What is Guided learning?

Guided Learning is a module that stems from the concept of self-directed learning, which allows students to pursue a learning in an area which we are interested in. A 4 step learning process : Plan, Perform, Monitor and Reflect is used to help us facilitate our own learning.

What inspired this project?

Myra and I chanced upon a video on Facebook which was posted by Bigwig, of a man that was unaware of how closely he was living to wildlife like the hornbill. A hornbill was attacking his neighbours birds in a cage that was hung outside his house, due to the lack of knowledge on Singapore’s wildlife, this actually led to his birds being eaten.

Nigel Lian. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/groups/bigwig/permalink/728616350830638/

This made us realise how much Singaporeans are actually unaware of the wildlife that are living in close proximity with us and hence inspired us to proceed with this idea of holding a exhibition in school to raise awareness.

Our Project

I got to know Myra Tan Xiao Hui, a fellow course mate in Diploma of Veterinary Technology, we got to know each other more during our process of brainstorming what we wanted to do for our guided learning project. After discovering our similar interest on wildlife, we realised that we could potentially collaborate to work together on our guided learning project. More than just course mates, we are now friends having the same goal in mind which is to increase the awareness of wildlife in students and staff from Temasek Polytechnic. We are planning to hold a 2 days human-wildlife interactive exhibition which will be held at the area outside the school library.

Myra will be in charged of event management while I will be the content curator for this project.

The main content of this exhibition will revolve around wildlife, in particular their behaviour (for example if they were to enter residential areas, what are the right ways and steps to handle them) We will be educating them on how we humans have a way to decrease the illegal wildlife trade around us and how we can help protect the wildlife around us.

To ensure that the content that I will be using is accurate and reliable, I will be meeting and interviewing experts in the field (such as some of my teachers who previously taught me on this subject, Wildlife Ecology and Conservation and some of my teachers who are vets themselves) as well as other organisations (such as ACRES and WWF) to know more about wildlife in Singapore. Afterwards, I will be researching more about wildlife on my own and then coming up with the content we will be sharing during the exhibition. We will be mainly concentrating on :

Dealing with wildlife in Singapore
Tackling wildlife trade
Wildlife protection

We managed to partner with Wildlife Reserves Singapore (WRS) for this project in which all content materials will be vetted by Mr Haniman -representative from WRS and props will be borrowed from them.

This event was held on the 23rd and 24th of July in Temasek Polytechnic, area outside the Library There were 2 shifts on each day. First shift from 10am to 12pm and the second shift from 1-3pm. (The whole exhibition was a total of 8 hours).