“Sustainability – Is It Teachable?” or “It’s Your Legacy, Silly” March 17, 2025
Posted by Willie in Education, Student Development.Tags: coding, Education, programming, student organisations, Teaching, Technology
add a comment
Written by: Willie Poh Kaw Lik (0 words generated or researched by AI)
This article should be accessed at https://itsocietymmu.wordpress.com/?p=1277 when the link is available, originally published on 13 March 2025. This copy of the article is a backup on the personal blog of the author (for reasons that will become clear by reading the article.)
TLDR: Stop deleting your websites, kiddos.
This year’s IT Society President (Tharshen) is starting something new, and I’m writing this article in support of that, and so that I can just send the next tech committee lead a link instead of explaining this again, annually.
This is going to be a long one, but let me start with two short stories:
Stop Deleting Yourself, or I Resign
I’ve offered to resign as Advisor to IT Society two years in a row now, verbally, to the student President of the organisation and their leadership in general. It was an offer to get out of their way if they wish to keep doing things the exact same way to no avail. Good news for me my continued appointment in this role – they’ve decided to keep me and try something new while they’re at it.
What I wanted them to try, is to stop erasing information. “An Information Technology Society shouldn’t be so focused on the technology, we forget about the information. I’m sorry but I do not want to continue to be associated with this if you guys keep wiping out previous generations. I can’t,” I told them.
Before I give the wrong impression, I have a great working relationship with the last two generations of leadership. I’ve actually had a great relationship with most of the past 10 generations or so. These student leaders are some of the most brilliant, technically capable and responsible people I know, and I am proud to count them among my friends.
Yet despite that, I went so far because I’ve tried for YEARS to get them to do this one simple thing. So much so I have become convinced that long term thinking is simply unteachable. More on that later.
I Ran a Tournament for Asia in My First Year
I like to tell my students how I used to be pretty (very) active in student activities myself – it’s how I have a unique perspective on how student-run organisations and events work. The biggest event I organised was probably the 7th All-Asians Intervarsity Debating Championship. There are some exciting stories there – chief among which is signing away my life on a letter of intent with five zeroes behind it to book hotel rooms and ballrooms for a week.
How do they know I’m telling the truth, and not just bragging to impress the next gen? Even the Wikipedia page for the tournament series has been erased for not having enough original sources. They DON’T know I’m telling the truth.
Well – here’s my name on the top of the committee list for said event:
It’s a physical programme book for the event no one can erase off the Internet – with a foreword I wrote – with my signature below it. Sorry – had to drink in the pride for a moment. We made this, me and my team. (For this article’s likely audience, the sixth name down the list is probably a little bit more in your field.)
Yeah – so that’s lame. It’s a silly tiny book no one will ever see sitting on a shelf. It’s the age of everything’s-on-the-Internet! Say – who was President of IT Society in the year 2022? I checked – it’s not on Instagram, Gemini couldn’t tell me, and Google search turned up nothing. A very capable leader who helped keep IT Society alive over the pandemic MCOs and brought it back to the campus after – he doesn’t exist anymore, and it’s only 2025.
A Brief History of the IT Society Website(s)
We’ve gone a little ahead of ourselves, so let me break down a brief history of IT Society’s website(s) as I understand it. (I was the ‘unofficial advisor’ since 2015 on the request of its official advisor back then.)
Disclaimer before we begin – IT Society MMU Cyberjaya has actually existed since 1998. Due to organisational memory loss, we have not much in the way of records or history of its activities, websites or socials before 2015.
- In 2015, the leadership of IT Society, not having a website to work with from the previous generation, decided to set up a self-hosted WordPress site. They also wanted it to be an actively updated site – blogs, events, etc, that non-coders could post to and update. (We had a VP from FOM!)
- Tech Career Days – this event had a resume uploader system in Ruby on Rails. (Revived and supported for another 2 events)
- In 2017, the new tech team (possibly due to expiring hosting payments) rebuilt the website in Jekyll. Thankfully they converted the entire previous site. Thanks to the Markdown format of Jekyll, the site text since 2015 is preserved in GitHub. All image-based content is lost, however. Posts via Jekyll continued until December 2020 until they stopped. During this time, posts were limited to events and promotions only – essentially a glorified socials site.
- In 2021, over the pandemic, IT Society relied on socials only.
- BarCamp Cyberjaya – event needed a new system for online voting event forced to be virtual by pandemic
- CodeNection – new event – new website with custom functions.
- In 2022, after the pandemic, we had possibly the strongest web-development tech team the society had ever seen. They decided to build the main site from the ground up with a headless CMS with a promise to restore the articles from the Jekyll site. They launched in the middle of the year with only the front page. They were justifiably busy with:
- Tech Career Days – resume uploader site was rebuilt from the ground up in PHP.
