🇸🇬EdTech Blog: Nov Conferences - EduTech Asia, DSC24, RITC

Last week, I attended two conferences at Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre. Specifically, I went to the free EduTech Asia Expo (did not pay for the conference) in the basement and there was also the Data Science Connect x Data Arcade Tournament Finals by GovTech at level 4.

Speaker from HPB

Speaker from NTUC Enterprise

Having joined the Data Visualisation competition and creating Tableau Data Stories for 3 years running, I feel that my skills and abilities had improved quite drastically from when I first started. The peak was unfortunately last year when my team got into the DATxMOE finals. This year, with data about early childhood education (from ECDA) and quality of life for children and caregivers (from NCSS), our data story was not good enough. Nonetheless, attending the session and listening to the speakers I feel energised and keen to continue exploring the space and improving myself further.

Amongst the things that were shared, I particularly learnt a lot from the 3rd speaker at DSC24 who spoke about how the Straits Times used data and technology to improve their storytelling in particular using scrolly-telling. Here are some relevant links for you to check out if you are keen.

https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/10996265/ Pw: tilemap
https://www.straitstimes.com/multimedia/graphics/2022/09/dementia-singapore-home-care/index.html?shell [applied photogrammetry]
https://str.sg/hdb-design
https://str.sg/sgsea
https://str.sg/stholiday

Later on, there was also a fun facts section about the DAT and apparently, there were 544 teams in total from 75 agencies and 16 different DATx too. I think eventually this data culture will permeate all agencies and require a shift in practice in most of the HQs including in MOE as well.

Komodo and Zoala, tech or AI for Mental Health

Asian Development Bank Education Report

I met some former MOE colleagues at the EduTech Asia conference who are now in the private sector. Some presented at the conference while others were manning booths and it was nice to have a short catch up with them especially since I am in transition out of MOE HQ too. My colleague Nicholas, from the AI Research Group, also pointed me to several interesting edtech software and evaluation framework worth looking deeper into moving forward.

Past two days, I also had the privilege to attend the RI Teachers' Conference and I got the chance to catch up with some old friends and listen to some interesting things that other teachers were exploring in education.