IdEas@Work in Nanyang

Contributed by ANGELINE SEET SIEW PENG, DELINE VICTORIA LEW HUEY LAN Current situation: The options after a student has gone for CCA trials are 'yes / pending / try another CCA'. This last option if a student does not pass the trial can be rather discouraging to the mood of the student. Improvement: Instead of 'Next opportunity', perhaps we could use 'Moving on' or 'Thank you' or 'Next up'...these terms evoke a more positive feel, especially after a student has been rejected.

Contributed by LEE KIM TING Current situation: Chinese New Year cards is typically sent to all the PSG Librarians to wish them a happy new year and to thank them for their help over the past year. Cards are priced at $1.20 x 40 pax, total of $48/-.(approximately) Improvement: Using Nanyang Girls HIgh's in-house designer's Chinese New Year E-Card design, we print it on one side of a harder paper, and the back, with a photo of the PSG Librarians Appreciation Tea Party group photo, the cost is only $4 for 40 pax . This not only save money for the school, but also give a personal touch and an added value for the PSG Librarians when they receive the CNY card. Front  Back

Contributed by LUIS TIRTASANJAYA LIOE Current situation: Presently, when the students participated in some competition, there will be prize presentation session during morning assembly where they presented the prize to the school and they get acknowledged. While this is a good practice to have the whole school celebrate their achievement, there are two issues that might be important to address. 1) Limited assembly slots - with the limited slots, especially the shortened Friday session, there may be difficulty to get all teams to share the achievements. 2) Presently, most of the sessions were taken to acknowledge teams who win the prize. I feel that it is good to have an avenue for students who just participate (without winning the prize) to also being acknowledged and their sharing of the experience is also worth celebration by the school. Improvement: I notice most of teacher i/c have taken picture when the prize is presented during the competition side. It may be good to levera

Contributed by ANGELINE SEET SIEW PENG Current situation: The Pledge is recited in the classrooms on Mondays & rainy days. The announcer says - please stand - and hardly any time is given before the Pledge is recited. Usually as the first line is recited, I can still hear the dragging of chairs as the students rise. Improvement: After the announcer says - please stand, give a pause of 5s before proceeding with the recitation of the Pledge. This will accord the necessary respect to the ceremony in class.

Contributed by TEO ZHIYE Current situation: walkway outdside PE Dept to the CCA rooms and bookshop is too dark even in the brigh and sunny afternoon. Improvement: to save energy yet make the place bright and safe for students and staff, i suggest installing a motion sensor to turn on the lights. switching it on throughout drew flakes for wasting energy. safety first.

Contributed by TAN KAH KEOW, TAN YIN PHENG CHERYL Current situation: There is structured log book to record incidents pertaining to canteen vendors. Improvement: To create a log book that records Date of report Reported by Reported to Incident details Follow up action taken Outcome The records will be used as a reference for contract renewal etc. and to keep track of the follow up actions by committee.

Contributed by TAN GEK HOON, CHONG CHIN YOON LINDA, SAM CHOON JUEN Current situation: For entry of remarks and marks for students in the online results portal of students in banded groups, the subject teachers have to extract each student out from their original classes. This often led to unintentional data entry error - omission of results, entering of wrong results, deleting of overriding of results of student from another band. There was a lot of manual checking for banded groups to minimise such errors. Improvement: If the student list can be extracted according to the bands, the chances of error in data entry is greatly reduced. With the list of students in bands, time to search manually for the students is also greatly reduced. There is increased efficiency and accuracy. Many thanks to Paul and his team for agreeing to look into this arrangement.

Contributed by TAN KAH KEOW, TANG WEE HOON, GOH SOON HUI JOANNA Current situation: Our school organises events or loan out school facilities. Sick bay is sometimes used as a nursing room for participants. Improvement: Replacement curtain in the sick bay is translucent. While it allows sufficient light from outside, it does not provide the privacy required for a nursing room.

Contributed by Tan Gek Hoon Current situation: For conference held in the school, we usually end off with a panel discussion with the invited speakers addressing questions from the audience. Improvement: The Conference Debate is a refreshing alternative mode which I saw from a recent conference. A statement is selected for this debate. Invited speakers take the position of "FOR" or "AGAINST" (perhaps 2 per side). At the start of the debate, the audience is invited to do a poll on their stand. (possible online platform to use www.slido.com) . The speakers are then invited to deliberate their points of argument. After the first round of deliberation, the audience have the option to change their stand. The speakers then have the option to rebute each other's points. The audience can then, after the rebuting, recast their poll. The focus of the debate is not to decide on a winner side, but a rich discussion from both the positions. Any questions which the audi

Contributed by Saw Pei Lin Current situation: RC are charged to collect all hosted visits to NYGH for SEM record purposes. After I took over the responsibility from Avelyn, I needed to send out reminders to all teachers every now and again to remind them to send me the details of their hosted visits. After that, I will need to key in the details myself. It is a double work. Moreover, I will not be able to remind them about the guest book if they only give me the details after the visit. Improvement: With this google form, teachers who are hosting visits can fill in the details and be captured in an online google excel. I am able to put reminders on the form to remind the teacher hosting to collect guest book from me at the same time. By sharing this excel with in-charged teacher, he/she will have a better look at the conflict of visits for student buddy and facility booking. In addition, there is an option of administrative charge involve which will give Foong Har an advanced not

Contributed by ANG JOO LIAK Current situation: About 10 students have been offered the new 2018 DSA STEM (Science) for Sec 1 batch. Some STEM enrichment activities would be planned to engage them. Unlike DSA CCA students who have CCA teachers on hand to look after their welfare, DSA STEM (Science) students do not have such an arrangement yet. Improvement: This is to propose that a team of dedicated science teachers (e.g. 1 physics, 1 biology and 1 chemistry) are roped in voluntarily as mentors for the 1st batch of DSA STEM (Science) students to: 1. serve as mentors on STEM-related learning opportunities 2. provide social-emotional support over the duration of the DSA STEM (Science) commitment.

Contributed by ANG JOO LIAK Current Situation: Students generally may not pay much attention to or not aware of news items related to the application of physics in real life. These may include application of physics concepts, as well as technology, and their impact on society. Some items may be mentioned by teachers in class if time or topics permit. Improvement: To better promote the awareness of real-life applications of physics and technology in current affairs, a website was set up since early 2017 to collate all current news items of relevance. The site is regularly updated with new items at http://physicsinthenews.pbworks.com This is promoted to my all my sec 3 classes through email and via link on my sec 3 physics website at http://1718physics.pbworks.com This is also shared with physics teachers for them to use the news items as and when relevant to promote awareness of real-life applications of physics and an authentic learning experience. These items are also used to