After 4 days of intense competition amongst the world's best champions at WorldSkills competition (WSC) (5 to 8 October 2011) in London, ICTian Gina Chow, beats the global competitors from 21 countries in the IT-SSB (Software Solutions for Business) category to clinch the Gold Medal.

ICT’s other competitor, Sam Yong, was also equally challenged by competitors from 27 countries in the Web Design category and was awarded a Medallion for Excellence.

They were accompanied by ICT lecturers who were on the panel of International Expert Judges and coaches to them.

Our warmest congratulations to our ICTians!  This again exemplifies our ICT Can Do spirit !

 

                                  Gina and Sam with ICT’s experts and coaches at WSC 2011 in London


WorldSkills London 2011 - A Big Thank You!
by Sam Mauris Yong on Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at 1:18am



The following note is written to my two Coaches (Mr Anand Ravi Deshpande and Mr Melvin Tan Jin Soon) and Expert (Mr Chiu Kok Lan) who has been with me through the long and tiring journey.


                                                        

Hello Mr Anand, Mr Melvin, Mr Chiu

The journey for WorldSkills London 2011 has finally ended. I just want to say...

THANK YOU!

The journey had been long, tiring and draggy, with so much changes and web design+development work done over the past two years. WorldSkills London 2011 has been a great experience for me.

It all started with Mr Anand putting me into Certificate in Web Design & Development (CWDD) classes to be evaluated and selected for the internal round.

Then together with few others, I proceeded to the long 8 hours Qualifying Round last year. I still remember vividly after the competition, I complained of shivering hands. The QR was followed by a long 2 months wait before I knew that Samuel and I advanced to the Singapore finals.

And then it came to the Singapore Finals, where we battled at ITE College West together with the other polytechnic and ITE students for the chance to represent Singapore in WSL2011. I recall that during the closing ceremony, my category was the last to be called, and the Gold medal was the last of the last to be called on stage. I thought "it's now or never". Then my name was called and I stumbled my way to the stage.

The past one year had be tough on all of us. Mr Anand helped me with some of the administrative stuff as well as guiding on the programming and development, Mr Melvin kept giving me feedback and tips on developing in Flash animation and graphics design, and Mr Chiu giving me feedback and guidelines on usability, accessibility and contrast. I can imagine all 3 of you working through nights to get things sorted for me to compete well.

Under your teachings, I am proud to say that:

• Under the pressure for better website development in PHP, I have developed website structures that helped to develop websites faster and eventually went on to develop phpRaise the PHP Framework. This helped to save a lot of time in terms of development and allow us to focus on testing business logic.
• Under the pressure for better graphical design, I am now able to design websites more beautifully with more options and choices. One plain image can be transformed into a swan easily. Looking back at my design work, I have drastically improved in terms of design.
• Under the pressure for usability, accessibility and contrast I am now able to develop applications (not only Web, but also for mobile and desktop) with more user-friendliness and ease of use. I am now able to apply these skills to other aspect of software development and this allows me to develop applications that users are able to use more happily.

Even though I didn't win the medals as I previously aimed to achieve, I am very happy and glad to have met you all and to learn the ropes from you all. I am able to further boost my portfolio and open more doorways to my career in the near future.

All these events had been rare opportunities. Without your helping hand, experience and guidance, I wouldn't be who I am today.

Once again, thank you.

Cheers

Yong Shan Xian (Sam)
I'm representing Singapore in Web Design, WorldSkills London 2011

More photos are available on http://www.flickr.com/photos/npsict/sets/72157627858695428/ .


About WorldSkills Competition

WorldSkills is a biennial international competition to recognise the world’s most technically skilled youths. It is often described as the “Olympics of Skills”.
The skills are classified under 46 categories and ICT competed in the “Web Design” and “Software Solutions for Business” categories.
This year’s WorldSkills competition was held in London involving competitors from 51 countries competing in the best in their chosen skill.