Affirmation

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 08:50:00 +0100

Mrs Frances Ess, a senior teacher who is on attachment with us, started attending my AAG233: Climate and Climate change class as part of her observation on how university lecturers teach. At the end of the session, I gave her a ride home as the class eneded at 1815. We chatted in the car and I inevitably asked for her observation of my class. Short of sounding boastful, Frances affirmed some key features of my teaching that I will share below as part of my personal reflection exercise:

Ability to engage students for an extended period fo time (3 hours in this case). Frances noted that the level of engagement remained high even in the third hour. In her words, she was surprised that I could get the students to read an article for 15 minutes and then discuss it even though it was the beginning of the 3rd hour of the class. She said, i could get away with blue murder!
Ability to build rapport with students (even at the first session). This is perhaps due to the rapport I have built with them since year one.
A good story teller who uses the power of narrative in teaching.
An entertaining teacher (she contrasted it to the concept of an entertainer). To Frances, many teachers can be entertainers but she called me an entertaining teacher.

There were some other things she said but I cannot recall all of them. Let us wait for her blog and I will publish it here (after I ask her for permission; afternote: yes she has given the green light. here is the link http://mamafesspdl.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/a-climate-of-change-changing-climate-in-singapore/).

Thanks Frances, your comments affirmed my teaching philosophy and what I believe are the key factors to my professional practice as a teacher.

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Climate Change Education workshop

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:09:00 +0100

I conducted a workshop on climate change education yesterday at Westwood Secondary School. It was O level results day so we could only spend 2 hours on the workshop. There was good initial feedback and I have been invited to go back to the school for an extention run so that we could deal with some of the issues deeper. I will share some reflections on this workshop after the second run.

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Oral Defence and grade anxiety

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 08:42:00 +0100

Today marks the last group of oral defense for ACG321. This time I have decided to do individual oral defense of their unit plans. An interesting observation is that despite the numerous attempts at reassuing them that the oral defense to help them improve thier own understanding of the unit planning process, rather than just another assignment, they are still very nervous. Perhaps this is really due to the heavy emphasis that people put on grades. Grade anxiwety as it is commonly known is the feeling of nervousness, uneasiness and great concern over academic measurement of performance. Grade anxiety may lead to the loss of pleasure in learning, as the focus becomes on the outcome of grades rather than on the learing itself. It may also result in less efficient cognitive functioning as anxiety reduces one's ability to concentrate. In addition the preoccupation with performance menas that fewer cognitive resources are available for the oral defense. Of course the anxiety will also lead to physical and psychological stress. I must think abou thow the grade anxiety can be reduced in future batches.

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Is Testing the way to go?

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 09:03:00 +0100

We administered a class test yesterday modelled after 3 O level questions for our teacher trainnes in ACG321 who are learning how to plan for instruction. As part of teesting their prior content knowledge, and as part of allowing the trainee teachers to understand where their gaps in understanding are, the test was desgined to test knowledge and skills in the geography discipline. We have included graphs, maps and tables for analysis questions and also require students to draw on their knowledge of current events to answer questions on climate, coast and tourism. I persoanlly wonder if this is an effective diagnostic tool to determine the readiness leve of students. However, a quick glance through the test script that I will grade in a while has showed me that there is indeed areas that students need help in developing deeper understanding. More later...

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Research team update

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 16:51:00 +0100

To date the work of this project has been contributed by the following in addition to those of the prinicpal investigator, Dr. Chang Chew Hung:

1. Dr. Zhai Junqing

2. Mr. Pei Weijie

I would like to thank these two outstanding individuals for being on the team. I will post updates accordingly.

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New Term Starting

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 10:57:00 +0100

A brand new exciting semester is starting today. Look out for new postings here on my reflections of my teaching epxereince this coming few months.

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Call for participation

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 13:28:00 +0100

Any teachers or students interested in this project can email me, please.

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Preliminary literature review

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 13:27:00 +0100

A preliminary literature review of informal education for CCE will be published online in the coming weeks.

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Job Vacancy

Thu, 05 May 2011 13:30:00 +0100

Research Assistant (1 year contract) at NIE

Details: http://www.nie.edu.sg/careers/vacancies/research-assistant-humanities-and-social-studies-education-academic-group-rs-111-cch

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Climate Change Education in Singapore - Perception and Practices

Wed, 04 May 2011 13:36:00 +0100

Dr Chang was awarded a Reserach Grant for the period May 2011 to April 2012. The project will examine the state of climate change education in Singapore. A sub-page on this research project will be created on this website for interested persons.

