Schools Outreach Programme - Creative Computing Workshop
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| Republic Polytechnic’s
Schools Outreach Programme in the November
school holidays proved to be popular, just
like the first Schools Outreach Programme
during the mid-year holidays. The Creative
Computing Workshop which was specially
designed for the Schools Outreach Programme
by Prof Alwis, Director of Academic Affairs,
enjoyed a re-run in 11 schools. Due to
time constraints, schools which sent in
their confirmation of participation late
were turned down most regretfully with
the assurance that they would definitely
be kept informed about next year’s
workshops.
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| In the first week
of November, students from four schools
attended the workshop: Coral Secondary
School, Manjusri Secondary School, Gan
Eng Seng Secondary School and Marsiling
Secondary School. In the second week,
there were four schools as well: St Hilda’s
Secondary School, St Theresa’s Secondary
School, Holy Innocent and Bendemeer Secondary
School. Westwood Secondary School and
Admiralty Secondary School took part
in the third week. In the last week of
November, students of Teck Whye participated
in the 5-day long workshop.
All in all, over
200 students attended the workshop.
They learned how to use the Visual
Basic Programming software to create
interactive computer applications through
the Problem-Based Learning approach.
The students discovered that the workshops
were not what they had expected. Instead
of finding a teacher in front of the
class giving instructions to follow,
they had to explore what was on the
screen before them, establish what
exactly they needed before going on
to solve the assigned problems on their
own.
On day one, students
were presented with a completed application.
They would then begin the process of
identifying what they knew, what they
did not know and what they needed to
know in order to create a similar application.
They were also free to create variations
or completely new applications which
added perceptibly more fun to the entire
enterprise.
While some students
might have expressed some measure of
bewilderment at the beginning, with
guidance from their friendly facilitators,
their confidence grew quickly. This
was evident in the way they progressed
from merely copying given windows applications
in an alien programming language to
creating simple interactive applications
through the process of self-discovery.
Working in groups, they were also challenged
to be as creative as they could with
what they had learnt. Many of their
efforts were impressive which belied
the fact that the students were novice
users of the software.
The month-long Schools
Outreach Programme ended with much
appreciation on the part of the schools
and great eagerness on the part of
Republic Polytechnic to work again
with students whose willingness to
be challenged will remain with us a
long time.
© Nov 2002, Republic Polytechnic.
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