Zoom Roleplay

Classroom of the Future (CotF) is one of the things I have been working on since I started at MOE HQ as part of the Innovation & Design (I&D) team of the Technologies for Learning Branch. After this year's Design Thinking work with the schools, we had a showcase for the Primary Schools' School Leaders (SLs) and Key Personnel (KPs) who helped make our work possible. Although we are not a theatre company, we stepped up to the challenge of 'acting out' or roleplaying our ideas in a zoom skit set in a school in the future when our CotF ideas have come to fruition.

It was quite an enjoyable process as the team even prepared zoom backgrounds of classroom/home/office spaces as well as audio/chimes to make the skit feel more realistic. The good thing is that behind the zoom camera there were ways for us to refer to the script especially for the parts which were long or complex.

I had a fun time acting as a teacher, Mr Su, who had to teach Maths nearing the end of the day. Thus, my Brain Boost Time (BBT) idea came into play. It was nice to see colleagues from ETD/ITD/ESD showing the enthusiasm (observed in the class setting too) when BBT was triggered. In fact, some of the SLs and KPs were pretty game and sporting enough to join in the fun.

We then shared some of the responses that we got from students and teachers whom we had 'tested' on/with. The insights helped us iterate and improve on the prototype and we even got promising survey results (75 student responses) which suggested that about 4 in 5 enjoyed BBT and 3 in 4 focused better after BBT. We still have to work on that 1 in 5 or 1 in 4 though.

As the work wraps up for the year, the CotF team will be losing some members and possibly gaining new ones. Also, the work will continue next year with some movements as some will focus on making functional prototypes while others will continue to iterate in the DT process. I feel that this work is really exciting and I look forward to the creative work that we will continue to do next year.