- BarCamp – repurposed the old codebase for a new year without online voting
- CodeNection – rebuilt the codebase as easier than maintaining old one.
- In 2023, the inevitably new tech team attempted to continue 2022’s website, adding a few dynamic static pages. The blog feature was never completed.
- Tech Career Days – repurposed old codebase for a new year.
- BarCamp – set up the event site on WordPress (own site).
- CodeNection – repurposed old codebase for a new year.
- In 2024, the … again new tech team decided to rebuild the entire tech stack of the site (without a CMS), but the leadership pushed back and wanted to start a long-term main site on WordPress, which they did. (Yes I offered to resign too.) They restored the old Jekyll history, which restored articles since 2015.
- Tech Career Days – event was not held due to timing issues.
- BarCamp – set up the event site on WordPress (IT Society site).
- CodeNection – rebuilt the codebase from scratch.
- It’s 2025. Here’s the state of the sites:
- Main Website – 1+ year old WordPress site. New domain!
- Tech Career Days – 0 years old – new codebase for special functions.
- BarCamp – 1+ year old WordPress site.
- CodeNection – 0 years old – not sure yet but high chance of rebuild (change from competitive programming to hackathon).
I think just from this history alone, you can see the pattern and the point I am trying to make. Before 2015, IT Society has no public history, and we almost lost what we had since then between 2021 and 2024. And EVERY year, we erase the history of the previous event – who participated, who won, who came, who sponsored – all of it.
Two observations. One – IT Society does not lack for systems to build. Custom systems that serve very specific functions obviously have to be built out. In fact, many of the codebases that you can see above being repurposed annually or rebuilt from scratch year after year could’ve been built as permanently deployed multi-year apps so that they do not need to be redeployed annually. They would only need maintenance when hosting platforms mandate it, perhaps. Hackerspace, a friendly sister organisation has run on ONE Ruby on Rails system since 2013 and survived two framework version upgrades mandated by its host platform.
Two – if a generation codes poorly, the technical debt is so high in the succeeding generation it is more effective to rebuild the codebase. THE OPPOSITE IS ALSO TRUE. The stronger a generation’s tech team, the higher the chance the succeeding generation has to rebuild the codebase, because learning to maintain an advanced codebase as a beginner to CS – call it a technical burden – is equally as bad, even if the code and design patterns are better. Student organisations are not like companies – continuity is a HARD problem. Every year it is like the entire company resigns with the remote possibility that one or two juniors becoming the team lead with only half a year of experience.
Disposable Website, Disposable Organisations
Imagine if you’re a startup, and you got tons of funding that will last you two years, with plans to go for more venture money after establishing a certain level of technology.
For some reason you change your CTO every year, and once he comes in with his new team, he… decides to rebuild everything because there’s a sexier tech stack, he’s not familiar with the previous CTO’s preferred stack, or he wants to prove himself a superstar by building up on a new stack from scratch.
The first time you abandon a whole site/stack, maybe no one will question it. The second time that happens, I’m fairly sure you’ll never get funding again, and you’ll be labelled vaporware. What is worse is that every single time the site/stack is abandoned, all the current information on it is essentially ‘lost’ – users, articles, blogs, statistics, etc. Buried in some repository or database known to none but its creator, no longer accessible to the world.
Every club in MMU is a failed startup, IT Society included.
Every website any club in MMU has ever built has been disposed. I would be so happy for this statement to be proven wrong, but I cannot find a single club website for any clubs in MMU Cyberjaya that is still up. With a quick search I found one site for the Student Representative Council, abandoned of course, and still up because it was hosted on – lo and behold – wordpress.com. Because of that I know the Melaka SRC folks were attempting to make our Student ID usable for discounts at numerous establishments in Melaka back in 2017 – a worthy effort.
If this analogy wasn’t bleak enough, every club actually changes CEOs every year too, and to belabor the analogy a little, most of their Board of Directors (club advisors) are unable to provide much of a continuity as they’re there mostly to rubber stamp event approvals.
If an organisation cannot guarantee the continuity of its own internal record-keeping and organisational memory, should it expect to preserve the continuity of an ever evolving and changing tech stack for its website? Would that be a realistic expectation?
Sustainable Websites
In such a situation, should then SUSTAINABILITY not be the king? Make choices that sustain the information content of your sites. Make them as easy to maintain as possible, and make them impossible to disappear even if a generation of your successors utterly suck. The generation after that can Google your site, look you up, and get a handover directly from you.
With the most sustainable options at the top, use:
- WordPress.com
- Wix.com – or whatever hosted service.
- GitHub Pages (manual page editing) (Failed for the 2017 gen?)
