School: Raffles Institution
    Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

20 students, ages 13-16 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 20, 2008. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 1999 - 2007 (consecutively)

Classes and Teachers: Mrs Aileen Chor, Mr Soon Yinjie, Ms Lorraine Wang

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.ri.sch.edu.sg

1. Description of Our Community

Singapore, a city-state with a land area of about 690 square kilometres, is situated in South-East Asia at the tip of the Malaysian Peninsula. Our community consists of residents, organisations and businesses located in Singapore, our country of residence.

2. Summary of Our Project

Our project is about local businesses and organizations that have made, are making or will make a difference to us. In the past, Singapore has relied on the visionary prowess of her leading political appointment holders to steer her in the right direction in every aspect of governance. The ‘Past’ section examines Singapore’s past leaders and their politics that have shaped numerous facets of Singapore society and brought her to her current standing in the world. In the present, Singapore enjoys economic stability. A welcoming government coupled with excellent infrastructure welcomes the Multi-National Corporations of the world to Singapore’s doorstep. As focus turns from stability to growth, we look at the organizations in the industry and the economy that have made some of the most important contributions to Singapore’s development as a nation. With expansion surfaces a newfound desire for improvement, and to quench this thirst for knowledge Singapore has firmly placed herself at the forefront of technology as we move into the 21st century and beyond. In the foreseeable future, Research and Development will no doubt become one of Singapore’s main focuses and selling points. We look into the lucrative field of research as Singapore once again shifts her focus from growth to innovation as the entire nation gears up to nurture pioneers of the future. In this age of globalisation, no nation can cloister herself within her own borders, and Singapore is no different. As we move forward we must always look toward our peers as mutual understanding, respect, and exchange of knowledge becomes critical for progress and prosperity for any nation in this globalised world of today and tomorrow. We examine the organizations that make this exchange of knowledge possible.

3. Our Computer and Internet Access

A. Percentage of students using the Internet at home:more than 50%

B. Number of workstations with Internet access in the classroom:none

C. Connection speed used in the classroom:dedicated connection

D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:more than 6

E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):

Although there are no workstations with internet access in classrooms, teachers can either bring their laptops into class for lessons, or bring their students to one of 6 fully-equiped computer labs.

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

One of the first problems that we encountered in our project was coordinating with our group members to convey information and conduct meetings. As the members of our group are each involved in many other activities and have commitments of their own. Communications through email also proved to be unreliable, since some members of our group did not check their email frequently or provided a non-working address.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

Our participation in Cyberfair has allowed us to more intrinsically understand the role of organizations and businesses in the development of Singapore, in maintaining its current standing and in the shaping of its future. Also, it has given us another opportunity to experience project management and the difficulties and challenges we face, while letting us explore ways to get around these adversities and issues.

6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?

This project fits into the Basic Computing curriculum (for basic HTML), the Computer Elective curriculum (for backend php programming) and the Infocomm Club curriculum (for CSS design). We had to teach ourselves all these skills before we could embark on this project. Our content fits into the Social Studies and History curriculum. We had to learn about all the relevant facts before writing the articles. During this project, we had to improve our time management as well as our people handling skills so that we could get all the group members to write and edit articles on time. Additionally, brainstorming helped us to a large extent. The internet has been a great tool to teach us about our past. We learned a lot more about the formation of Singapore and the current state of the economy, just to give two examples.

1) What information tools & technologies did you used to complete your CyberFair project?

We completed most of the project in school, with the use of technology in the computer labs. Some of us had the luxury of using personal laptops, however, the majority made use of the computers in the computer labs. Most of the computers were of medium to medium-high speed, with a 3.0 Ghz Pentium D processor and 1 GB RAM. We also made use of the power of the scripting languages, AJAX and PHP, to aid us in designing a Web 2.0 website. In the process of creating our website, we made use of programs such as Microsoft Word, Adobe Flash, and Adobe Dreamweaver, among others. In order to source for reliable information to form the basis of our website, we sought the help of free online databases from NLB, and newspaper and research database by our school. In order to make sure that all our articles generated are not plagiarized and original, we also used Turnitin, an anti-plagiarism software that makes use of its database of materials to check for plagiarism.

2) In what ways did you act as "ambassadors" and spokespersons for your CyberFair project both on-line and in person.

During the course of our project, we have contacted quite a few people, so as to source for information. We made a conscious effort to meet them personally instead of over the phone, as it would be more polite, and would make the other party feel more comfortable. Also, we ensured that at the time of our interview, the interviewees did not have any urgent matters, and that they were free and had the time for the interview. During our interviews, we were conscientious of our behavior, and made an effort to improve our gestures and etiquette, as we knew that we were representing the school. After the interview, we would thank them through giving gifts and “thank you” cards to them, so as to express our heartfelt gratitude for helping us in this project.

3) What has been the impact of your project on your community?

Even though our project has not been published online until recently and there have been not a lot of internet visitors in our site, we can definitely anticipate its impact to the community. This website will hopefully help readers gain more insight about the local leaders of Singapore that helped to drove her to what she is today. They will also get to know more about our illustrious history and the trials and tribulations that she had to go through. They will also hopefully learn more about our local culture. Through our survey, we have also revealed the merits and the lacks of our nation and organizations, and instilling thought on people to reflect and improve upon the current system put in place.

4) How did your project involve other members of your community as helpers and volunteers?

We received quite a lot of help from our seniors and teachers. They have constantly came back to help us in the development of the website. Ranging from the reviewing of content to website coding and debugging, they have certainly gone a long way to help us in this project, spending countless time and effort. Our parents were also very supportive of us. Knowing that we were facing multiple commitments, they tried to give us moral support, always constantly spurring us on, and boosting our morale.