Seven new Interactive Heritage Trails were launched, covering the Central Business District, Chinatown, Civic District, Fort Canning, Kampong Glam, Little India and the Singapore River.

Through the use of affordable mobile devices and applications, students from primary schools to junior colleges will now be able to “experience” their humanities lessons outdoors through interactive Heritage Trails (iHTs) developed by the Ministry of Education (MOE). An easy-to-use Learning on the Move (LOTM) tool has also been introduced to help teachers create new trails or customise existing ones.

The launch of the seven iHTs was announced by the Minister for Education Mr Heng Swee Keat at the inaugural Humanities Educators’ Conference 2012 at Raffles Institution on 30 May 2012. The trails will enable students to develop an appreciation for heritage sites around Singapore as they visit the Central Business District, Chinatown, Civic District, Fort Canning, Kampong Glam, Little India and the Singapore River. On these iHTs, students use mobile devices to access and respond to information sources such as photographs, oral history accounts and videos about the sites on the trails.

“We hope that these trails will not only enable students to construct new understandings of key heritage sites, but also strengthen their sense of belonging to and pride in Singapore,” said Mr Heng.

One of the conference participants Ms Michele Tang Sheng Lien, a Geography teacher in Catholic High School, was intrigued by the iHTs’ features. “I am able to track the location and progress of the students, and the students’ learning becomes self-directed.  They can learn at their own pace as they go from one station to another to complete the task set for them, unlike situations when the students have to tag along the teacher to listen to the teacher’s explanation at every station,” she noted.

The Learning on the Move tool showcased at the Humanities Educators’ Conference enables teachers to create new trails and customise existing ones in a cost-efficient and timely manner.

Another participant Ms Anne Kang Joo Lia, a Geography and Social Studies teacher at Commonwealth Secondary School, likes the fact that using the iHTs, the teacher is able to give immediate feedback to the students while they are on the trail, and not when the trail has ended and the worksheets collected. Students can also stay on-site to gather more information until they have achieved the desired learning outcomes. “Place-based authentic learning can take place effectively and efficiently,” she said.

Ms Kang hopes to explore designing a trail near her school’s premises. For teachers who are keen to do this, a Learning on the Move (LOTM) tool has been developed to help them create new trails and customise existing ones in a cost-efficient and timely manner by leveraging on the simple web-based authoring tools. The LOTM tool, which was showcased at an exhibition during the Humanities Educators’ Conference, was developed under the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) under its Experimentation@Schools programme, which aims to seed and encourage ICT innovations between schools and industry.

Mr Darry Tan Wai Mun, Social Studies and History teacher in Catholic High School, said he likes the way content can be added to the existing iHTs by using the LOTM tool. “In that sense, we can customise to our students’ needs depending on their learning abilities. For instance, we can add on more challenging questions for students with higher learning capabilities.”

Students from Clementi Town Secondary School give Education Minister Mr Heng Swee Keat a demonstration of the “Clementi Town National Education Trail”.

The Experimentation@Schools programme developed the tool to allow schools to also customise or create their own trails easily. One school which has successfully developed its own trails using LOTM tool is Clementi Town Secondary School. The school has designed a “Clementi Town National Education (NE) Trail” and a “Bukit Timah Trail” since it started in 2011. Currently, the school’s Secondary 2 students use the “Bukit Timah Trail” as part of their post-examination activities, while the Secondary 3 students do the “Clementi Town NE Trail”, which helps them relate the significance of their neighbourhood with National Education values.

Ms Hon Sok Foon, Head of Department, Information and Communications Technology Department, Clementi Town Secondary School said the LOTM tool was very user-friendly. “We only needed to know very layman terms such as ‘insert pictures’, and ‘cut and paste text’ in order to use the LOTM tool. It is also easy for us to add other capabilities such as recording a video interview, into the trails using the LOTM tool.”

Compared with trails of the past, she said, “Previously, it was all about paper and pen. Students would need to take pictures using their cameras, and take notes separately on worksheets and then consolidate both pictures and words when they return to school. It was time-consuming. Through the new iHT platform, the digital natives are able to take pictures, videos and annotate them while on the trails, creating a multi-sensory learning experience.”