- WordPress but self-hosted. (Failed for the 2015 gen)
- …
- …
100. The current sexiest tech stack to roll up a custom new website.
Websites NEED TO BE UP to serve their MAIN PURPOSE which is to deliver INFORMATION.
By this simple principle:
- If you’re busy developing and the site is down, you don’t have a website.
- If you pause updates coz the next one is coming, for half a year, you don’t have a website!
- If your information goes down for 2 or 3 years when switching systems, you don’t have a website!
- If your event is coming in two months, and you spend 1 month developing a promotional website, when you could’ve rolled it up on Notion THREE MONTHS AGO for all anyone cares, you’re … doing something wrong?
If the information is largely static, be it main website or event website, throw it up on a software-as-a-service – it is the most sustainable option there is. Focus on building out custom, dynamic functions that are not readily available or is too expensive to buy.
And to all the other clubs and societies out there, not to brag, but if my top IT Society tech teams cannot maintain custom systems for more than two years, you have no chance in hell of doing the same.
Think of how much more we can do if we had all the information in these main and event websites preserved. We can seek advice from past directors of Tech Career Days, BarCamp and CodeNection. We can browse previous winners of CodeNection – and let our participants and winners have a moment of pride. We can answer questions about what topics were voted for in previous BarCamps.
We can host what would now be TEN year old photos of the original IT Society organisers and participants. Our 10-year anniversary of intact organisational continuity would MEAN something. Think of the money support we could milk get from these alumni from their sense of belonging to our organisation. We would know who our past supporters and sponsors are. We could build a lasting relationship with our strongest sponsors.
But… But…
Ohhh I fought hard to get people to preserve sites. I had heated debates with students and friends I consider peers and I care for dearly, people I consider some of the smartest in any room.
It’s All on Social Media You Dinosaur
Every entity or organisation worth anything has a website. Multimedia University has a website. If you founded a startup, you would have a website. Chrome Extension asks you to build a bloody website before registering your app on their store. Ask yourself, WHY?
Most clubs used to run on Facebook until the generation of students who do not have Facebook accounts came to power. They use Instagram instead and it makes perfect sense to switch. They’ll keep using it until maybe the TikTokers arrive? How much access do these platforms give you to extract the work you’ve put into them? How reliable are these tools for archiving?
The vast majority of posts on these platforms are promotional in nature, and go up BEFORE activities. When they go up after activities, they are often self-congratulatory with very little actual reflection or information. They are also unstructured. Information, when it exists, is impossible to find other than through the act of mindless scrolling.
CS Students Should Build Things!
Yes they should! Why don’t you learn how to make paper before you write then? Figure out how to mix your own ink and chase down a chicken for a feather quill? It’d be nuts.
If you want a cute little statue of the mascot of your event however, and you start making a papier-mâché figurine using … a lot of of the same paper-making techniques of breaking down fibre, adding glue, shaping them, drying them – NO ONE would question it. Because there is no ready made statue of YOUR mascot available to buy.
Why would you want to build a static website from scratch considering the enormous continuity issues? Why reinvent the wheel just to host information and maybe a blog?
Also already observed earlier in the article – there are plenty of things to build! Build custom functions that no platform provides. Build them better! Resume uploading with approvals by your committee. Build BarCamp online pledging or voting to promote the event, that automatically shows the results online quickly on the day of the event. Build useful tools for students of your university or faculty.
There are so many OTHER things worth building. Show off your skills. Learn a new language or framework. Join Hackerspace and build whatever you want! Why build the most pointless thing there is?
There’s one important point to be made here – if this is your hobby we’re talking about – go make your own crafted paper or ink or toaster… or website from scratch. No one should take that joy and zen away from you.
An organisational/event website is NOT your hobby. You are a leader in an organisation that has a history and a legacy. You are in charge, yes. But you are supposed to be WORKING towards something. This organisation is not your personal playground. It’s an attitude to start cultivating BEFORE you go and join the workforce perhaps? And isn’t there some pride in building on top of what has come before?
Your Student Legacy is Important
Hackerspace MMU is nothing compared to IT Society in terms of size and activities. We run on a budget of zero. Some years we are just five schmucks in a room dragging small exam tables to the center to geek over the latest gains AMD had over Intel in chip design – and the latest bit of code some of us wrote. However, IT Society pales in Hackerspace’s shadow when it comes to legacy.
I can tell you that Hackerspace’s first meet up was on 9 June 2011 and the names of the 7 people who were there. I can tell you that as of the time of writing, we’ve had 439 meetups. I can tell you how many times our ex-ex president has spoken in our sessions (44 times to date). I can also tell you how much this information motivated our ex-president to grow his skillset, so he too can share (he has spoken 63 times heh). And more importantly, any random member of Hackerspace, if they paid attention to Discord, could tell you all (well most) of this as well (it’s member-only information).
