Monday 30 December 2013

Welcome back! Here's the schedule for the first week of school 2014. (Updated)

Dear SST students,

I hope that you had an enjoyable holiday and are looking forward to coming back to school.

The first week of the school year for 2014 is known as week 0.

Do make provisions to leave your home earlier as the traffic on the roads are expected to busy.

Here is the updated schedule for 2014 Term 1 Week 0. 
(Kindly note that there has been a change dismissal time for Sec 2 and Sec 3 students on 2 Jan 2013. Students will be dismissed from school instead. Pls see schedule for details.)

Do remember to bring the food provisions for the Food Donation Drive. Kindly place the donated food items at the tables located to the side of the ISH when you arrive on the first day of school.

Sec 2 and 3 students - Pls remember to bring the signed consent form for the Food Donation Drive - Flyer Distribution.

Sec 4 students - Kindly note there will be a class photo-taking session on 2 Jan 2014. Details are the in the schedule for Term 1 Week 0.

Looking forward to seeing you in school on 2 Jan 2014 (Thursday)!


:)
From the Student Development Dept


Principal’s Letter: School Updates (December 2013/January 2014)

Dear Students,

We are pleased to enclose the Principal’s Letter to Parents, Ref: SST/P/13-121, dated 30 December 2013.

In line with our “Go Green” initiative, you will only receive this letter in the soft copy form. It is also made available in the parent’s corner.
Thank you.
Warmest regards,
School of Science and Technology, Singapore

Reminder on Reading Programme during Morning Assemblies

Dear Students,

Please be reminded to bring appropriate reading materials for the Reading Programme during Morning Assemblies, starting on First Day of School, Thursday, 2 Jan 2014.

1st Day of School: Personal Grooming

Dear Students,

Welcome to 2014 in SST!
Gentle reminder for all students to be appropriately groomed when you report for school on 2 Jan:

  • Male Students– Hair must be short and neatly combed 
  • Female Students – Hair that is shoulder length or longer must be tied up. 
    • Simple hair accessories such as hand bands, hair clips may be worn
  • Fingernails must be kept clean, short and unvarnished 
  • Attire worn must be clean and neatly pressed with no no holes, tears or frayed areas. 
  • Click here for more guidelines 
Thank you. See you on 2 Jan 2014 at Indoor Sports Hall! Report before 7.40am!


School Uniform Shop Operating Hours in 2014

The uniform shop will be open from 8 am to 3 pm on 2 January (Thursday) and 3 January (Friday).

With effect from 6 January (Monday), the uniform shop will only be opened on Mondays from 8 am to 3 pm.

For purchase of uniform on other days, please visit their retail outlet at 302 Tiong Bahru Road #06-05 Tiong Bahru Plaza Singapore 168732 or call them at 6276 6689.

Thank you.


Sec 1 Registration Matters

Dear Y2014 Sec 1 Students

Details shared in the Sec 1 Registration Day (23 December 2013) are available on the left panel of the blog:



Saturday 28 December 2013

Info: Y2014 Sec 3 classes

Dear Y2013 S2-to-Y2014 S3 students

You would have learnt the subject combination you are offered when the outcome was released in November.
Do check your classes at the GoogleSite announcement page.

Friday 27 December 2013

Create an Apple ID without a credit card

Create an Apple ID without a Credit Card


For parents or students who might find this useful:

An Apple ID is an all-in-one account used to log into various online systems that Apple Inc. offer for many of its products, such as iWorkiCloud, the iTunes Store, and the Apple Store, using a customer's existing email address from any email provider.

For SST students, an Apple ID is necessary for them to install apps from Apple's App store, for learning and investigation.

To create an Apple id, please follow the instructions on Apple's support page:

NOTE: you must purchase a free app (such as Xcode) before registering for the new account in order for the "none" option to appear as the payment type.

Do feedback to us at contactus@sst.edu.sg to let us know if the method works well.


Tuesday 24 December 2013

e-Mote 2013 finalist - SST

Our students from Media Studies recently made it to the finals for the the E-Mote Digital Story Telling Competition 2013.

