Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew Declares Official Opening of the Singapore Centre for Chinese Language

The Media Development Authority of Singapore and the Singapore Centre for Chinese Language (SCCL) signed a Memorandum of Understanding on 17 November 2009 at the official opening of the SCCL, officiated by Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, to collaborate on research in innovative teaching and learning strategies of the Chinese language, including a joint effort to launch a Call-for-Proposal (CFP).

The joint CFP for the development of Chinese language learning and teaching will focus primarily on three areas; oral training, mobile learning and news in education (utilization of textual news articles, audio and visual news clips for the enhancement of Chinese language teaching and learning).

The CFP aims to encourage local developers to research and develop technology with a suitable network infrastructure that can assess students who are learning
Chinese as a second language, diagnose their oral skills and systematically improve their skills through different pedagogical approaches and training in areas that are lacking.

Signing the MOU on behalf of MDA was Mr Michael Yap, Deputy CEO of MDA and Executive Director of the multi-agency Interactive Digital Media R&D Programme Office. He said, “The MDA and SCCL collaboration hopes to apply Interactive Digital Media to uncover innovative applications to promote and transform the learning of the Chinese language. Through this collaboration, the industry will be able to tap on domain expertise and funding to explore and develop compelling ways to learn and teach Chinese.”

Dr Chin Chee Kuen, Executive Director, SCCL said, ”ICT in education is not new, but ICT with research-proven pedagogy and rigorously-tested learning strategy makes all the difference in further elevating ICT-assisted Chinese Language learning. SCCL’s collaboration with MDA hopes to bring together the best of the government, industrial and educational sectors in the field of ICT-integrated Chinese Language learning.”

Interested parties are welcome to submit their proposals by 18 December 2009 using the designated application form, which can be downloaded from www.mda.gov.sg or
http://www.idm.sg/cfp/futurebooks/. The guidelines and offerings by the partner network can also be found on the respective websites.

The Keio-NUS CUTE Centre officially opens

The Keio-NUS Connective Ubiquitous Technology for Embodiments (CUTE) Centre was officially opened by the President of the Republic of Singapore, His Excellency S R Nathan, on 12 October 2009. The S$20 million Centre is a partnership between NUS’ Interactive and Digital Media Institute (IDMI) and Keio University’s Graduate School of Media Design (KMD). Funded by the National Research Foundation’s strategic Interactive Digital Media R&D Programme, this is Keio University’s first full-scale international research centre located outside of Japan.

Prof Hang Chang Chieh, Chairman of the Management Committee for the Keio-NUS CUTE Centre, said, “The establishment of the CUTE Centre reiterates NUS’ commitment towards supporting national development goals and reinforces the leadership position of NUS in interactive digital media related research through its collaboration with Keio University, a world leader in Media Design.”

The Centre is headed by two Co-Directors – Dr Adrian David Cheok, KMD Professor and Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NUS, and Deputy Director (Research) of NUS IDMI, and Dr Masa Inakage, Dean and Professor at KMD.

On the aspirations of the Centre, Prof Cheok said, “The new centre opens up exciting new opportunities for both NUS and Keio University in terms of research and education, with a strong focus on new types of multi-modal networked communication for children and families. There will be substantial interaction between researchers and students in NUS and Keio through joint lab projects.”
For a start, the Centre will conduct research and development in feeling communication and build a trend-spotting engine of online digital content activities. It will also be working on other areas such as global computing, to install a Global Studio that will provide high-speed networking capabilities between Singapore, Keio University and partner locations. Projects which the Centre have been working on include the “Huggy Pajamas” where parents and children can “hug” one another via a hugging interface device and a wearable, hug reproducing pajama connected through the Internet. The Centre has also been awarded funding by NEC to conduct research funding on “Kitchen Media” and received a substantive grant from the Defence Science & Technology Agency to work on augmented reality in urban combat.

To date, there are 51 interactive digital media researchers based at NUS and 36 researchers at the Keio campus. A total of 14 KMD faculty members are involved in the Keio-NUS CUTE centre and researchers from the NUS Mixed Reality Laboratory are now part of the Centre.