The main reason for this, is because every time someone tries to replace our record-keeping system, they are told: “We love it! But you have to keep ALL the information and functionality of the old system, AND the old system has to be maintained as a redundant, functional backup.” Sounds tough right – but that’s EVERY company system. Think about it for a second.
An organisation cannot grow and become better if it does not have a history. Students CANNOT LEARN ACCOUNTABILITY if there is NOTHING TO BE ACCOUNTABLE TO.
There is a reason why student organisations in our university and country look like toddlers learning to walk compared to the vast, building-owning, staff-hiring, service-providing, endowment-generating student organisations of older, more established universities overseas. Part of it has to do with the prior laws of this country I’m sure. But a huge part of it has to do with the disposability and lack of continuity of our organisations.
But that’s another discussion.
Fixing the continuity of our public information is perhaps step one to fixing our legacies as student organisations. And your legacies matter! They inspire the next generation. They raise the bar and provide foundations for the future to build on. They raise the esteem of your university and the value of your degree.
Right now, your generation may not have a heavy enough legacy to carry on the information front. But you still feel it from the legacy of events and services that this organisation has cultivated over the years. Start honoring your own public records this year, so that every generation that comes after will have that much of a clearer legacy to build on.
Leave your organisation and institution a little better, a little more storied, and a little more prestigious, than you found it.
One Last Story – On Legacy
One of our FCI alumni received a scholarship to do his Masters at Cambridge University (yes THAT Cambridge) last year. When he got there, he made quick friends with a fellow South East Asian from the Philippines, who not only knew of Multimedia University, but spoke of us glowingly. He even knew that Suthen Thomas (the CTO of Grab) was our alumni, and that his nickname was Tate.
What’s the connection between a 2023 Masters student in Cambridge with our alumni from 2005?
This new friend turned out to be the 2023 World Universities Debating Championship (WUDC) champion from Ateneo de Manila University. WUDC is the most prestigious tertiary institution debate competition in the world.
Suthen and Logan were VOICEs Debate Club debaters who represented Multimedia University in the 2003 Stellenbosch WUDC and were one of the first (if not the first – I can’t verify) pair of Asian debaters to break (reach the octo-finals) at the WUDC. They were an inspiration to Asian debaters all over.
Ateneo de Manila University debaters still train using content from Suthen and Logan, until today. MMU’s legacy in the form of our two brightest debating stars – is helping drive the next generation. Not just here, but across the South China Sea. And that legacy elevates you, as a fellow graduate of this institution wherever you go.
Here’s Our Challenge to Future IT Society(s)
So anyways, to close a way too long article, here’s our (Tharshen and I) challenge to future generations of IT Society – and any club and society for that matter:
- Keep this site and the information in it.
- Keep it as easily maintainable and sustainable as possible.
- Keep it up with as little downtime as possible.
- Grow it and do not let it shrink.
- Build on top of its annual records wherever possible.
- Go wild with your own ideas too!
Tharshen has written a Digital Preservation Manifesto on the architecture of IT Society sites and apps moving forward. I hope this article helps capture the spirit and principles behind why we’re trying to unify and archive generational information on both the main and event sites.
How much faith do I have that this article will be read and it’s principles embraced? Let’s just say that I’m keeping a backup copy of this post on my personal blog as an archive.
The day this article goes offline? Welp – that’ll just be proof that sustainability and long term thinking is unteachable. Yes? Prove me wrong.
That time is NOW! September 14, 2012
Posted by Willie in Astronomy, Education, Science.Tags: brian cox, pale blue dot, science
add a comment
The “Pale Blue Dot” are probably the paragraphs of words which had the greatest impact on my life and creed, but last week, I found this:
“The arrow of time creates a bright window in the universe’s adolescence, during which life is possible. But it’s a window that doesn’t stay open for long. As a fraction of the life span of the universe, as measured from its beginning to the evaporation of the last black hole, life as we know it is only possible, for one thousandth of a billion billion billionth, billion billion billionth, billion billion billionth of a percent.
And that’s why for me, the most astonishing wonder of the universe isn’t a star, or a planet, or a galaxy. It isn’t a thing at all. It’s an instant in time. And that time is NOW.
Humans have walked the Earth for just the smallest fraction of that briefest of moments in deep time. But in our 200,000 years on this planet, we’ve made remarkable progress. It was only two and a half thousand years ago that we believed that the Sun was a god, and measured its orbit with stone towers built on the top of a hill. Today the language of curiosity is not sun gods but science.
And I believe it’s only by continuing our exploration of the cosmos and the laws of nature that govern it, that we can truly understand ourselves and our place in this universe of wonders. And that’s what we’ve done in our brief moment on planet Earth.
