An Explosion of Ideas at ExCEL Fest (Part 1)

Fancy a shop-load of SPaM? Game for a little night Mu-seek? Or how about flipping an umbrella upside-down to turn it into a fish pond or flower pot? Don’t worry – there were no dubious emails or canned ham in this festival of ingenuity.

Instead, ExCEL Fest 2008 at Suntec City on 5 July was a basket of innovative tricks and practices that parents could sample, to see how teachers have introduced to make learning more fun, enriching and meaningful.

Learning with SPaM

Students at Yew Tee Primary School love SPaM – nope, not online junk or canned food, but games that stimulate learning. Teacher Ms Jan Lin explains that SPaM was conceptualised when a group of beginning teachers decided to create “board games that could be contributed to teachers’ teaching resources as well as cater to pupils’ learning needs”.

The three games that comprise SPaM are:

• Shopaholic – Launched in 2006, it resembles Monopoly but adds a local flavour by using names of shops familiar to Singaporeans. Through this game, students learn how money is used, with scenarios that they can relate to in real life.
• PLANTz! – This game provides lessons in love, at least for flora and fauna, by helping pupils learn and remember difficult scientific facts about reproduction in plants and animals.
• Mental Maths – A card game with the punchy fun of Snap!, it uses cards with printed numbers that spur players to practise key Mathematics skills such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

One parent intrigued by these games was Mrs Anna Wong, who visited ExCEL Fest hoping to uncover new ideas to teach her two daughters, aged 7 and 16. “The only way I know how to teach my kids is to sit at the desk and go through assessment books,” she remarks. “But today, I see there are many ways of enriching and teaching children. These games by Yew Tee Primary School certainly make learning more fun and engaging!”

Put some Mu-seek in your life

At Griffiths Primary School, Pri 5 students from the Infocomm Club got a rare chance to design an actual computer game. The objective: a fun learning tool that would help teachers better assess students’ grasp of music, as well as pique interest in the subject among Pri 2 pupils.

Using Adobe Flash software to create new worlds and characters, they came up with Mu-seek Puzzles!, an interactive role-playing game where players match their wits against a tyrant who has deprived his kingdom of music. As the students play the hero and battle evil ghosts, solve puzzles and collect magical gems to restore the land’s melodies, they tap on musical concepts taught in the Pri 2 Music syllabus, making a game a test of knowledge as well as an adventure in fantasy gaming.

The game has been a smash hit with students since its release last year. Pri 2 student Syaamil Nur Iman Bin Kahr says, “I like playing Mu-Seek Puzzles! because I can learn music while having fun!”

Griffiths Primary School now hopes to see the game adapted for other subjects like Art or even Maths, as its design allows teachers to easily insert new puzzles and challenges into the plot.

Generating ideas – to infinity and beyond

Vending machines typically dispense drinks, titbits and sandwiches. But why shouldn’t they offer stationery as well, especially in schools? And what can an umbrella be used for besides shelter from the sun or rain? Well, how about turning it over to form a container for fish or plants?

The people that sparked these and other ideas, such as a flower pot that fights the Aedes mosquito with smart drainage, come from MJ +?y, a creative thinking programme that kicked off last year at Montfort Junior School.

According to teacher Mdm Tay Chor Lin, children often find it hard to come up with new ideas and inventions. “So we decided to teach them creative thinking processes to provide a framework for their thinking, as our school believes that creativity is not just from nature but it can also be nurtured.”

MJ +?y is a school-wide programme in which teachers impart various creative thinking methods to students for one period each week. Students learn to apply thinking skills such as “flexibility”, “fluency”, “originality” and “elaboration”.

They also have a MJ T?y booklet that they can use on their own for more thought-provoking and idea-generating activities. As an incentive, students receive MJ Tokens after they complete each MJ T?y project. Those who accumulate 22 tokens can exchange them for prizes such as stationery and even field trips.

Montfort is now expanding the reach of MJ +?y. “This year, we have further improved the programme by linking it to other subjects such as Art, Maths and Health Education and also to to the ‘Habits of Minds’,” reveals Mdm Tay. And as the ideas generated so far prove, students have no lack shortage of creative juices once they learn how to open the tap.

Secondary schools get their turn in Schoolbag’s next feature on ExCEL Fest, where we put the spotlight on schools who have devised novel ways to develop their literary talents and nurture young inventors.