Project information
| Status | Finalist |
| URL | Go to website |
| Category | Culture |
| Country | Singapore |
| Operational areas | Urban |
| Target groups | Children, Youth, Women, Men, Seniors |
| Wireless connection | WiFi Wireless@SG |
| Access points | Government office, Business, Home, School, Library, Cafe |
| Interact | Desktop Computer, Laptop, PDA |
| Software License Types | Open Source |
Project location
Random images Challenge 2008
Rediscover Singapore
- Brief description
- Singapore is the quintessential 20th century experience of a city that has gone through a super fast ride into modernity. In our rush to embrace the future, residents overlook the fact that there are many cultural and natural heritage places in their own backyard both in the city centre and suburbs. Rediscover Singapore is a unique explorer's guide to various interesting nooks and crannies around Singapore.
- Vision, Objectives and Goals
- Singapore is a city that happens to be a country, and land scarcity is always pervasive, but as much as we need to make room for growth, we also need to improve the quality of life. This includes finding ways to keep significant parts of our green spaces and built heritage. We envision that Singaporeans will learn to appreciate and enjoy this natural and built heritage. Hence, we produced guide booklets on specific lesser known areas in Singapore, besides the usual tourist spots. Rediscover Singapore is a unique resource that brings these guides online and aims to encourage local residents to explore these areas. Besides the printable maps, the website also includes a flash programme, The Central Area Discoverer, an interactive library with stories, videos and 1000 pictures of Singapore’s City Centre, with the different modules launched in phases.
- How does ICT contribute to the organisational objectives
- We have a visitor centre, Singapore City Gallery, a city exhibition that showcases the efforts of city planning in Singapore. The gallery attracts 230,000 visitors a year and it used to be the only place where our resources such as the walking maps and the Central Area Discoverer (CAM) programme in the form of touchscreen kiosks can be found. The Rediscover Singapore portal enables the Singapore City Gallery to reach out to more people in its public education efforts, beyond those who visit the gallery and for visitors such as teachers to continue the education effort in the classroom after leaving the gallery. This is a timely move as now, most schools have computers with internet connections to facilitate learning with IT. In the past, teachers may have had to buy video clips in the form of DVDs and copy text manually from the exhibits in the gallery. Now, they simply have to call up the information on the internet. Those seeking information about city planning in Singapore also have a new resource with these modules online.
- Transferability
In many cities, there are always efforts - individually and by organisations to get residents to "rediscover" their own backyard. These are however mostly sporadic. With Rediscover Singapore, we try to pull the small efforts of government or NGO agencies together so that once consolidated, they are more effective. With sharing of resources and cooperation, such a project can be replicated quite easily, but it does need some governmentt support, as a lot of information resides there.
- Project summary
The way we use ICT is to use the right technology for right uses. Thus, we don't opt for the most advanced or newest software. For example, the maps could be more interactive and entertainning, but we deliver it as pdf files that are printer friendly. For the Discoverer programme, we use Flash so that updating is easy, cost-effective, and reachable to the masses.
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