Just as we, and all life on Earth, stand on this tiny speck adrift in infinite space, so life in the universe will only exist for a fleeting, bright instant in time. But that doesn’t make us insignificant, because we are the cosmos made concious. Life is the means by which the universe understands itself.
And for me, our true significance lies in our ability, and our desire to understand and explore this beautiful universe.”
– Brian Cox, Wonders of the Universe (BBC 2012)
Now if only there was ‘an image’ that can represent these paragraphs, it might hold people’s attention for a bit longer.
From Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot paragraphs to what we have today from Neil DeGrasse Tyson and this from Brian Cox – you can see how science and our understanding of the universe is changing humanity’s perspective – it’s widening.
Whereas the Pale Blue Dot forces you to think about yourself as an individual on a precious small world, born out of our understanding of our place in space, this forces you to think about yourself as a sentient conciousness, alive in a preciously brief epoch, born out of our understanding of our place in time.
The profound beauty and privilege of being alive, here and now is staggering to me. To me, the message is clear as day – “Do something meaningful and awesome with it you idiot!”
And also staggering to me is the profound tragedy of the fact that the vast majority of mankind is completely blind to this awesome view right before their eyes, lacking the perspective to understand what they are seeing.
More people need to watch this documentary. But more importantly perhaps, more people need to be able to understand why it is so immensely awesome. And that is why I work in education.
The educator too, must accept blame for plagiarism! May 20, 2011
Posted by Willie in Personal, Student Development, Teaching.2 comments
The status quo in thinking about plagiarism usually goes like this: “Integrity is a compulsory value for each individual student, and they must uphold it in all matters, including homework and assignments.” Most universities require students to sign a pledge never to commit cheating or plagiarism. Coming from an education climate rife with plagiarism issues, I too, held strongly to this. (Disclosure: I copied math homework in uni – at most twice. But the distaste and pointlessness it left in my mouth made me swear never to do it again. I however never claimed the work as my own – the lecturer basically knew (and expected) everyone to copy.)
As such, most academicians have a tendency to place all the blame on the students – students who plagiarise are scum, with no values, etc etc. I wish they’d stop etc etc. I don’t think that is fair.
I am not trying to excuse a student’s individual responsibility to hold to academic values. However, looking at the big picture – human beings are incentive driven creatures. It is not always clear what those incentives are – it often differs from person to person. But increasingly in academic institutions (especially those catering to mass higher education), those incentives are ‘paper oriented’ – they want a degree, to get a good job and start a good life. End of story. Very few come here these days to actually ‘learn’. (Most don’t even know what that means anymore.)
A student who arrives here with values, will lose them very quickly. Submitting their own work, and at the same time watching those around them plagiarise and receive better grades is hugely demotivating, especially when ‘own work’ and ‘own learning’ often seems to matter little towards the ultimate goal – the degree. An educator has the responsibility to crack down tirelessly on plagiarism. Every instance of plagiarism encountered must be punished with the maximum possible sentence with zero negotiation/tolerance or the educator has failed his responsibility to every student who is trying to hold on to whatever shreds left of their academic integrity.
It is the educator’s responsibility to recognise students who hold on to academic integrity, not just with words, but with the assessment itself. They must be able to measure themselves against their plagiarising peers and know that they are better for it. And no – not tomorrow, not ten years from now when they are better members of society etc – but NOW. An educator who is incapable of allowing such students to recognize their own worth is scum as well.
Having said that, it is not always easy to detect plagiarism – in mathematics for example where often the solution steps are close to being the same. After detection, it is similarly hard to prove plagiarism. It is too time consuming, and there is a lot of other work to do – improving classroom methodology, research, etc. As such, another responsibility falls on the educator – to ensure that assignments are as impossible to plagiarise as possible. After a year of trying, I find it really isn’t as hard as some people pretend it is.
(Giving the same math problems to a hundred students and interviewing them one by one is often not a valid method of plagiarism elimination. It becomes an “interview assessment” instead of a “math” assessment. We’d probably have to do a “solve this problem in front of me” session for a significant random sample of students, and immediately fail those who are unable to solve said problem in order to provide a deterrent to plagiarism. And is that fair to those who ‘escape’? What about those who cannot think under pressure? Plus, if we’re going to assess them in our presence anyways, why not just do a small open book test?)
This trimester, I went with the standard practice for a subject I am teaching for another department – I gave out two ‘back of the textbook’ math homework assignments usually slated for 15% of the total assessment. Being free to give additional assignments, I cut the textbook assignments to 5%, and gave another case study/research assignment which is impossible to copy, and assigned it 10% of the grade. I told myself that this is sufficiently balanced. The 5% assignment will still force those who copy to at least write solutions, and maybe that will prompt them to learn eventually.
