On 1 February 2012, Back To School was launched by publichouse.sg, with the aim of crowd-sourcing lesson plans and commentaries for teachers in Singapore.
We started small, with a handful of lesson plans, illustrations and web support from friends, and a simple message to everyone – that we’re all stakeholders in our country’s education, and we can all share ideas to support teaching and learning in Singapore.
Slowly, it grew. Yahoo! News Singapore kindly featured our fledgling site on 15 February 2012 (‘S’pore teachers offered free lesson plans on website’). We started receiving lesson plans and opinion pieces from strangers, some of whom remained anonymous, only wishing to contribute without any credit. A few more organisations offered their educational materials and commentaries – and many more remain in the pipeline, to be published on our site soon.
In April 2012, innovation and design firm IDEO Singapore mentioned Back To School (‘Andrea Kershaw of IDEO on Creativity In Education’) on DesignTAXI.com, which was tweeted to more than 154,000.
We started receiving anecdotal feedback that this was something that teachers found interesting and useful. Also in April, Singapore’s National Institute of Education (NIE) featured Back To School on its website as a resource for trainee teachers.
Launch of SchoolAsia.org
Today, six months later, we’re keen to test new waters. Our new website SchoolAsia.org aims to crowd-source a rich collection of lesson plans, opinion pieces and educational events to support educators in Asia. Our content deals with current affairs, humanities and the arts – and in particular, Asia-focused educational materials for teachers at primary, secondary and tertiary levels. (Read more here)
We now have 30 lesson plans and 11 opinion pieces – and gearing up to crowd-source much more, from more individuals, non-profits, theatre companies, museums, corporates, government organisations etc in Singapore and beyond.
As a non-profit, our mission remains the same – to support educators in our local and regional communities through a vibrant exchange of ideas. We are a volunteer-run group with zero funding, so we need all the help we can get. Please view, share, modify, use and contribute to the content at SchoolAsia.org – we hope to hear from you soon!
The Editors,
SchoolAsia.org
Visit us at: http://schoolasia.org/
Join us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/schoolasia