Do vote for them by liking their video and helping them win the Viewer's Choice via the link below:



SST's Community Outreach to Elderly in 2014

SST will be reaching out to the elderly residents living in the Southwest CDC region in 2014. As such, we will be collaborating with the SouthWest CDC on a school-wide level to run a series of community involvement activities involving our students.

The objectives of the community outreach are:
1) to foster and promote the message of intergenerational harmony
2) to assist and care for elders living in residential care homes/ hospices
3) to advocate a community spirit of care and appreciation for the elderly amongst our younger generation

To kick start the year-long community outreach, we will be having the following community involvement activities in the first 2 weeks of January:

1) Community Food Donation Drive 2014 (participation by all 2014 Sec 2 and 3 students) - on 2 Jan and 11 Jan 
2) Flag Day with Caregiving Welfare Association (participation by all 2014 Sec 4 students) - on 11 Jan
All Sec 2, 3 and 4 students will have to print out the relevant consent form  (see attached) for the community involvement activities  and return the reply slips to their form teacher on the first day of school (i.e. 2 January).


[26 & 27 Dec 2013] Info Hub is closed

The Info Hub is closed on 26th and 27th December 2013.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Sunday 22 December 2013

Conduct of Temperature-Measurement Exercise


  1. The objective of the temperature-measurement exercise is to remind our students of the need to exercise social responsibility and personal hygiene, and to be prepared against threats posed by diseases such as Influenza A virus. 
  2. The next temperature measurement exercise will be held on 7 January 2014, Tuesday. All students are reminded to bring their personal Oral Digital Thermometer (ODT) to school on that day. The ODT, which cost $5.00 each, can be purchased from the school bookshop. All students are reminded to keep their ODTs in good working and clean condition. 
  3. Disciplinary actions will be taken against those without thermometer on that day.

Saturday 21 December 2013

Setting Parent Controls in OS X 10.9, Mavericks


The Parental Control Panel allows parents to set restrictions in 
  • using Apps
  • accessing the Web
  • interaction with People
  • time for usage
  • Others
For a quick tutorial on how to set up effective parent controls and restriction in Mac OS X, parents can refer to http://goo.gl/BeoehD.
We will be covering more details and having a hands-on session during the upcoming parents engagement session.

Tuesday 17 December 2013

Pre-school Engagement Activities - Session 4

To create digital posters, we can use multimedia applications like PowerPoint  or KeyNote. Very often, we convert these "slides" into images/ PDF files as  static display. There are some online "poster" creation platforms that permits dynamic displays (which includes video clips). Glogster is one of them.


1. Create a Glogster account using your SST account.



  • Select your SST account when prompted which account to log in to.


2. Choose on "Create Your first Glog" and then choose the "Vertical" template



3. Identify from youtube a song that you like very much. Share the song - the video and lyrics in the poster; also include a paragraph to tell others why you like the song.

  • Use the title of the song as the heading of the poster.
  • You may use modify the template and insert other objects into the poster.

4. Save the glog. Click at "View This Glog". The Glog will be displayed.





Click HERE to view sample.



5. Scroll to the bottom and click at "Embed this Glog". 
Copy the code for "Blog size Glog 560x758".


6. Login to your blog. Create a new post entitled, "My Favourite Song".
Switch the posting mode to HTML and paste the HTML code there.





7. Switch back to "Compose" mode and the blog post should look like this:





Monday 16 December 2013

GSO Newsletter


“GO SAFE ONLINE” serves to provide a consistent call-to- action where users are reminded to take personal responsibility in protecting themselves against cyber threats. In that the best protection for infocomm users against cyber threats is personal commitment to infocomm security.

November Newsletter


 In this issue, we can learn about "how to dispose mobile devices securely"



Saturday 14 December 2013

Pre-school Engagement Activities - Session 3

In this session, we are going to explore the use of online stickies. Two commonly used platforms are Padlet (http://padlet.com/) and Linoit (http://en.linoit.com/).


ACTIVITY 1: GENERATING IDEAS WITH PADLET

1. Login to Padlet and fill up the information as shown below
  • Enter the title "Digital Citizenship"
  • Add the description: Let's put down, in each sticky, word/ phrases that crosses your mind when we talk about "Digital Citizenship"
  • Choose an image as your portrait icon. Alternatively, you may upload your own image.