I am always honest and direct with my students, and I admitted to them that it will be quite impossible for me to hunt down plagiarism in the 5% assignment. But I told those who attempted the work themselves to write, “Own Work” on the front cover – as a point of pride for them, and to make it known to me. Of course, it is impossible to substantiate this claim from the student, and as such assessment cannot be adjusted to accommodate this.
However as I went through the assignments yesterday and today, every time I gave a high score to an obviously or suspiciously plagiarised assignment, and a low score to an “own work” assignment, I felt more and more empty inside. Yeah it’s only 5%. But it’s also hours of work from my precious “Own Work” students being effectively trivialized.
I enabled plagiarism this trimester, and I accept this blame.
Never again. Not even for 5%. I will never again allow myself to follow “standard practice” in giving take home assessments for which I am not ready to reasonably detect and punish plagiarism. And if I find that I am forced, I will fight it tooth and nail.
Thank you to all my “Own Work” students, for this valuable lesson in this educator’s career, and my sincerest apologies.
You are who you pretend to be. May 13, 2011
Posted by Willie in Personal, Society.8 comments
This post is going to sound a little odd. It is inspired by this quote:
“Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.” – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (American Writer, b.1922)
This has always been sort of like an epiphany for me. It carries a precautionary tone, but it can mean so many things. And it gives an odd, but very interesting way of looking at things.
Every now and then we hear of a great man/woman or a great act of good/kindness and we tell ourselves, “I don’t think I can ever be like that” or “That’s just not me.” This quote tells you that if you wish it so, you can. In fact, you will be. Just pretend. To yourself and others. As convincingly as possible. The other way to say this is probably “if you believe in something enough, you can make it happen”. That is the idealistic, positive tone of putting it, but it doesn’t really work for everyone. Some people cannot believe. However, those who do not have the strength to believe, can pretend that they do – and if you pretend long enough – that will be you.
Another way of explaining that – how are we ever certain that we’re doing the right thing or heading the right direction? Even someone who has looked really hard and figured out his purpose and direction as well as he can (and continue doing so with every new experience) – will have constant doubt. If I start bringing reusable containers to pack food, but I don’t know how to start conserving water when cleaning things because I’m a clean freak, does that make me green? Do I have the right to encourage others to be green? Should I first resolve all my own excesses?
Well the truth is – no one is holding a ruler and measuring when exactly you cross the line that makes you green, or charitable, or great, etc. No one can. So quite simply – yes – you are green when you choose to be. (I’m pretending here). If you sincerely pretend you are in all your dealings with yourself and with others – you will make it so one way or another. You gotta start somewhere. In fact, the decision to be something – is the decision to start pretending to be something. When we decide to change our ways and be green, we aren’t actually green yet – we are just starting out.
However if you don’t convince yourself that you have that green principle, you will never bring that reusable container to pack lunch, or refuse that plastic bag at the checkout counter. If you don’t convince yourself that you are someone who is on time, you will never plan ahead or apologize, because that isn’t your principle. If you don’t convince yourself that you are charitable, you will never offer that ringgit note to that stranger or friend who needs it. Life becomes a series of excuses of why you can’t be this and can’t be that.
Of course the precaution is there as well. We all make mistakes, but if we wallow for too long in self pity for being a horrible person – we will come to believe it. Everyone indulges sometimes – we allow ourselves a little too much gluttony, or a little too much envy, but eventually it will become us. We will find ourselves with people that we love to hang out with, but whose principles we completely disagree with (or more commonly, who do not have any principles at all). Everyday we pretend to fit in, and every time we allow ourselves to be silent on things we cannot stand for – we will slide that much closer to what we do not wish to be.
This is not in any way saying that everyone can claim to be whoever they want, wax poetic and that will be true. If you don’t bother to be consistent or hold to your pretense, you’re not going to convince anybody. However, if you’ve done your homework and if you’ve figured out who you want to be and why you want to be that, you can safely ignore that little nagging voice that goes, “Nah… you’re just making this up as you go. Even with all the introspection, you really still have no idea what you’re doing.” In fact, embrace that voice – because you will know that you’re on your way.
When you get down to it, a good and consistent pretense is indistinguishable from a strongly and truly held principle. So call it whatever you want. We’re all pretending, but we all really are (pretty much).
So yeah – pretend to be awesome, and you will be awesome!
“What are you talking about, I already AM awesome!”
Yeah, that’s it. Good job.
“Wait what?”
:)
50th Anniversary of Human Space Travel April 12, 2011
Posted by Willie in Astronomy, Society.add a comment
Today is the 50th anniversary of mankind’s travel into space.
