The second cultural forum 2014 was held on 6 September at the Confucius Institute. The Centre was honoured to have 2 speakers – Mr Rex How, Founder/Director of ChineseCUBES, Net and Books, and Locus Publishing; and Mr Tan Yuh Huann, SCCL teaching fellow who is also a Chinese language teacher currently seconded from Ministry of Education.

 

First Session: ChineseCUBES by Mr Rex How

 

Mr How introducing ChineseCUBES

 

ChineseCUBES: "Hands on Learning"

Mr Rex How is the Inventor of ChineseCUBES. Using these "digital cubes" known as Augmented Reality Cubes (AR cubes), learners can form over 2000 short phrases or sentences with 200 Chinese characters through various permutations and combinations. A webcam-enabled computer will recognise the Chinese characters through the QR codes printed on these digital cubes, offering real-voice pronunciations and simultaneous translations. Teaching through lively activities, the digital cubes are a fantastic Chinese learning tool especially for second-language learners.

Chinese learning tool-- ChineseCUBES

Learners' Levels

While teachers at the talk were impressed with this Chinese learning tool, many of them were concerned about its applicability. Mr How suggested that ChineseCUBES is useful especially for preschool children and students from the lower primary, since it teaches simple grammar and word formation. This triggered meaningful discussions over language acquisition based on the design concepts of ChineseCUBES at the talk.

 

Second Session: Knowledge creation, Education, and Information & Communication Technology by Mr Tan Yuh Huann

 

Mr Tan Yuh Huann giving his lecture

In his talk, Mr Tan led the audience through a thinking journey on the importance of knowledge creation and its relation to the 21st century education. The roles of information and communication technology are also explored. Besides learning about three existing theories of knowledge creation, the audience were able to interact with other participants and the speaker via the mobile application, Socrative. As the researches on knowledge creation in Chinese language (CL) classrooms are lacking, Mr Tan extended an invitation to all interested CL teachers among the audience, to collaborate on the exploration of how knowledge creation can facilitate teaching and learning of CL in the 21st century.

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