The end of holidays does not mean the end of having fun. Combine fun and learning about technology through our techtivities, where we can enjoy a day out with our family and get to see amazing technology in action! 

Starting off with a #TechFact for 2023, did you know that Wikipedia was launched 22 years ago on the 15th of January, becoming the “largest and most-read reference work in history”? As of 2022, they are still in the top 5 most popular websites in the world, and they have information available in 329 languages with contributions from users all over the world! (Source)

Image for #TechFact (January 2023 Techtivities)

Now that we’re all set, keep scrolling on to discover techtivities that you and your family can indulge in this month! ✨


Light to Night Festival

Up for a unique art experience? Engage all your senses and interact with art in playful and innovative ways at the Light to Night Festival! From exciting self-guided tours, gamified tours, interactive installations, to a relaxing chill-out zone and activities with prizes to be won, there is sure to be something fun for everyone in the family. Make sure to register early!

What tech is here?
‍‍ – Participate in a tour without a guide with the help of Augmented Reality (AR)!
‍‍ – Immerse yourself in light and sound at the “Ephermeral” installation as these bubble-tectures, choreographed to a reactive soundscape using sensing technologies, produce a magical sight at night.
‍‍ – Featuring three carefully programmed projection works, “Art Skins on Monuments” is the biggest façade light show in Singapore and will showcase the beauty of our architecture through façade lighting technology! ️️

Details:
When: 6 to 26 January 2023
Where: Civic District Singapore
Price: Free
Learn more here.


Avatar: The Experience

Caught the new Avatar: The Way of Water movie and left wanting more? Step into the mysterious world of Avatar and immerse yourself further in their alien universe at Avatar – The Experience at Gardens by the Bay. Take your immersion to the next level by interacting back and forth with life-sized animatronic characters and the Pandora world, and even transforming into an avatar yourself!

What tech is here?
‍ – See AR in action by “avatar-ising” yourself at the interactive booths
‍‍ – Take control and fly a banshee at the stations available, just like how you would a robot!
‍‍ – Become part of Avatar with characters reacting real-time to the environment and an interactive multimedia installation for you to interact with the world with the help of Sensing and Interactive technologies!

 

Details:
When: until 31 March 2023
Where: Gardens by the Bay
Price: from $27
Learn more here.


Mega Carnival @ Downtown East

Calling all fun-lovers out there to the Mega Carnival, where there are over 20 unlimited games and rides, all for a single price! Packed with exciting attractions such as VR games, photobooths, arcade games, and carnival rides, and spots to relax with snacks from the food truck, this is the perfect place for the whole family.

What tech is here?
‍ – Enter 4 new worlds and stimulate your senses with games powered by Virtual Reality (VR)!
‍ – Diving into a ball pit is always fun for our little ones, and what better than an interactive dinosaur game right there in the ball pit, with the help of Interactive Technologies?
‍‍ – Watch dinosaurs come to live with Animatronics and control your own robot at the Robot Navigator carnival game! 

 

Details:
When: until 5 February 2023
Where: D’Marquee at Downtown East
Price: from $28
Learn more here.


2023 Weekly Coding Classes

Get a headstart this new year with our coding classes! With an MIT-inspired, award-winning curriculum specially curated for ages 5 to 18, there are classes for both beginners and the initiated.

Immense possibilities await! Learn basic computational thinking and coding concepts in our Scratch, App Inventor and Python introductory classes, and discover just how much you can create with just a good foundation. Advance further to learn more about the world around us, and find out how popular programs work, whether it be Quiz programs, games like Geometry Dash, or web applications! 

With both physical and online options, there’s definitely a class suitable for everyone! Sign up here or feel free to drop us an email, call us or WhatsApp us to get in touch.

Details:
When: from 3 January 2023
Where: Online, Parkway Parade, Bukit Timah (KAP Mall)
Price: From $401.52

Sign up for your Coding Lab class now!


Image for #TechFact (January 2023 Techtivities)

In an effort to promote digital literacy, DBS Foundation and the government will contribute a total of S$1 million dollars to fund the national Digital for Life (DFL) movement.

The funding is expected to benefit nearly 100,000 Singaporeans over the next two years. Read more on the efforts of the DFL movement here!


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

(Written by Thinzar)


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.

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

 

Social media has become an intimate way for many of us to connect with relatives and old friends when we share pictures of our families and celebrations for the various events in our lives. However, that also means everyone else is watching.

It is estimated that by 2030 parents’ over-sharing of personal information about their kids on social media could cost almost £670m in online fraud”. How can this happen? We must first understand our “digital footprint”.

