More than 400 primary and secondary school teachers attended this one-day Conference on the Use of Newspapers in Teaching and Learning at the Grand Hyatt Singapore hotel on Nov 17, 2003.

This was an inaugural event organised by the Press Foundation of Singapore, in conjunction with News For Kids, which publishes a monthly students' newspaper What's Up.

In her welcoming address to the conference, Mrs Sng Ngoi May, General Manager of the Foundation, said: "The newspaper is a wonderful resource for all types of information for all ages. It is a living textbook that can help stimulate a student's interest in many subjects. If young people read the newspapers regularly, they will have a better understanding of the ever-changing world around them."

>The Conference consisted of two plenary sessions - Plenary Session I: Behind and Beyond the Headlines: The News as Life focused on the newspaper, and Plenary Session II: New Children, New Economies, New Media was on the child. In between the plenary sessions, twelve workshops were conducted for the teachers to delve into a diverse range of topics pegged to newspapers as a teaching tool.

At the end of the day, the teachers picked up from education professionals and lecturers many creative and meaningful ways of using newspapers to teach a range of subjects, from history to moral values, social studies and maths.