Some peace now

Well, yesterday was the day when the first batch of EduCamp ended. I do hope that participants who attended the first batch had enjoyed it. Of course, I must admit that there had been some flaws here and there. I hope that we can show more professionalism during the second and the third batch of EduCamp.

During the EduCamp, I had been invigilating two (to be exact, three) tests, namely the English Proficiency Test and the Critical Reasoning Test (which is divided into Verbal Challenge and Diagrammatic Series). So far, nothing had gone wrong during the tests, and I do hope that it will be the same for the upcoming batches. The second batch of EduCamp will come on the 20th of April. It was supposedly to be scheduled on the 19th of April, but due to unknown reasons (probably because 19th is the Perak Sultan's birthday), it is postponed to Thursday, 20th of April.

Generally speaking, it has been quite a wonderful experience for me as a facilitator in the EduCamp. I'd never had so much fun facilitating a camp, so much that I really enjoyed it, despite all the long walks and the sacrifices that we had to make. Nevertheless, seeing the participants enjoyed every moment of it made us felt much appreciated. I am looking forward to the next batch of EduCamp participants.

I had mentioned earlier about Critical Reasoning Test. Let me relate my shocking experience during the test. No, not that the participants copied or something like that. The Critical Reasoning Test consists of Verbal Challenge and Diagrammatic Series, whereby the formal tests participants on the ability to judge for themselves which sentences are true, false or "no answer" based on a passage given, and the latter tests participants mainly on logical sequence (IQ).

During the Diagrammatic Series test, three participants raised their hands and asked, "Excuse me, but could you tell me how to do these questions? I have no idea what the questions want us to do, and I have never seen such questions before." I was taken aback, surprised initially, but then regained composure and based on the examples provided, I explained about the concept of answering such questions. Some understood the concept and immediately proceeded with the questions; the others remained just as blur as they were before I explained. In the end, some could finish the questions, while some couldn't.

The reason I was so surprised was that these participants had obviously undergone the PTS examination whereby their IQ were tested. I am very sure that they had undergone the same training that I had before, and if you're wondering how does the Diagrammatic Series look like, to those who have applied for the ASEAN Scholarships and went for the tests, the Diagrammatic Series is exactly like the General Ability Test that we'd sat. To the rest, it is actually a test whereby the examiner will determine if you can decide the sequence of five pictures in logical order, and then select the sixth picture from five different answers to match the logical sequence.

I can't seem to understand what is so difficult about getting that concept. Perhaps some people just cannot picture the logical sequence and so it seemed very difficult to them. Others thought that it was "a piece of cake". Oh well, at least I've learnt something new in the EduCamp, which is that I need not be surprised if some people just cannot do the Diagrammatic Series test.

I'm very tired now. I had not enough sleep for the past two nights. So now I'll just log off. Goodnight.