Fun Techtivities in July!

June holidays may be over, or your Summer holidays may have just begun, but we can all enjoy ourselves with some family time at these fun techtivities in July!

For July’s #TechFact, did you know that computers that run on water exist? In 1936, Russian engineer Vladimir Lukyanov built the Water Integrator. At the time, it was a revolutionary invention the size of a closet – and the only one that could solve partial differential equations!

Fitted with various pipes and pumps, it was used for a wide range of applications. It only became obsolete around 50 years later, when smaller and high-speed digital computers were developed. (Source)

With that, let us introduce you to the techtivities that you and your family can indulge in this month! ✨

DinoQuest World Adventure

Meet dinosaurs of old from Australia at Suntec City! With the help of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, immerse yourself in interactive displays and exhibits as well as view the multimedia projection show in 5 thematic zones.

Learn more about these extinct creatures through experiential media such as animatronics, holograms and hands-on activities! ✨ Take a look at various fossils, and you can also look forward to personalising your very own dinosaur by identifying fossils correctly.

Details:
When: Until 31 August 2022
Where: Suntec City, North Atrium
Price: $22
Learn more here.

Smart Nation Playscape

Featuring various technologies behind Singapore’s Smart Nation journey, Smart Nation Playscape is an exhibition developed through the collaboration of the Smart Nation and Digital Development Group and Science Centre Singapore!

With 8 different zones, each zone allows anyone of all ages to easily understand how these technologies work. Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR) and Robotics are just some of these technologies. Scramble a Rubik’s Cube for a robot to solve, doodle and see how fast the computer recognises it, and many more! Such interactive elements are available at every zone and are sure to capture the attention of your child and make the trip an enjoyable experience! 🤩

Did you know that your child can learn to create such technologies at Coding Lab as well? Take a look at our Young Computer Scientists courses here!

Details:
Who: 13 years old and above
When: Permanent
Where: Science Centre Singapore, Hall F
Price: from $8
Learn more here.

Mythology RElooked

Mythology RElooked is one of the exhibitions under the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre’s Cultural Extravaganza. With more than 20 art installations and works by local artists, this is the place to go when you want to learn more about Chinese mythology!

Through technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and digital reactive media, get your phones ready so that you can immerse yourself in the stories in unique and exciting ways!📱 Get your little ones excited to experience how new technologies and art can come together so wonderfully.

Image of Mythology RElooked for July 2022 Techtivities

Details:
When: Until 31 July 2022
Where: Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre Ho Bee Concourse, Level 1
Price: Free
Learn more here.

OFF / ON: Everyday Technology that Changed our Lives, 1970s – 2000s

Step into this immersive showcase to educate your little ones (and reminisce!) about the times when typewriters, pagers, payphones and other older iconic technology played an integral role in lives. You can share about the times when you paged 07734 (upside down, this spells hello) or 143 (stands for I Love You) and how these technologies have evolved into what we know today. You’ll even get a handy Digital Companion to accompany your showcase experience as you play unique games and stand to win prizes.

From a retro office to old school coffee shop and a charming living room, there are many nostalgic sets for you to journey into to take photos and explore. Afterhours, gather your friends and make An Escape Through Time as these sets turn into an exclusive in-gallery escape room game!

Image of ON / OFF: Everyday Technology that Changed our Lives for July 2022 Techtivities — *Photo credit: Global Times*

Details:
When: Until 30 Oct 2022, 10am-7pm
Where: National Museum of Singapore, Exhibition Gallery, Basement Level
Price: Free
($15 per person for An Escape Through Time)
Learn more here.

Weekly July Classes and International Summer Camps 2022

Coding Lab offers an MIT-inspired and award-winning curriculum that is sure to ignite your children’s passion for coding! With classes from age 5-18 and an option to attend either physically or online, everyone will get a chance to experience the joy of coding – and we’ve got lots of Hardware-Based Learning in store for your little ones to explore this term. 🤩

Do you prefer weekly classes or are your children up for 2-day, 3-day or 5-day summer camps during the international school holidays? We’ve got them all! Sign up here or feel free to drop us an email, call us or WhatsApp us to get in touch.

July Weekly Classes and International Summer Camps 2022 Banner

Details:
When: Until 12 August
Where: Parkway Parade, Bukit Timah (KAP Mall) and Online
Price: From $401.52

Sign up for your Coding Lab class now!

Image for #TechNews (July Techtivities 2022)

The cockroach… an unlikely saviour? 🦸🏾 Harnessing its natural ability to stealthily infiltrate the tiniest of gaps, researchers at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have given the Madagascar hissing cockroach a cyborg upgrade. 🦾

Deployed in high-risk disaster areas, these microchipped cockroaches are equipped with a human-detection algorithm that boasts up to 87% accuracy, and can be traced by their human partners from a safe distance. ⛑️
Read more about heroic cyborg cockroaches here!

