Thanks to FOSSASIA and GCI, they have given me this chance to be involved in their community and join their GCI student page as shown below!
Image showing the pull request to merge changes to the repository!
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everybody!
For this interview, I have interviewed Ms Law, a teacher at my school, Dunman High School and have asked her some questions about GCI as well as other matters! I would like to thank Ms Law for taking time off to accept this interview.
1. Where are you from?
I am from Singapore!
2. Which school did you teach at?
I went to different schools to teach, before this I was a lecturer at Raffles Institution as a senior teacher. Now I am a senior teacher at Dunman High teaching Geography at upper secondary levels.
3. What do you think about the GCI contest?
Although I may not as tech-savy as other teachers, I find that this contest can be an eye-opener for many students for our school. It helps students to learn more about technology other than the computing lessons the students have in lower secondary. I would also be interested to participate in GCI if I were a student! GCI helps students develop communication skills which is essential in this 21st century. Now that it is the winter break, students can take this chance to improve their programming skills while enjoying their holidays, definitely having a fruitful break by taking part in GCI!
4. What part of Geography interests you the most?
I find the physical part of Geography to be very fun because I am a factual person, thus I love the physical nature of Geography and I find volcanoes, rocks, rivers etc very interesting as I also get the opportunity to travel overseas and explore them myself!
5. What other hobbies do you have?
I personally love reading storybooks especially non-fiction ones and like to go to band concerts, appreciate the beautiful melody of the notes and the whole orchestra!
6. If you are not teaching Geography, what subject would you teach?
If I do not have a choice, I guess I would teach Literature. But there will be nothing to replace my love for Geography of course! 🙂
In conclusion, what are you waiting for? Go and start GCI with FOSSASIA this break and learn something useful for the future!
For this interview, I have gotten Koh Pi Rong to share his experience with FOSSASIA in this GCI contest. He has taken part in this competition for 2 years and is currently working with FOSSASIA, being active in the open source community and one of the current leaders in FOSSASIA for GCI as of when this blog is being posted. I am honoured to have him answer a few questions despite his busy schedule.
I am from Singapore.
Dunman High School.
I am participating in GCI because I am interested in contributing to the open source community.
I have learned about the presence of open source organisations such as FOSSASIA and projects they work on such as Open Event.
I am interested in the projects the organisation is working on such as loklak, susi AI and Open Event.
I am interested in Open Event because I find it relevant and easy to implement.
No, as I feel that the GCI experience has been fruitful for me so far and FOSSASIA is an organisation which makes me feel comfortable working with them.
In a nutshell, if you aspire to be an active open source contributor like Pi Rong and have little idea on how to start, join FOSSASIA and take part in the GCI contest as FOSSASIA helps everyone regardless of their coding abilities to join in the open source community! Start contributing today!
I am Samuel Chua, a 15 year old student from Singapore. I am currently studying at Dunman High School. This is my 3rd time participating in Google Code In and I am extremely delighted to have the honour to work with different organisations with platforms such as Google Code In. FOSSASIA actually caught my attention when I was viewing the mentoring organisations. They develop software applications for social change using a wide-range of technologies, which I find that I can get more involved in sharing and developing open-source software. Without further ado, I shall state what I hope to learn from Google Code In and how FOSSASIA can help me.
I have been introduced to GCI by my teacher Mr Gi in school, who is also currently a mentor for FOSSASIA GCI 2016. At first, I was clueless as to how GCI works and how mentors can help us in GCI. But after taking part in the competition for 2 years now, I have realized that I can learn much more outside the classroom. Through GCI, I am able to expose myself to different tasks such as coding, documentation, outreach etc. With a wide variety of bite-sized tasks, it’s easy for beginners to jump in and get started no matter what skills they have and that’s what I like about GCI, it caters to everyone as long as they have the passion to learn and understand the open source community better. Mentors from the participating organizations lend a helping hand as student learn what it’s like to work on an open source project. The feedback they give is also constructive and aims to improve our work as well. Also by participating in GCI, it helps my communication skills as interacting with people of the open source community is essential to get people to understand your needs and help one another!
I hope to learn more skill sets other than coding. While I am interested in coding, I would also like to help other people and FOSSASIA is the perfect organisation to do so. As they create software for social causes, I can help by contributing to the open source community and through GCI. Through the tasks provided by FOSSASIA, I can do my little part in participating in the sharing society, expanding knowledge, tools and opportunities provided to me by FOSSASIA. I also hope to improve my communication skills. As FOSSASIA depends heavily on interaction with other developers through platforms such as slack, Gitter and etc, I would like to interact with other people in the community to have a better understanding of the projects FOSSASIA have and allow me to blend in as well.
FOSSASIA can help me by maybe setting more tasks on GCI so I have a wider option to choose from and have more tasks that will also interest me such as design and other types as well. Hence, I can play my role in contributing to the open-source community! With that, I look forward to collaborating with FOSSASIA and helping out, hoping for yet another enjoyable GCI experience. 🙂 If you are interested in joining the FOSSASIA community, do find out more from their website at http://fossasia.org!
![IMG_6934[1].JPG](https://samuelchuadhs.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/img_69341.jpg?w=268&h=331)
Sugar has a wide variety of activities that suit children, and these activities can be published by anyone in the community. Today, I am going to review one of Sugar’s activities – Story Activity. Before I start with my review, I would like to explain how Story works.
Story Activity uses images to prompt the young learner to tell a story. Here’s a screenshot to make it clearer:
As you can see, there are 9 images loaded. The young learner has to invent a story based on these images; he or she has to try to tell a story that ties the images together into a comprehensive narrative. For example, I may begin the story like this: A lock is needed to open a tent. There is a strong wind blowing currently, and the palm tree outside the tent is almost uprooted.
Stories could start like that, but more details could be included in the story and the story could make more sense.
The toolbar in Story
The first icon, the one in blue and has a question mark opens the standard Sugar activity toolbar.
The second icon, which reminds you of a refresh button in a browser, loads nine new images.
The third icon, with an eye on it, saves an image to the Journal.
The fourth icon, which looks like a disc, records what you are saying for your story.
The fifth icon, which is similar to a “play” button, plays your audio recording.
The last button, which looks like an ancient coin, is used to exit Story.
Now I will review Story.
A written version of your child’s story
Honestly speaking, there are not much projects I can complete with Story given my age (15 years old). Only two ideas come to my mind. The first one is that I can narrate a story and share it with my friends, and my friends will have to continue the story (say like a sequel) with their given set of images. Then they share it with their other friends and so on. One person can only narrate one story.
The second idea is that I could inform young children in my neighborhood about Story and encourage them to download it. These young children are Story’s main target audience, and I think they will enjoy Story a lot as they can share their own narrated stories with their friends.
After navigating through Story for a while, I found out that I could not spot any bugs nor lags.
Excellent. I strongly recommend anyone, regardless of their age, to give Story a try. Story boasts many features and the minor problems I pointed out can definitely be fixed. Moreover, since Christmas is round the corner, perhaps you could ask your entire family to download Story and the adults can help their children become better story tellers. In the 21st century of today, public speaking skills are a must and perhaps you can hone these skills by practicing with Story. You can also make your imagination more fertile with Story. Go download Story now at http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/ !
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Google Code In 2016 