From the Desk of Mr Daniel

Dear Lower Secondary Students,

ISPL Week is now over. We hope to receive your feedback on your experiences for improvements.

Please login to your LMS account and click on the link below to do the survey:
http://dmss.commontown.net/cos/o.x?c=/cas2_dmss/survey&func=view&id=585

Thank You for your time and effort! :)

ISPL starts this week! The school website was also updated to reflect the event:






The day starts with a technical glitch. We published the files using the wrong user account. This causes the files not to display at eLearning Week 2009 folders at 8am. The problem was discovered and retified at about 8.30am. Sincere apologies for those who wake up early in the morning to participate.


Since 8am in the morning, we see a huge number of support request (20 windows popup!) We were almost overwhelmed! There are some commly asked questions we observed

1. Could not locate Assessments
2. Could not locate Submission Trays
3. Upload to HBL Submission Trays
4. Cannot download documents
5. Cannot see the files
6. Assessment [START] button do not work

Here are the answers to these questions:

1. Click on the [Assessment] link and look for the subject in the title, or your teacher's name.
2. Click on [Submit] link and look for the subject & class in the title or your teacher's name.
3. Do not use HBL Submission Trays! If in doubt, ASK!
4. See this support webpage [GO]
5. Refresh your browser (CTRL + Refresh / CTRL + F5)
6. Certain functions of the LMS do not work if you use FireFox or Safari. Use IE instead.

We would like to assure all students that the school's ICT team is committed to bring a positive eLearning experience to everyone. This year, we have setup a support webpage for everyone. At the webpage, we cover: common issues like Opening of files for viewing and editing, configure your computer to read and type Chinese text, and other frequently asked questions. A copy of the timetable is also available there.

May has been a busy month for me. From competitions, mid-year exams and preparation for Home-based Learning and ISPL Training. What a busy month! I am also involved in my company's Multimedia Educators' Conference on 8 June.

Fortunately, the one week preparation for Home-based Learning was done. We did planning, materials preparations as well as prepare the students for LMS and eLearning familiarisation as well as account maintainance. Life still goes on in school as usual. Now that the first case had occured and more people are diagnos with the flu virus. If the situation did not improve when school reopens, Home-based Learning may be executed with instructions form MOE. Until then, normal life still goes on.

This week as been one of the busiest week for me. With 3 days of Learning Week from Monday to Wednesday. There is only 30mins of rest in between periods. I am so drained that I fell asleep the moment after dinner. During the Learning Week, I am in charge of the ISPL Briefing together with the teachers. The students has been cooperative, apart from 2 classes being late for the briefing.

One of the class is cute. Initially, they call ISPL as "Irritating Stupid People Learning"... :O I was like... -_- Hey guys, you are the ones going through this activity loh! Does that suggest you guys are... *LOL! So after realising that, my student immedately change it to "Intelligent Smart and Poised Learners"!!!

BTW, ISPL stands for Independent Self-Paced Learning. It is a termed used at Damai Secondary School for eLearning. It is a anual event that runs for a week for lower secondary students. This activity aims to prepare the school to ensure that learning continues dispite school closure due to crisis.

Exams are over! Results are out!

I hope everyone has done well for their papers. For those who did well, keep up the good work! For those who did not do so well, do not be demoralised. Find out where did you go wrong and improve for the next exams! :)

This week we are having the post examination activities again. From 25 May - 27 May, there will be a series of activities going on. A number of interesting activities has been planned for you guys. So join in the learning fun!

Together with the ISPL comm. teachers, we will be involved in the ISPL briefing, which is one of the learning week activities. The purpose of this programme is to allow everyone to be familiarised with the LMS features, ISPL time-table as well as standard operating procedures.

So, looking forward to all your active participation!