2. To post on the wall, place the mouse pointer at the space and double click.
A sticky will appear. You may start posting your thoughts. Generate as many as you could and attempt to organise them into broad categories (as shown).




3. Click at "Share" (on the right) and copy the HTML codes under "EMBED".





4. Login to your blog. Create a new post entitled "Digital Citizenship - Random Thoughts"
Switch the posting mode to "HTML" and paste the HTML codes there.


5. Switch back to "Compose" mode and the blog post should look like this:






ACTIVITY 2: ORGANISING THOUGHTS WITH LINOIT


1. Login to Linoit and "Create New Canvas":




2. In the new canvas,
  • Enter the name "Good "Digital" Practices"
  • For "Access to Canvas", choose "Show stickies to everyone"
  • You may change the background colour.


  • Click at "Create a Canvas" so that the canvas will be saved


3. Post each idea that cross your mind in a sticky. You may choose stickies of different colours to categorise your thoughts.



4. To copy the HTML codes, click at "i" to display the different options display options.
Copy the HTML codes in the third box, "Embed Lino".



5. Login to your blog. Create a new post entitled "Good "Digital" Practices"

Switch the posting mode to "HTML" and paste the HTML codes there.





6. Switch back to "Compose" mode and the blog post should look like this:


Tuesday 10 December 2013

Pre-school Engagement Activities - Session 2

In SST, blogs is commonly used as a communication platform. The Students Blog is where information is disseminated to the student community (announcements). Every class has a class blog where class activities and daily homework are posted there keep all (students and parents) informed of the happenings at the class level. Similarly, some subjects run activities via the subject blogs too.

You will be required to participate in blog activities quite regularly, as someone to comment on blog post, or as a co-author. It is therefore important for all to be familiar with the features of the blog.

To access to the blog,
  • Log in to your email
  • Click on the Apps launcher, click "More" to display the dropdown menu.
  • Select "Blogger"




*Note:  Alternate to logging in your email every time to launch a Google app, your might want to consider "installing" the Google Apps Launcher for Mac and add the apps from the Google Chrome Web store.

ACTIVITY 1

1. You will be prompted to login again. The following will be displayed.
Choose "Blogger Profile" (on the right) to create a limited Blogger profile.


2. Enter your FULL Name in when prompted to update the Blogger profil.



3. Next, you are ready to create your first blog.
Click at "New Blog" (on the left) to begin




4. For the first blog, give the blog title, "My SST Journey begins here".
Create your own blog address. You are encouraged to name it with "sst-" before your full name (e.g. sst-chuawaitan.blogspot.com). 
Choose a template before clicking at "Create blog!" at the bottom right.



5. You are now ready to blog. You will be "brought" to the dashboard where your blog is.
Click at "New Blog" to start blogging.




6. Submit your blog URL in the form below.



Click HERE to view the list of blogs submitted to-date.


ACTIVITY 2


1. In your first blog post, you are going to do an introduction about about yourself.
Who are your target audience: Your Form Teacher and Classmates

  • Blog title: About me (I)
  • Insert image of an object that you would like your peers to associate you. 
  • Give a brief introduction about yourself. It should include...
    • Your name, how you would like your peers to address you
    • What are some things you like to do (i.e. your hobbies)? 
      • e.g. Are there some sports you enjoy doing? 
      • e.g. What are your favourite pastimes?
    • Your personality and behaviour that you would like your peers to take note of
      • e.g. Do you enjoy talking to people? 
      • Do you tend to quickly get into action?

2. Make an attempt to change the size, font and colour of the text and even highlight some key words that you would like to draw others' attention to.



ACTIVITY 3

Embedding "stuff' in a blog post

In session 1 on Google Maps, we have created a custom map and named it "Places I like to go in Singapore". We are going to post this map in a new blog post.

1. Create a new post entitled "Places I like to go in Singapore".


2. Retrieve the map (from Google Maps - place the cursor in the search box and choose "My custom maps".) In Google Maps Engine, click on the folder icon and choose "Embed on my site".




