Sunday, 20 January 2008
after watching too many ted videos...
My 'TED' wish, is to set up a TED community in NUS. This community will come together to share ideas, about the things they are passionate about, and it'll be held like every month or so at some lecture theatre there. This thing will be entirely voluntary, the most difficult thing is to publicise this thing.
Anyway, here's something else - its slightly bigger and many more times more ambitious. My second 'TED' wish is to transform Singapore into a leading edge global city that does not merely want to catch up to other cities, but carve a place for itself in the world. Get what I mean? Its going to be about technological literacy, getting more tech companies to set up centres here, not just for marketing, but for research and all.
Here are some ideas - consolidate our education system - education should be more dynamic, not only restricted to schools, and teachers should not be limited to the classroom. Give our teachers more space to do their work. Who joins the teaching profession to do things other than teach? Schools should be seen as a public good. We should revise our ranking systems - seems to commercialise schools. Ranking system has become counter-productive. Schools emphasize ranking over the education of their students - which sucks for our kids. What we need may only be some indicators of areas schools are good at.
If the children of a village in Peru can all have laptops, why can't we do the same? OLPC!
Implement the open-source learning for teachers (from TED).
We cannot just mouth words like 'innovation' and 'creative'. Watching TED videos have seriously revitalised my belief in the power of innovate and create. but in order to do either, we must first open up ourselves to possibilities. I believe Singapore can be a cutting edge city. Do others believe? The world will move faster and faster....