“Digital footprint”: The traceable and permanent trail of data made up of all of your online activity

For example, some parents may accidentally expose the location of their children through the geo-tagging function on Facebook or by “checking in” at these places and then sharing it online.

Malicious actors may take advantage of the content we post online unassumingly to build up a profile of our identity, which can then be used for nefarious purposes. Even though if profiles are private, “parents often find a false sense of security by being able to curate who sees this information, such as friends and family, but do not realize that a majority of kidnappings and violent crimes against minors are committed by acquaintances and relatives“. (Source)

What's your digital footprint blog? Take care of it!: Digitial footprint image
Image Credits: TheSocialWorker

What we post and share also has implications for the future, and we need to be cautious of what we post, especially young teenagers. Companies and universities will conduct online research on applicants and can rescind acceptance offers if found to have done offensive things on social media, such as sexually explicit and racially offensive memes. (Source)

Once something is posted online, it is extremely difficult to remove it from the Internet, and hence every post should be treated with caution before being posted online. How can we do this? Take a look below and some of these measures that we have compiled below for you!

Communication

Many young teenagers may be unaware of how far the information they post online can travel and it is important for them to understand this.

Have an open conversation with them about the dangers of over-sharing and going through the social media platforms they use together with them to understand what they are exposed to and the potential threats they may encounter! Consider visiting each other’s social media profiles to see how much information someone could extract from you if they had the ill intentions to do so. By clearly illustrating these dangers, it would set an example for them to police their own posts online.

What's your digital footprint blog? Take care of it!: Parents and son looking at computer (communication)
Image Credits: Unicef

Privacy Controls

What's your digital footprint blog? Take care of it!: Privacy Controls
Image Credits: AppSec Stof

Take charge of your digital footprint by enabling privacy controls! Many social media platforms have privacy controls to reduce the amount of information that is exposed to those outside of our immediate social circles.

Ensure that your profile is set to private and that the photos and other media you post online can only be seen by those you’ve added or followed back. Go through your friend list or followers and ensure that you know and trust all who have access to your profile.

Avoid Oversharing

Be careful not to share too much information online!

As explained above, tagging your location online may allow someone to identify where you or your children may be at specific times which could lead to stalking or even kidnapping. Constantly sharing photos of you or your children online could allow malicious actors to piece together information such as their school, their recreational activities outdoors, or other bits of sensitive information that we may absent-mindedly share. By restricting the number of photos we share and removing location-specific tags from them, we can make it much harder for someone to be able to track our children’s whereabouts.

What's your digital footprint blog? Take care of it!: Oversharing
Image Credits: Glendale High School

What's your digital footprint blog? Take care of it!: Abbreviations
Image Credits: WorkAwesome

Use false data / abbreviations

Some parents may maintain a digital profile for their young kids and many young teenagers already have their own social media profiles.

A good way to obscure our digital footprint would be to avoid using our full names or to use abbreviations for our social media profiles. Even slightly changing the date of birth on social media would make it much harder for someone to verify their real identity and hence protect them from predatory actors. Only give the name of your account to people you know in real life and trust.

Think before sharing

Pay close attention to what you post online!

It is important to consider thinking about how our posts may seem to outsiders. Some posts that are meant to be private or “inside jokes” between friends may in fact be offensive to an outsider and could have wide-reaching consequences.

These posts could be dug up in the future long after we’ve forgotten about them and as such, we should consider at the moment how these posts would affect us if the world were to view it.

What's your digital footprint blog? Take care of it!: Think before you share
Image Credits: euneighbourseast


So there you have it! We hope that these measures are effective in helping you control your digital footprint and educating your children on how what they post online can have far-reaching consequences. Information posted online can be very difficult to remove and we are often unaware of malicious actors close to us who may be collecting them for ill-intended purposes. Posts intended for friends and families can also spread far and wide and unintentionally cause harm to a wide group of people.

By understanding these consequences, we can exercise better responsibility on the content we share and make the internet a better and safer place to navigate for everyone!


(Written by Lech, edited by Thinzar)

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.

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

Meet Jun Min, our avid coder and Secondary One student currently studying in his dream school, NUS High School of Math and Science, which he entered through Direct School Admission (DSA). As one of Coding Lab’s earlier students (he started when he was barely 7 years old), we catch up with him since his previous blog feature.

Student Feature - Jun Min header (900x600px)
Jun Min, now a student at NUS High, has a love for coding and drawing. Putting the two together, he is excited by the possibility of becoming an app and game developer!

You may also recognise him when he won 2nd Place in our International Coding Showcase 2020 Ages 10-12 (Scratch) category and 3rd Place in our Young Coders’ Global Hackathon 2020 in the Junior Category (Ages 7-12). Let’s hear from Jun Min about his DSA experience and coding journey thus far!

