eGarage is a strategic partnership between Hewlett Packard and Ngee Ann Polytechnic. The eGarage was officialy launched in 28 Feb 2003. The MOU between Ngee Ann and HP involved the setting up of an eGarage Showroom premises within Ngee Ann to incubate new XML technologies and web services. The eGarage was expanded by ten times its original size and the expansion was completed in January 2004. The scope has been extended to include mobile technologies and IP Telephony.

The expanded eGarage houses the following attractions:

• Development Lab to encourage technology incubation in developing innovative solutions using leading-edge technologies with support from industry collaboration and partnership
• Project Showroom for exhibiting student/staff projects that are innovative or are of commercial value to ICT and NP visitors such as VIPs, industry partners, school teachers and students
• Infocomm Showcase by industry partners to keep students abreast of technological advances in IT e.g. wireless technology such as 3G and wireless LANs; mobile devices such as PDAs and Tablet PCs.
• Living Lab that offers a conducive environment to induce creativity and innovation
• ICT Network Centre with ‘open concept’ design to facilitate tours by students and visitors

The setting up of the expanded eGarage allows tremendous opportunity for staff and students of NP and ICT to pursue excellent teaching and learning activities. The following initiatives and programmes were implemented by the School of InfoComm Technology staff.

Providing experiential learning through development of technology projects

The eGarage provides a total technology development package for our students. Through our contacts with the industry, new technologies, products, services and applications are introduced to the students. The first-hand exposure to these new developments helps to encourage the students to be more excited in undertaking the relevant projects and to develop innovative applications. Very often, these projects are either initial technology pilot projects or are highly needed by the industry. IT infrastructure is in place for students to access resources and test their applications. Apart from acquiring new skills and knowledge, the students will experience the entire life cycle of real-life projects which include analysis, design, development, testing and implementation. They will also be able to showcase their completed works at the eGarage Project Showroom as well as at external project exhibitions or at technology seminars.

The projects in the Showroom have created a good image for the School and NP to VIPs, industry partners and visitors during events such as Minister’s Visit, eGarage Opening Ceremony, PS Visit, MOS Visit, 2PS Visit, Open House, NP Council Chairman, NP Council Members, seminars, etc. The feedback from the visitors was very positive.

A flagship project named CoolSchool was initiated to enhance teaching and learning experience in a futuristic school environment where education is fun and convenient – accessible to students anytime and anywhere. It empowers students to take charge and be more engaged in their learning experience. Central to the CoolSchool experience is mobility, where students and teachers are armed with “cool” mobile devices such as PDAs, handphones, and tablet PCs. Students will enjoy the use of such “cool” devices and experience the more flexible, independent, and self-paced learning environment. Services and applications are developed based on wireless technologies, mobile devices and web services to allow ubiquitous computing. A total of 7 projects were completed involving 5 staff and 14 students. This flagship project clinched the Ngee Ann Polytechnic InnoHub Technology Award in August 2003.

Accelerating industry collaboration and injecting industry relevance into our curriculum

The completion of the expanded eGarage has attracted more than 12 companies to come onboard to join as eGarage industry partners acting as technology providers and/or development partners. It is a place for discussion with potential partners as well as a place to showcase the latest innovation and technology capability of NP staff and students. Industry partners have given their endorsement that the Infocomm Showcase is a good breeding ground to showcase and educate staff and students as well as visitors on their latest innovative products. Such endorsement comes from HP, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, LinkSys, Sony Ericsson Mobile, Apple Computer, Sun Microsystems, Raffles Risk Management, Orange Gums, JWCC, LUGS and many more. Industry partners were drawn into the partnership as the expanded eGarage initiative demonstrates sincerity and commitment. It is exciting that more partnerships are forged resulting in more external projects for students in the eGarage as shown in our External Final Year Project records.

By engaging synergistic technology providers and developers, we are able to inject industry relevance into our curriculum via pilots, projects and attachments. To further incorporate industry relevance into our curriculum, we collaborated with Microsoft to become an official Microsoft IT Academy in July 2003 to provide IT training and certification for our students as well as the public for skills upgrading. To facilitate the Microsoft Office Specialist Certification, the School collaborated with NTUC Testing Services to set up the first Certiport Centre in a tertiary institution.

Nurturing creativity and innovation and providing total student development

The physical environment of the eGarage such as the Living Lab and the general state-of-the-art ambience are very conducive for nuturing creativity and innovation among the students. Its layout is very unlike an ordinary classroom so that students will think out of the box and dare to be different. The community of like-minded students mingling and interacting in the eGarage encourages sharing and spontaneous discussions.

The exhibits in the Project Showroom and Infocomm Showcase could be a source to inspire our students to be creative and develop innovative projects. Working with eGarage industry partners also creates opportunities for the students to commercialise their projects and take the first steps towards entrepreneurship.

An eGarage Student Club was formed to manage the eGarage and demonstrate the project exhibits in the Showroom. This provides the opportunity for students to apply their innovative and enterprising skills in managing the eGarage premises and organising activities which are essential skill sets for the new economy. A plan is in the pipeline to provide "carts" for students to put their entrepreneurial skills into practice. Several technology SIGs (Special Interest Groups) were formed under the eGarage Student Club e.g. Wireless SIG, Microsoft Student Club, Linux SIG, Infocomm Security SIG.

The eGarage provides the space and facilities for social interaction among our ICT student bodies: eGarage Student Club, ICT Society, SCS Student Chapter and Senior Buddies. Student leaders from these student bodies have access to the eGarage and they use this place for planning meetings. This helps to bond the various student bodies together and provides opportunity for them to jointly organize major activities such as the iTechOne Mobile 2004 competition organised by ICT Society and Wireless SIG for secondary schools.

The Living Lab is used by the various student bodies to conduct seminars and training programmes for their members. It can also be a place for musical performances or plays by students.

The eGarage has facilitated a vibrant student life and provided opportunities for student enterprises. It also offers a conducive environment for nurturing student innovation and creativity. Hence, it has contributed to NP’s goal of providing total education where learning goes very much beyond the classrooms and lectures.

Site visit to ICT Network Centre

The ICT Network Centre was designed with an “open concept” to showcase the centralised IT infrastructure that provides the computing facilities and services for all ICT staff and students. The site visit to this Network Centre allows students/visitors to assimilate the following:

• observe the physical equipment e.g. servers, networking devices, cabling
• know the essential requirements of a network centre (equivalent of a conventional data centre) e.g. air-con, UPS, halon gas, etc).
• understand the design and configuration of the various systems as well as the constraints (ie capacity planning, technologies), approaches and actual implementation in the real world.
• acquire knowledge on the daily operation and administration of all the backend (ie Internet, Intranet, Servers, etc) resources and services that are taken care by ITSG.

After the visit, students were able to relate the information gathered to what they learned in their networking modules e.g. Network Fundamentals, LANs, etc. They could then close the loop and have a better understanding and appreciation of the content taught in these modules. This visit also enables students to visualise the environment of their IT career after graduation.

For more information, visit School of InfoComm Technologies »