3. Copy the embed code.




4. Return to the blog post, switch to the "HTML" mode and paste the code in the space.

It should look like this:




6. Switch back to "Compose" mode and the post should look like this:




7.  In the same post, describe some of the places that you like to go, and why you like to go to those places.


Embedding a Video Clip (from YouTube) into the blog

Similarly, we can embed video clips into the blog so that we can watch it together with the accompanied text.

1. Create a new post entitled "A video clip that caught my attention".


2. Identify one video clip in "Youtube EDU" (http://www.youtube.com/education?category=K-12) that you find interesting and would like to introduce it to your audience.



3. Underneath the video clip, click at "Share" followed by the "Embed" button.




4. The HTML code will be displayed. Copy the HTML code.





5. Return to the blog post, switch to the "HTML" mode and paste the code in the space.
It should look like this:



6. Switch back to "Compose" mode and the post should look like this:




7.  In the same post, add the following:

  • Title of the video clip 
  • Briefly what is the content of the video clip
  • In 3 bullet points, describe briefly what you have learnt from this video clip?

Sunday 8 December 2013

Pre-school Engagement Activities - Session 1

Dear Y2014 Sec 1 Students

In December 2013, the ICT Department will be rolling out a series of web-based activities to prepare you for the ICT-enabled activities that you will go through in the new academic year.
Note: As you will be using web-based applications only, you can carry out these activities using any computers that are connected to the internet. It is not necessary to do these activities with a macbook. 

You will be required to do blogging on the 1st day of school (2 January 2014).

Starting from 7 December, the activities will be posted up in the Students blog. If you miss anyone of them, simply refer to the left panel and filter the blog posts that come with the label "Pre-School Engagement Programme". The related posts will be displayed.



Look out for new activities on the following days:
  • #0: 5 December 2013 (Thursday) Overview
  • #1: 7 December 2013 (Saturday) Google Maps
  • #2: 10 December 2013 (Tuesday) Blogging
  • #3: 14 December 2013 (Friday) Padlet and Linoit
  • #4: 17 December 2013 (Tuesday) Glogster
  • #5: 19 December 2013 (Wednesday) Popplet and Mindmeister

We will start with Google Maps Today!


Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps

Google Maps is a web mapping service application and technology provided by Google, that powers many map-based services, including the Google Maps website, Google Ride Finder, Google Transit,[1] and maps embedded on third-party websites via the Google Maps API.[2] It offers street maps and a route planner for traveling by foot, car, bike (beta), or with public transportation. 

It also includes a locator for urban businesses in numerous countries around the world. Google Maps satellite images are not updated in real time, however, Google adds data to their Primary Database on a regular basis[3] and most of the images are no more than 3 years old.[4]


Session 1 - Fun with Google Maps


ACTIVITY 1


The new Google Maps interface should be enabled for your SST account. If the interface you have in Google Maps is somewhat different from the ones you see below, you might have to refer to last year's activity on Google Maps.
1. Log in to the School Email Account. Click at the App Launcher icon, then click on "More" and choose "Maps"






          


2. Place the cursor in the search box. You will see a "Make custom maps" card. Click on "Create" to create a new custom map. 




3. In the new map engine interface, click on the title "Untitled map" to change the title to "Places I like to go in Singapore". 





4. Search for SST in the search box. Click on the green place marker of SST and click "Add to map".











5. Search at least 5 other places and add them to your newly created map.



6. Click on the green "Share" button on the top right-hand corner. Copy the link to share.
Next, ch
ange the access setting from "Private" to "Public on the web" - "Can View".
Click "Save", and then
 "Done" to save the setting.



7. To retrieve your map, paste the copied link on the address bar of your browser.  In the new Google Maps interface, place the cursor in the search box and click "My custom maps" to access your map(s).








ACTIVITY 2


1. In your map, search for the nearest MRT station to your home. Click on the "Directions" icon.





4. Now, we are going to get directions to travel from the SST to the  MRT station. 
Enter "School of Science and Technology, Singapore" in the empty field. Upon choosing the correct suggested destination,  the suggested route will appear. You can choose to display the route by car, MRT or foot.