Today, we honor the brave men and women who strapped themselves to millions of kilograms of explosives to be blown into a merciless, radiation filled vacuum to show us that the stars are within reach. We remember those who have given their lives for it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents
Through your eyes, we have seen our home, our place in the universe, and the vastness beyond. We understand the fragility of our existence, the reason for our humility and (for some of us) the urgency to @#$% get with the bloody programme and stop being ignorant glorified monkeys.
https://althras.wordpress.com/2007/05/19/reflections-on-a-mote-of-dust/
Thank you.
The Logic Behind Barring August 26, 2010
Posted by Willie in Education, Student Development, Teaching.4 comments
The question I spent two and a half hours struggling with last evening (which I did the previous trimester as well) was this – should I bar seven students who attended between 35-45% of my classes with between 0-5 out of 20 coursework marks?
Barring is a mechanic my university has to prevent students with poor attendance or performance from sitting from final examinations, thus failing them before they even sit for it. They are not assigned the “F” grade, but a grade which gives the equivalent 0 in grade point calculation. The guideline cut off point for barring is usually 50% attendance and 30% coursework marks.
Why do we practice barring?
To be frank, it is perhaps best to explain a possibly unknown benefit of barring on the lecturer’s part. Students who are barred are not counted towards the failure rate of the subject, thus improving the distribution of your marks (and thus your class performance). Lecturers are of course reminded never to bar based on this reason, but it is still an obvious and immediate benefit of barring to the lecturer. Lecturers in my university do not have to adhere to a normal distribution when grading, but they are expected to explain poor student performance, and describe remedial plans.
In reality, most lecturers wave the barring stick as a means to get poor attendance or performance students to withdraw from the course before final examinations. “You should withdraw from the subject before I bar you,” being the operative warning. If withdrawn, the student will not get a fail-equivalent grade. The subject will simply not count in their grade point calculation.
Barring Benefits Whom?
On the student side, there does not seem to be any benefit of barring itself. One is basically stripped of the right to even try. Even if the lecturer is VERY certain that the student will not be able to pass the subject, I can think of no reason (other than the benefit to the lecturer) not to just let him fail the subject.
On the other hand, when barring is used by the lecturer to force students to withdraw the subject, there is a benefit for the student. Not failing with either an ‘F’ or the bar grade will ensure that the students do not suffer a grade point drop due to the subject. This will prevent them from entering a probation state, which limits the number of subjects they can take, and of course, eventually lead them to termination. It also makes them look bad to sponsors, the immigration department and so on. To make sure this works of course, the lecturer has to actually bar students who do not withdraw, otherwise it would be an empty threat.
So… in my humble opinion, barring itself only benefits the lecturer. Barring to force withdrawals allows the lecturer to force the student to take the safe road.
Not Barring…
Not barring however, teaches the greatest lesson of all – it allows the student to make his/her own decisions, and suffer his/her own consequences. And isn’t that one of the most important lessons a university must teach its students? Isn’t the ivory tower all about growing up and learning from your own experiences and mistakes?
There is a third perspective on this, which is the university perspective. A university which saves lazy students from getting themselves terminated stands to benefit from continued candidature and fees in the long run. However, neither the university nor my department has ever encouraged barring. In fact our Vice President Academic argues vehement in Senate to lower the guidelines for barring, and to discourage lecturers from barring.
So why bar, at all?
Looks like this is a question I’ll keep struggling with from trimester to trimester.
Footnote
There is one way I WILL use barring however. It is an excellent way to summon constantly missing students with poor performance to meet me. “Meet me by this week or you will be barred due to your attendance and poor performance.” It is a good way to discuss the the withdrawal option to save themselves a fail. “Based on your current performance, I seriously doubt I can pass you unless the moon turns pink for three nights in a row. (Or you work very, VERY, VERY hard.)” The final decision however, I feel should always be in the student’s hands.
Of course, for the threat of barred-unless-you-meet-me to work, I would have to actually bar those who do not meet me. Haven’t had the need to do that though.
Ken Robinson – Tread Softly on Our Children’s Dreams May 26, 2010
Posted by Willie in Education, Society, Student Development.add a comment
Ken Robinson’s second talk at TED is as powerful as his first. He likens the urgency of solving the crisis of human resources (education) to solving the climate crisis. Some highlights:
“Reform is no use anymore, because that’s simply improving a broken model. […] What we need is not an evolution, but a revolution in education. This has to be transformed into something else.”
I wish I had the luxury to give up on education in its current state as well. Still struggling to see the light at the end of the tunnel over here. He also quoted something from Abraham Lincoln:
The dogmas of the quiet past is inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
I agree with Robinson – my favourite word in that whole quote is “disenthrall.” Every time I try to highlight to my peers or juniors that every “system” in the world is man made, far from perfect, and should be subject to scrutiny and improvement, they give me a blank stare. Being so enthralled robs them from the opportunity to see themselves as anything more than what the system tells them to be. It frightens me that so many of the next generation are content to choose courses based on what dad thinks will earn them the most money, with their own interest locked up deep in the closet.
