Distinguished Guests,

Principals, teachers, students,

Ladies and Gentlemen

I am delighted to be here this afternoon to launch the eduQUEST: Singapore-Apple Collaboration. Let me first congratulate the 3 eduQUEST schools: Marsiling Secondary, Canberra Primary and Woodlands Primary for making today’s event a success and an enjoyable experience for us. The eQ experience is also enriching as it illustrates the many possibilities that technology brings to learning. The level of enthusiasm and commitment shown by the teachers and students today is encouraging. It inspires us to want to experiment and innovate as well.

The ability to innovate is a critical element that ensures we remain dynamic and competitive in a knowledge-based economy. It is therefore important for our schools to foster a culture of innovation.

Schools need to create a conducive environment for students to take risks, discover and have fun experimenting with new ideas. Advances in technology provide students with richer and better learning tools that engage their curiosity, give them more avenues and greater freedom to express their creativity.

One of the goals in our IT Masterplan is to generate innovative processes in education. In line with this, the Ministry of Education initiated eduQUEST. edu.QUEST stands for Quality and Excellence in Schools through Technology. It is the platform for building a body of research on the innovative use of emerging technologies in teaching, learning and school-community partnership. We hope to establish eduQuest as a brand name in quality research on educational technology and promote Singapore as the education hub of the region.

This project is also about creating vibrant learning communities where exploration and experimentation are integral to the learning process, where teachers and students are the innovators and experimenters. The initial explorations by the 3 schools with wireless mobile computing and media-rich tools have shown promise and brought about new possibilities and benefits.

Wireless technology has made learning fun and authentic for pupils of Woodlands Primary. Pupils do research on the Internet, study plant specimens with their portable digital tools, collaborate with their peers and communicate with their teachers wirelessly. All these are done in the green and inviting atmosphere of the school garden. Learning has gone beyond the classroom and become more interactive.

Another example is the eduPi Camp@Mars (Partners in education camp at Marsiling Secondary School). This project secured a grant from the MOE Innovation Fund. It is a good example of an innovative practice that uses existing school IT facilities, such as the digital movie-making equipment, to provide a new experience for students, their parents and teachers to learn together, work collaboratively and share their products with the rest of the school community. The eduPi Camp has been effective in bonding pupils, their parents and teachers as partners in education and fostering a more cohesive school community.

Greater access to new tools and resources in schools, is however, only part of the equation to innovation. We need to ensure that teachers are comfortable with new tools, to create the space for them to innovate and time to reflect on their classroom practice. In the eduQUEST schools, action research is part of an ongoing form of professional development for teachers.

Within the first six months of implementation, teachers in the three schools have embarked on close to 20 action research projects, ranging from using digital portfolios for assessment, videos for anchored instruction to designing an eduCart, a Singapore version of a mobile cart that facilitates learning with wireless technologies. The eduCart also received a grant from the MOE Innovation Fund for the design and making of future versions.

The experiences of teachers in this project will be documented and shared with other educators in the professional community. Their learning is grounded in practice and can be easily adapted for use by other teachers.

The pace of change of new technology is more rapid than the typical timeline for educational research studies. Teachers need to be action researchers who can produce and publish research findings on a more rapid cycle so that other teachers can build on their experiences, learn from them and implement these improvements in their own classrooms.

Action research is not only an ongoing form of professional development for the eduQUEST teachers, it also acknowledges that teachers as practitioners can contribute valuable findings to the educational community.

To the eduQuest schools, I encourage you to nurture the seed of innovation that has been planted, to continue in your experimentation with the strong sense of community and the spirit of innovation that you have cultivated.

Today's experience has shown us how enjoyable learning with technology can be. In closing, I wish you a fruitful and exciting time ahead as you continue to try out new ideas, to explore and learn in your quest for quality and excellence in schools through technology.

-------------------------------