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Workshop on Questioning

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 14:49:00 +0100

I'll be conducting a workshop on Questioning for Humanities Teachers on 30 March 2011 at JJC. However this is a closed door session. If you are interested to have a similar workshop in your school, please email me for a discussion.

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Project start

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 13:26:00 +0100

The project started on 30 April 2011.

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Roundup of Natural Disasters in 2010

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 12:51:00 +0100

Dr. Chang has been interviewed on TV. Look out for the interview on Natural Disasaters in 2010. The programme will be on FOCUS this Thursday 16 December 2010 at 2230 hrs on MediaCorp Channel 8.

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Tagboard feature added.

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 10:28:00 +0100

A new tag board has been added to this webpage. Hi. This tag board is created fro me to interact with my visitors to my page. Please leave me a comment or messgae if you like. You will need to use the control box on the rightmost colum on this page to key in your short messages. It is really simple to use. No log in or sign ups required.

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Climate Change Education

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 12:14:00 +0100

Please do this survey if you are a singapore teacher. I am conducting a preliminary scan of teachers' perception on climate change education in Singapore.

http://www.kwiksurveys.com?s=HLNELO_78ffa0c7

Please note the consent statements in the survey. Many thanks.

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Less than 24 hr

Sat, 20 Nov 2010 13:09:00 +0100

It's less than 24 hr to the conference trip and things are looking good.

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Off to SEAGA 2010

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 08:38:00 +0100

I will be out of town for the conference until 27 Nov. You may want to read about the conference on the blog.

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Read my article on preparing for storms!

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 11:17:00 +0100

With Mega typhoon Megi landfall in Asia, maybe it is time to read the article I just published on preparing for storms....

HERE

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Super Typhoon Videos

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 11:05:00 +0100

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYf2fWhcBNc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2hpBk5zgwM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNWllTFT2xs

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Typhoon Megi/Juan

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 10:56:00 +0100

Over the last weekend, there was a light haze over Singapore so my friends asked me why this was so. I took my god-brother's ipad and looked up the MSS haze monitoring website and showed them the hotspots. One of them who was planning to travel to Hong Kong this week, pointed out to a tropical storm system just off the coast of the Philippines. I pulled up the JMS webpage and ran an animation to show them that it was a typhoon. He asked if his trip to HK will be affected. I told him I was unsure as the path seemed to veer more northerly than north-easterly. But that was only the beginning of a Mega Megi Storm!

The system seems to be pulling in clouds from the southern hemisphere and pushing the clouds as far north as 50 deg N. If you look at the animation, it appears at first glance a mega weather system spanning 60 degrees of latitude!

As of today, the storm has reached CAT4 and I have put the animation of the past 24 hours on youtube as a teaching resource.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN3I9AM7zNw

For those of you who are interested, you may also refer to these news articles.

I have decided to use this news platform to collate the reports for you.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69I0DB20101020

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2010-10/19/c_13564498.htm

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Teaching Leadership

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:04:00 +0100

“Dear Chew Hung,
After sitting in the classes last semester, I learned a lot about teaching skills and how these approaches help to improve students’ learning.
One of the best approaches is to have students write down what they have learned from class during the last 10 minutes of each lecture, and randomly pass their notes to other classmates. Then students are asked to read notes from their fellow classmates. The approach helps students to refresh and digest content of lectures. Reading notes from students can not only reflect what they have learned but also help lecturers understand what information is not well delivered to students.
Another approach is to have good interaction with students. I noticed when you had conversation with students and randomly asked questions to them, they paid much more attention to the lecture. The approach helped them to focus on the subjects and memorize the contents of each lectures.
There are some other ways you used for teaching, and all the approaches are awesome and fantastic. This semester I adopt some of your approaches in class, and the feedbacks from students are good. Hence I would like to say thank you. Thanks for your teaching skills, I learn how to improve my teaching and inspire students’ enthusiasm in studying.
Sincerely,..."