It is also somewhat liberating to know that Lincoln had the wisdom to take tradition down a peg or two. The world it seems is stuck in the great vicious cycle of tradition. The young is deemed “too young” to be taken seriously, yet when they are deemed “old enough”, they often bring only the wisdom of “yesterday,” are out of touch with “today” and especially “tomorrow.” And those who decide who is “old enough” are often “the oldest possible,” who choose those most likely to honor “tradition.”
He ends the talk with a brilliant poem, and to a standing ovation. The brilliant talk below.
Ken Robinson’s earlier TED Talk is embedded in this post.
Another video I’ve found inspiring called “Exponential Times” below. It touches briefly on education and highlights quite well why things need to move forward – urgently. (Bear in mind that this is based on statistics from 2008 – two years ago.)
Teaching Math and Science – for Real May 14, 2010
Posted by Willie in Education, Science, Society.2 comments
Incoming overly long sentence :- You know those ‘seizures’ you get when your mind is screaming, “OMG MY THOUGHTS EXACTLY” a little bit too loud in your own head when someone else is talking while you politely wait for them to finish talking so that you can agree with them vehemently? A US high school mathematics teacher gave me one of those today, via a TED X Talk.
It’s about a problem I’ve been trying to express for a while, especially to my fellow educators. I usually refer to it as “lexical analysis of examination questions without actual learning” (being the geek and programmer that I am). He calls it “lack of math reasoning and patient problem solving.” Both describe the “plug numbers into formula” teaching that we do in most of mathematics and science education today. He talks about the whole thing in a much more positive way though. I tend to ooze negativism and sarcasm whenever I discuss these things.
What we usually end up achieving is the conversion of our students into walking computers. Given carefully worded questions (not unlike a programming language) with strategically placed numbers, they will identify a pre-programmed formula (14 weeks of lectures and tutorials in university) and be able to spit out a solution and answer. We then conveniently ‘evaluate’ their math understanding based on that. Given real world problems however, the likelihood of them solving it is pretty low.
Video below:
English teachers never have to deal with their students only ‘theoretically’ being able to speak English. Why are math and science teachers settling for that? It … doesn’t compute – in any way or form for me. At university level, our usual excuse for continuing the numbers-into-formula-plugging-education is that the students are used to it, i.e. blaming it on the schools. I wonder who the schools blame it on. And when does this cycle change if not with every individual teacher/lecturer/department/faculty out there?
I think it is high time that society stopped settling for half-baked math and science education in schools and universities. Until there is consumer awareness of the crappy methodology we’re employing in formal education, there will be little push for things to move forward. For real.
P/S I give short talks (for free usually) on consumer empowerment in technical education. Sick and tired of lectures, but don’t know how to point out that it’s a crappy teaching method? Think of yourself as a holistic learner but being forced to learn sequentially? Or are you a teacher/lecturer or managing teachers/lecturers and would like to start finding better ways of reaching your students? Look me up.
A follow up video to that is of course Ken Robinson’s TED Talk on how formal education kills creativity. I can’t believe this video isn’t up on this blog yet.
On JAKIM Cheating on Online Poll Results March 10, 2010
Posted by Willie in Politics.2 comments
Tim wrote a post on his blog in which he claims to have found proof of JAKIM doctoring their own website’s poll on caning as a form of punishment. To translate, the poll asks “Is it proper for Muslim men and woman who commit the offences of drinking liquor and illicit sexual intercourse to receive the whipping sentence, in accordance to syariah criminal law?” The choices are “Proper” or “Not Proper.”
Tim was kind enough to furnish me the results of his script’s data (655 small HTML pages of the poll’s results page saved every 2 minutes) which I manually tabulated into 10 minute slices in Excel to obtain the number of votes every 10 minutes.
I immediately found that there are cheating on both sides of the poll, which shouldn’t surprise anyone really. Cookie deletion or IP anonymizers should be able to circumvent the poll’s one vote policy. Despite this, although I wouldn’t think of this as conclusive proof, I find Tim’s conclusions highly likely – 500 vote jumps on the “Proper” side happening three times is just a little too neat, even for people spamming votes.
It’s not hard to throw out the few slices of two minutes that contain obvious vote spamming on both sides of the poll. And the ‘real’ results of the poll, which is what I’m most interested in, is damning.
With spamming votes removed, between 11:30 a.m. on 9 March and 11:10 a.m. on 10 March, there are approximately:
- 54 votes for “Proper”, vs
- 604 votes for “Not Proper”
Click to enlarge, full analysis in link below
Check out the analysis for yourself. The orange bits are the ones I decided are anomalous / cheated votes).
Willie
Siew
Will
zhiyuan
Earthwatcher 