If you haven’t seen our previous techtivity recommendations, check out our June #TechtivitiesOfTheMonth, which includes more cool tech-related activities you can do with friends and family!

(Written by Thinzar and Edited by Cheryl)

Best-in-class Curriculum for Coding

We are honoured to be the winner of multiple awards.

Thank You for your support.

Hop on board the Coding Lab train! Click here to get our monthly newsletters straight to your inbox.

A Peek Into P21S ACS Advanced Computer Scientists - Header (900x600px)

A Peek Into Our Course: Advanced Computer Scientists (P21S) – Broad-Based Exposure to STEM Topics

Should my child DSA (Coding)? Coding Lab’s P300 Portfolio Preparation Programme for DSA

#CodingLabParenting Series: Towards Better Learning Header

View Our Classes

Coding Lab Student Feature: Aarhan Salujah, 13, St Joseph’s Institution

Photo of Educator Ryan at our Parkway Parade campus with two students in a Scratch class

Coding Lab Educator Feature: Ryan Wong

Techtivities Of The Month (small header)

Fun Techtivities in August!

Congratulations NOI 2020 Medallists Header

Congratulations to our 7 winners at the Hwa Chong Infocomm Challenge 2022!

All About NFTs, Simplified

Screenshot of Online Class forming a heart together

Join our LIVE online classes!

Ages 5-6 | Ages 7-9 | Ages 10-12 | Ages 13-18

Call us at +65 6977 9641
Email us at [email protected]
Chat with us via WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger

Coding Lab Educator Feature: Interview with Ryan Wong

Meet Ryan, our upbeat and passionate educator, who brings a wealth of experience to his classes from his time teaching overseas to his impressive work at the Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) and Ministry of Defence (MINDEF). With a knack for breaking down complex coding concepts, he aspires to inculcate an exploratory and forward-thinking attitude in our students so that each child will be prepared for the digital world ahead!

Team Photo - Ryan, Educator — *Ryan was a Senior Engineer at DSTA for 5 years and was also involved with system used by leading data scientists for MINDEF.*

Hi Ryan, can you share with us how you first got interested in coding?

I have always believed that technology will be key for the future economy and decided to take a plunge into it when I first applied to Nanyang Technological University to do Computer Science. I had many chances to be exposed to different types of programming languages, so I learnt that there were many different applications of coding.

Now that I’m teaching coding, it requires me to keep learning to keep up with the changes in technology. I love the way technology is able to make life easier and more seamless!

How did you discover your passion for teaching?

When I volunteered at church as a Sunday School teacher for Primary 1 to Primary 6 students, I received a lot of great feedback. I generally enjoy communicating with people and teaching, so I decided to serve the kids overseas as well and gradually started to consider teaching.

Together with my degree in computer science, it was a good job fit when I came across Coding Lab. I love the subjects that I teach and now that I’m given the platform to share about them, it’s only natural for me to do so passionately!

“It gives me great joy to make things simple and easy to understand, so I have lots of analogies, examples and illustrations that interest and help students to grasp the coding concepts.”

Why do you think that learning to code from young is important?

Learning to code gives the child space to explore many different aspects of technology, such as creating simple games, solving puzzles, to coding more advanced programs. Most importantly for all programmers, it’s fun and doesn’t feel like work!

Can you share about your previous experiences at DSTA and MINDEF?

Oh, it’s highly classified information at my previous full-time jobs! I can share that I was involved in doing documentation and training staff to pick up skills for the job, so the familiarity of it all helps now that I’m teaching children to code.

What do you do apart from being a Coding Lab Educator?

On Saturdays (and some school holidays), you can find me teaching at Coding Lab. On weekdays, I’m a student (of the Bible)! Other than that, I have a love for the art of making coffee and pizza. From intricate coffee tools to having my stone oven shipped over from Italy during the pandemic, I would say I’m pretty serious about it.

Photo of Educator Ryan and his 3 students at Parkway Parade campus, with the male student playing the violin and two female twin siblings watching him — *A glimpse of Educator Ryan’s most memorable class.*

What is the most memorable class or student you’ve had?

There was this particular Young Computer Scientists class that had a pair of twins and this other kid (whose names I shall not disclose). The twins requested him to bring his violin to class and they started a mini-concert playing and singing along to their favourite song “Faded” by Alan Walker. What a start to the coding class!

Even during the Heightened Alert when classes were fully online again, they continued to virtually jam together with their violin, piano and singing over Zoom! And when it was time to code, they were serious and focused. It was truly unforgettable to see them enjoying their coding classes, getting together to have fun and learn at the same time.

If I stepped into one of your classes, what would I experience?