Hi Jun Min, Congratulations on entering NUS High School of Math and Science through DSA! How do you feel about your achievement?

I feel very happy and fortunate to enter NUS High! I decided to put NUS High as my first choice because of my passion in STEM, along with its other merits. The DSA process was quite an important and humbling learning experience. Through the different stages, I persevered and thankfully succeeded in the end!

“Coding has influenced my life a lot. I realised that there is the possibility for me to pursue a career in app and game designing, which will become very important in the future because of the advancement of technology.

I’m sure your coding journey has come a long way since our interview back in 2018! What were the difficulties you faced along the way and how did you overcome them?

Back in the days, I faced quite a few challenges when coding with Python because I was not used to the new programming language. I initially struggled to keep up, but I decided to practise more and finally completed the course!

To further strengthen my coding abilities, I definitely want to join more competitions in future. I hope these will strengthen my coding abilities by providing friendly competition, which will encourage me to practise and try out new things. 

Catch 11-year-old Jun Min’s Technology Clicker Scratch project that he submitted for the International Coding Showcase (SG-JP) 2020.

“Coding is a very important life skill to have, given that technology continues to be very crucial in our lives.  Learning to code is the start to helping children become digitally savvy and not get left behind.”

How has coding impacted your life?

Well, coding has influenced my life a lot. I realised that there is the possibility for me to pursue a career in app and game designing, which will become very important in the future because of the advancement of technology. It is also one of my favourite pastimes when I need to de-stress!

In your previous student feature, you shared with us your hobbies and a photo of you and your awesome birthday cake! What have you been up to since then? Do you have any updates?

Since the last interview, I have been learning all about new programming languages and new functions. Recently, I have been trying to create and code modifications to one of my favourite games, Kerbal Space Program. I still enjoy coding, creating and designing games, cycling, swimming and drawing – my hobbies haven’t really changed, but have advanced slightly such as going on very long cycling trips. I am also still passionate about Mathematics!

Image of Jun Min with his favourite characters on a cake

Student Feature - Jun Min turns 10 with cake

Nowadays, I would be happy with a plain cake! But if there were decorations, I would want it to have features of Kerbal Space Program or Minecraft (which my mom has made in previous years). 

What is your current favourite coding project?

My favourite project is still the ‘Fight Covid-19’ project for the YCGH! This is because it is quite fun and unique, and yet features realistic simulations of the pandemic, when the pandemic was still in its early phases. The project combined my two passions – coding and mathematics. It was a meaningful project as well!

Watch Jun Min’s favourite coding project Fight COVID-19 that he presented for the Young Coders’ Global Hackathon 2020.

Why do you think learning how to code is so important?

I feel that coding is a very important life skill to have, given that technology continues to be very crucial in our lives. Learning to code is the start to helping children become digitally savvy and not get left behind. Coding is also a way to contribute to society by coding useful or entertaining apps and games, which may shape the world we live in.

Finally, do you have any advice for young people like you who want to start or are learning to code?

Coding may seem difficult at first, but once you get the hang of the basics and if you are interested in it, it will be extremely fun and rewarding. 


Thank you for sharing your programming journey with us, Jun Min! 😃 We are so proud to see you grow from the curious and determined young 7-year-old Scratch student – that we invited to our Gifted Coders class – to becoming a coding pro, and now getting into your dream school at NUS High School of Math and Science! We hope that Jun Min’s story inspires many other young coders to take the step to learn to code, explore the vast world of possibilities, and to harness the skill to contribute to society and shape our world! 🌏

Wang Jun Min has been attending classes at Coding Lab since 2016 – from Scratch 1 when he was Primary 1, joining our Gifted Coders class and advancing through our curriculum. Jun Min, who turns 13 this year, won 2nd Place in our International Coding Showcase 2020 Ages 10-12 (Scratch) category and 3rd Place in our Young Coders’ Global Hackathon 2020 in the Junior Category (Ages 7-12).

Our #CodingLabStudents series features our ambitious students and their ongoing coding journeys – be it the budding coder or advanced Python Pro, we appreciate each and every single one’s efforts as they progress to greater heights. 🌱

Coding Lab offers an award-winning curriculum specially for ages 5 to 18 – check out our courses to begin your own coding journey today!

Read Next: Coding Lab Student Feature: Jun Min, 8, Henry Park Primary School

Read Next: Young Coders Global Hackathon 2020 Summed Up: Junior Category

(Written by Cheryl Tang and Zulaikha)


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.

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