What’s a side perk of owning a Computer Science school? We get to go on national TV 📺!
In mid-November, I received an email from a deputy editor at Mediacorp, asking to do a 7-minute feature with Empire Code which would be aired on Channel 8 Chinese news. The theme is about the emerging trends of computer science workshops for children and teenagers. Mediacorp would like to interview the manager 🙋🏻♀️, 1 of our trainers, and a parent-child pair.
We were obviously over the moon🌙 to be featured by the largest media company in Singapore! Firstly, I had to fix a filming day with Mediacorp. I asked for an extra week to prepare as I had to call all the parents of our Minecraft coding camps to obtain their consent for their children’s media to be featured on Channel 8. Concurrently, we began approaching our camp parents, enquiring if they would like to be interviewed with their children as part of the feature. Surprisingly, this proved to be the most challenging! Most parents gladly volunteered their children to be interviewed; however, almost all of them were too shy themselves to appear in front of national tv. 😳😲
Thankfully, after MUCH cajoling, we managed to find two parent-child pairs for the interview. The biggest challenge for all interviewees stemmed from the requirement that all the interviews had to be conducted in Mandarin. Though I did Higher Chinese in Chung Cheng High, it has been a few decades (yes, I am that old 🤣) since I read any essays/news/documents in Mandarin….Honestly, my only exposure to the language since Junior College involves making online purchases on Taobao 🤣🤣
There was a very interesting question raised, enquiring if courses revolving around the Metaverse concept is getting popular amongst parents and students. The simple answer is: Many parents have heard of the word but in terms of truly understanding its meaning and wanting to sign up for a Metaverse-related course for their children, is a different story altogether.
All in all, I am glad to say everyone had fun!! A big thank you to Mediacorp’s Channel 8 for doing a feature about our Roblox and Minecraft coding classes and our views about Metaverse!
