From the Desk of Mr Daniel

This week is a busy week for me. Apart from my usual project work lessons and lab duties, I am also involve in the students' competition. There is no lunch for me on Monday, as I need to attend to a last minute project work meeting. As the Thinkquest Website Competition is still ongoing, I have to divide my time between the last Photoshop training session and competition advising. I know this is a bad arrangement as it is diffucult to manage but I have no choice. I cannot be in two places at one time.

Today (Tuesday) is another packed day. Meetings with teachers and normal lessons are packed from morning to afternoon. I only have an hour in between to catch a breath. The Sec 3NT students are rather restless today. The Sec 4NT students are fine when I do a skill check with them and teach them new skills in audio editing using Audacity software. Immediately after my last lesson, I assist other group of students in iSports Media Challenge 2009 competition in their equipments.


The rest of the afternoon is dedicated to staff training. Around 40 staffs attended the training. This is my first time conducting a mass training for staff. Feedbacks were encouraging. Really appreciated my HOD's help and advise.


I felt bad as I feel that I am not able to support those website competition students well. But at the same time, I am glad that those who turned up are very independent and is able to coordinate well. The students definately picked up project coordinating & team management skills. On my side, I have also picked up competition management skills.


The busy days will soon arrive. There will be more training and project work lessons to handle. I am facing my oncoming responsibilities with pride and with stride!

I attended the Comic in Education Seminar at Ngee Ann Polytechnic organised by Dhoby Studios. The seminar gives us educators an overview of how comics can be used to effectively redefine teaching and learning.

We have a chance to listen to the experience of Mr Gary Goh of Doby Studios (Producer of 小白龙 comic series) as well as Mr Otto Fong of Ottonium (Author of Sir Fong 1 & 2 & Sir Fong's Adventures in Science) We also heard Tanjong Katong Secondary School's sharing on integrating Comics into Chinese Curiculum as well as Wacom product introduction and Comic Studio product demonstration.

Mr Otto Fong's passion in using comics in education left a deep impression in my mind. I was so impressed that I purchase 2 of his books (which costed $19 in total).

The missing link in Asian education is that we often forgot that in order to teach any subject, we need to relate it to passion. We do not remember facts and figures but actions and drama. The future belongs to an age of visual. If we wish to survive, we need techniques and passion. The minds of current students are constantly stimulated and conditioned visually by the internet, videos and games. They read less and watched more and write in SMS format. To engage them, we have to change our approach and methods of teaching.

Enjoy a video presentation by Mr Fong:

I have upgraded my blog's 3 column HTML layout into XML Layout. As promised, this new XML layout is more powerful and easy to edit. Blogger has bring content management system into it's blogging platform.

Initially, the XML coding may be daunting. If you can invest sometime to understand the coding, it will be east to handle. Adding links, photos and other various functionalities (call Gadgets) become as easy as a single click! This time round, I added a flash-based tag cloud, which you can see on your right. Over the next few days, I will add more useful gadgets to this blog.

Let me know which widgets you would like to see on this blog!

Saw this website from a friend's link [开心网] in Facebook. Wonder if this is the China version of Facebook?

Edited (31 Mar 2009):

Yes, this is the China's version of Facebook. In fact, China has a number of facebook-alike social websites! Attack of the facebook clones!!!

I always like 3 column layout. However, my favourite blogger layout is a 2 column layout. Hence, I decided to make some modificaton to turn it into a 3 column layout.

I googled around and saw this website and followed the instructions there. I uploaded the amended layout images to my Google Pages account and edited the CSS to link them to my skin. Next, I change the colour of the Blogger Navbar to silver and make it transparent so that it will merge into the gray background of my current skin design. Finally, I add advertisements from my Google Adsense account to make some money.

Invested the whole Sunday morning but it is worth the effort.

Students at Damai Secondary School has been using Photoshop 6 last year. This year, IT department purchased CS3 suite, which includes Photoshop CS3 and have them installed in all 4 computer labs. Sec 4NT students and Media Club students are among the first batch of students in contact with Photoshop CS3.

March Holidays are here! Finally, I have the time to do other stuffs apart from giving trainings and lesson plannings.

I have decided to move from my old blog to Blogger. This blog shall be my work blog from now onwards. It shall feature post related to my training career and a portal for my trainees/students to communicate and exchange ideas.