It gives me great joy to make things simple and easy to understand, so I have lots of analogies, examples and illustrations that interest and help students to grasp the coding concepts. I also love to interact and encourage students to speak up, especially the teens, so you can expect a lot of that – especially from me!

Do you have any final words of advice?

To all the students who are thinking of coding or currently coding, I would say to “Do it now!” To teachers, always think of ways to get your students interested and enjoy your time spent with them!

Thank you, Ryan, for taking the time to have this conversation with us! We hope that you will continue to inspire and nurture many more students with us on Saturdays and in all your other endeavours.

(Written by Cheryl Tang and Amanda Soh)

Best-in-class Curriculum for Coding

We are honoured to be the winner of multiple awards.

Thank You for your support.

Hop on board the Coding Lab train! Click here to get our monthly newsletters straight to your inbox.

A Peek Into Our Course: Advanced Computer Scientists (P21S) – Broad-Based Exposure to STEM Topics

Should my child DSA (Coding)? Coding Lab’s P300 Portfolio Preparation Programme for DSA

View Our Classes

Coding Lab Student Feature: Aarhan Salujah, 13, St Joseph’s Institution

Coding Lab Educator Feature: Ryan Wong

Fun Techtivities in August!

Congratulations to our 7 winners at the Hwa Chong Infocomm Challenge 2022!

All About NFTs, Simplified

Join our LIVE online classes!

Ages 5-6 | Ages 7-9 | Ages 10-12 | Ages 13-18

Call us at +65 6977 9641
Email us at [email protected]
Chat with us via WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger

Lianhe Zaobao Feature: Coding as a New Literacy in the Digital Age

Photo of Co-Founders Yong Ning Foo and Candice Wang at Coding Lab Parkway Parade — *Here are Yong Ning (right) and Candice (left)*

We were featured in Lianhe Zaobao 联合早报, the largest Singapore-based Chinese-language newspaper, on 22 May 2022! As Singapore advances towards becoming a Smart Nation, what does it mean for younger kids who are learning to code today?

Read our full feature and hear from our Co-Founders, Yong Ning Foo and Candice Wang, as they share the importance of learning to code, their insights on the increasing demand for coding classes for children, and more about how they wanted to teach their children to code starting from a young age – which sparked the beginning of our MIT-inspired coding classes at Coding Lab!

Here at Coding Lab, we believe in nurturing future leaders in technology – with our coding classes carefully tailored to introduce coding to children as young as 5 years old, and thoughtfully curated to suit different age groups as well as varied experience levels. We adopt inquiry-based learning to encourage students to actively try and explore – something that is beneficial not just in the area of programming, but also in other areas in life.

“Coding is a new literacy in the digital age. I hope that my children can grasp this language and build up their computational thinking skills. The computational thinking ability will help to build new systems, simplify processes and solve problems in our daily lives.”

– Yong Ning Foo

Our award-winning coding curriculum is curated based on students’ learning abilities, with kinaesthetic activities and block-based programming for younger ones, and incorporates GCE ‘O’ and ‘A’ Level Mathematics for older ones.

Did you know? We have parents of two-year-olds who have registered on our waiting list for our Junior Coders’ Programme.

Lianhe Zaobao 联合早报 also featured our student, 10-year-old Theodore Lee, who learnt to code two years ago and joined Coding Lab when he was 9.

His mother, Queenie, observed that the biggest improvement in Theodore after learning to code was the development of computational thinking, and when met with problems, he will calmly think through the problem step-by-step for a solution.

Today, he is in our Advanced Electives class alongside teenagers ages 13 to 18, and learnt to code this high-level Covid-19 Pandemic Simulator project. Check it out below!

Theodore coded a project that simulated a pandemic based on toggable variables such as vaccination rate and hospitalisation rate. He was awarded Distinction and Most Promising Coder for his impressive entry in the Ages 13 to 18 category.

The amazing 10-year-old (he was age 9 at the time of the project) also did a block-based Scratch programming project rendition of his Covid-19 Pandemic Simulator project and achieved another Distinction and Most Innovative award.

LHZB Feature (Original) page 1 — *Click here to read our full feature on Lianhao Zaobao!*

LHZB Feature (WeChat) page 1 — *We have also posted on our WeChat here!*

We’re truly honoured and always happy to spread the joy of coding and to shine the spotlight on our students in the media. Read our Lianhe Zaobao 联合早报 feature online here or check out the full translated version here. You can also check this post out on our WeChat. Thank you to Lianhe Zaobao 联合早报 for the feature!

Read our previous Lianhe Zaobao Feature of our student, Jake, 9 years old, in A Little Somebody

Read Channel NewsAsia and Channel 8 Feature: Grooming Young Tech Talent in Singapore

(Written by Cheryl Tang)