All Secondary one Crescentians 2004 intake have the opportunity to embark on the m-learning@Crescent experience – Mobile Learning anytime, anywhere.

There was a definite buzz in the air at Crescent in Term 3 as our school embarked on it’s pilot project of m-learning, i.e. mobile learning. The launch of Crescent as Microsoft’s Learning Gateway School and of m-learning@Crescent on the 31 st July 2004 was graced by our minister of Education, Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam.

Our Minister and VIPs from the MOE and IDA and industry partners joined our Secondary one students in the Geography lessons on bearings conducted by Mr Josef Tan and Ms Phyllis Pham. There were no books or pens in this classroom- instead, students opened up their digitized textbooks in their Tablet PCs. The students completed in the treasure hunt with the tools from the Fun with Construction application which was developed jointly with our teachers and industry partners.

Suddenly the screens “blacked out”! Mr Tan captured the students’ attention and flashed the winner’s answer onto the screen through the use of Virtual Classroom application and voila, we had our “Ms Indiana Jones”!

Now, lessons in Crescent are fun, exciting and lively.

Guests then moved outdoors to join in an audio conference on orchid hybridization with Mr Arthur Lim, an orchid enthusiast. He drew recommended modifications to the predicted orchid hybrid sketch via Instant Messaging. Mrs Goh K.C. who was in charge of the project found this most useful as m-learning allows students to communicate with anyone anytime anywhere! “I have no problems using the tablet. I don’t find it stressful using it,” she said. Location is no barrier, neither is age! Mrs Goh is very experienced teacher while her teacher-partner in this project- Ms Lim Suat Fong- has been in Crescent for less than a year.

Secondary one students have started using their Tablet PCs for their lessons. They use digitized textbooks for English, Science, Home Economics, Geography and History. Students build their knowledge of the topics by taking notes, drawing mind-maps, of which will be linked to the relevant topics in their Living Textbook, which makes studying and revising a whole lot easier! All classroom activity is also monitored by their teachers as Joycelyn of 1C2 quipped, “It makes us more interested in class. But we can’t play games, the teacher will know.” The teacher is able to view the screen of each student in the class through the Virtual Classroom application.

All Crescentians will also soon be given a personal account at our school Internet portal – Microsoft Learning Gateway – with which students, teachers and parents can communicate with each other easily. They can also keep documents, create forums and collect and submit assignments anytime, anywhere, via internet.