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1. Description of Our Community
Singapore is a small city-state nation having an area of 752 square kilometres. In fact, we are ranked the 44th smallest nation in the world. The population of Singapore is about 4.5 million. Singapore is a multiracial country made mainly of 4 ethnic groups. They are the Chinese (76%), Malays (13%), Indians (9%) and the Eurasians (1%).
Singapore does not have long and rich recorded history like China, India or Europe, the people here consists mainly of immigrants from China and India about 180 years ago, although the Malays have probably came here more than 10 centuries ago. The proper documented history of modern Singapore can be dated back from the year 1819, known today as the founding year of modern Singapore. Before that, either was there a lack of proper documents or the documents were not well-kept till today, although archaeological findings show that Singapore was a thriving sea trade port in the 13th century. The darkest moment of the history of modern Singapore is probably from 1942 to 1945, the 3 years and 8 months of Japanese occupation of Singapore. During that period, there were many people coming together and experienced the same fate. There were 5 persons whom we think can be accredited as heroes of Singapore during World War Two, during the Japanese occupation of Singapore. Who are they? Click on our project to find out more.
2. Summary of Our Project
The project describes firstly, the lives of the people of Singapore in the 1940s before the Japanese Occupation and then identifies 5 people who are regarded as heroes during the occupation. The project describes in details the heroes’ lives during that time and how each of them contributed to the society of Singapore then. It also briefly describes the battle of Singapore and the lives of the people during the occupation. Next and most importantly, the project lists down the lessons learnt from the occupation and from the heroes, and how the heroes were being remembered today.
3. Our Computer and Internet Access
A. Percentage of students using the Internet at home:more than 50%
B. Number of workstations with Internet access in the classroom:more than 6
C. Connection speed used in the classroom:dedicated connection
D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:more than 6
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
Our main problems were the formation of our team and shortage of meeting time and project time. As we were primary school pupils advancing to the secondary school level, we had just joined this new School. We like to do this project because we were interested to work on a project and we liked the project theme. We also wanted to contribute something to the school as well as to the community. The team members met to discuss the project only in January 2013. Our project team members are very committed to the project as we all came from the same Co-curriculum Club. We allocated tasks fairly and quickly. We learnt technology skill like Photoshop, Flash and Movie Maker. Sometimes we had to bring our work home. As the deadline drew near, we had to rush and spent our one week break working on the project. This proved that we had endured through this major problem that could easily dissuade us in further doing of the project. It was a feat we could not call small.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
Our interest in this project gave us the motivation and strength to persevere. As we had volunteered to participate in this project, we had to commit our time to ensure we complete the task. We have learnt many things when working for the Cyberfair Competition that we could not do so in the normal classroom like teamwork, research skill, communication and IT skills. We also learnt a lot from the organisation we are working on the project, that is the National Heritage Board. When we visited the Reflections at Bukit Chandu, which is a World War II interpretative centre, we learnt to be more observant of the display and story depicted there. We also pay attention to the tour officer there. We realized that teamwork is very important. We learnt to research for information from various resources like the internet, newspaper and we also consulted personnel working in the Interpretative Centre. The tour officer from the Centre was very helpful to provide us with the necessary information.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
In Singapore, the Ministry of Education recommended the Baseline ICT Standards, which is a comprehensive list of ICT skills competencies, to be integrated into core subject areas and project work. In participating in the CyberFair Competition, the pupils were able to accomplish the following skills areas such as (1) Learning to operate in an interactive media environment, (2) Learning internet navigation and use search engines independently, (3) Learning to create, edit and format text with word processor, (4) Learning to produce and manipulate multimedia content like flash and PhotoShop, and (5) Learning online communication skill like wiki. At the same time, they learn to respect Intellectual Property and practice safe and responsible use of the internet.
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