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Scaffolding field-based research

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 14:18:00 +0100

I was just clearing up my office at the end of semester when I realise I had to deal with a thick pile of field reports. These were submitted by the students who went to the Hanoi fieldtrip with me in December 2009 and I must say I am very pleased with the academic quality of the reports. Perhaps I am blessed with a good cohort of students but I believe it has to do with the way I designed the course AAG401. Although a 1-hour per week slot has always been allocated for the course before the students go for the fieldtrip, I have made these 1 hour slots even more tructured then before. I have set milestones for them to complete namely:

Conduct a prelimiary literature review
Formulating the research question
Concept mapping the ideas around the research topic.
Write a litearture review on methodology
Write a proposed methodology chapter
Design a field guide book

At each stage, 3 steps were taken: Peer reivew of the milestone product by one classmate, review of the product by me and then a revision which was then uploaded onto the CMS - BlackBoard.

I think this forces the student to pace their fieldwork and research and allows them to spend more time on data analysis and then writing after the fieldtrip itself.

While I am generally staisfied with this approach I think a few improvements can be made in future runs:

Include a similar process for the post-fieldwork sessions, especially on data analysis.
Have an oral presentation before the submission of the final product to allow for reflection

I have gathered some reflections from the students but I shall not post them here. Most of them have indicated that being in the field itself allows them to see the geographical phenomena they are studying from a very differen perspective. They have also learnt that a lot of field investigation depends on the site and even with the most comprehensive planning, some degree of improvisiation is required. At some point, I will collect these reflections and share them in an article. For the moment, I should write these thoughts down before they get eroded by time.

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mATSI

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 09:57:00 +0100

I recall a very engaging session at the AAG where Professor Sarah Bednarz and her team used the mATSI inventory to assess student attitudes to human Geography. I just read up on it and created a modified mATSI, sort of a mmASTI to study the attitudes of teachers using Web 2.0 for teaching and learning Geography. If you are a Geography teaching and using Web 2.0, you may help me by completing this survey at:

Click HERE for survey

Your helkp will be much appreciated.

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Photographs from Washington DC

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 13:29:00 +0100

Here are some photographs from the past few days. Enjoy.

LINK

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AAG Meeting 2010

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 19:26:00 +0100

I have finally presented my papers at the paper session on Mobile Devices and Fieldbased learning on Geography and the panel session on climate change education initiatives with the AAG. What's interesting is the networking rather than the paper presentations. Apparently, someone who attended my sessions went on to tell their colleague about my work and they came looking for me to talk about theirs. Small world even for a conference with over 8000 attendees. Well, I used the opportunity to publicise the SEAGA meeting in Hanoi. Let's hope that the meeting in Hanoi will be a sucessful one.

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Thinking

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:08:00 +0100

Your classes are interactive and he is able to stimulate thinking. Shows passion and generate more interest about the subject in me.

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Inspiration

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 17:02:00 +0100

“Hi Dr Chang, Just want to say that you did a wonderful job despite of the constraints you faced (like your cold). Your lecture is very comprehensive, with lots of interesting video (although I think it is a bit too overwhelming by the end, especially the 3 in 1 slide) and resources, your humour, your time management (A**) and most important of all, your ability to inspire people. One friend of mine even mention that she got so inspired that she even read up on more things online that very same night. And she was very eager to share what she found out today when I saw her again. And some of my friends even said that they were disappointed that you were not lecturing today.
Now that the results are out, I feel that I can say this now. That GEO module was the best I had in doing my Masters in NIE. It makes my decision to pursue the masters at this stage worthwhile. It might be partly because of my own interest but I think it is also because of the way the course is ran. It is not an easy module to take and have LOTS of reading but everytime I leave the room, I feel good cos I felt that I had learnt something and most importantly, I always felt inspired and a bit more reflective and critical of my own teaching. And believe me, it is darn difficult to feel inspired at 9.00pm after a whole day of work but I felt it anyway!
I have to admit that I was curious to see how you handle such a huge group of people with such a range of abilities. I don't know exactly what it is that you have or how did you do it but at the end of the day, you seem to have the ability to inspired at least some people to get interested and involved even in a crowd of people who has such diverse experience, background and reasons to be there. I can't help envying you for that! But you have given me something to work towards and reminded me the importance of being passionate about what I am doing so as to inspire my own students.
Whatever you are doing, keep on doing it! I think you are a wonderful teacher! And I hope that I have the chance to learn from you again;) Thank you for all your effort, XXX ”

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