Plan and stay focused

GONE are the days when teenagers hid their crushes and experiences with love as painful secrets.

Today’s generation of teenagers are more open, often expressing their feelings and thoughts about relationships.

Thus, a team of four teenagers from the Batu Pahat High School decided to explore the ideas behind love relationships in the contest themed “teenage angst”.

Mag Inc 2009 is the much awaited StarNiE-Pizza Hut Newspaper-in-Education contest which will run for two and a half months, beginning April.

When asked why they were interested in the topic, one of the contestants, Sandeep Singh, 17, said that it was related to what they had been experiencing.

“We have had some painful experiences so we thought it was a brilliant idea to find out more about love relationships through the making of this magazine,” said the deputy head prefect.

He added that they could relate better to a topic that they had first hand experience in.

“We will be interviewing the girls from our tuition classes and some relationship gurus for advice,” he said adding that the latter would include their parents, a married teacher and their counsellor at school.

Their catchy title, Not Your Typical Fairy Tale, and interesting layout won them prizes at the Mag Inc workshop held at a hotel here on Monday.

Each team was given 20 minutes to come up with a rough sketch of their magazine layout after briefings from Taylor’s School of Communications lecturer Azmyl Yusof and workshop facilitator Adeline Cruz.

Sandeep’s teammate, Eugene Lee also expressed his interest in participating in the three-minute video clip contest where each winning team member would receive a Canon A470 Power Shot digital camera, courtesy of Canon Marketing (M) Sdn Bhd.

For primary student Toh Qin Wayne, 11, the best thing about this competition was that he could learn more about feature writing.

“I am very excited because I get to interview people and write about them,” said the student of SJK(C) Foon Yew 1 in Johor Baru adding that he planned to focus on the issue of teenage smoking.

Johor Education Department academic sector chief assistant director Nor Ezah Mohammad who attended the programme said that the competition provided the school children a change to learn something new.

“The theme is a good choice for them to work on, especially for those who have first-hand experience with some kind of teenage angst.

“However, if they work on a topic where they do not have any personal experiences in, they can take it as an opportunity to learn more as they do their research for their articles,” she said.

She added that the number of schools which had registered for the contest had increased from 25 in the previous year to 32 this year.

“This is very encouraging and it helps them to improve their English too,” she said.

The competition is divided into three categories - Primary (Years Four to Six), Lower Secondary and Upper Secondary.

The grand prize winners of the upper secondary school category stand to win up to five pre-university scholarships from Taylor’s University College, worth RM100,000.

These lucky students can choose to enrol in one of the three programmes offered under Taylor’s pre-university studies - South Australian Matriculation, International Canadian Pre-University or Cambridge A- Levels.

They will also enjoy a trip to Sibu Island Resort, Johor, together with the grand prize winners from the primary school category. The lower secondary grand prize winners will get a trip to East Malaysia.

The runner-up teams in each category will spend three days and two nights at Genting Resort.

There is also an optional video clip category, under which students can present a three-minute public service announcement on the contest theme. Each winning team member will receive a Canon A470 Power Shot digital camera, courtesy of Canon Marketing (M) Sdn Bhd.

An additional 75 teams will receive merit awards in the form of Pizza Hut vouchers worth RM200.

Schools with the highest number of entries will receive RM1,000 in sports vouchers.

The competition is limited to schools only. The next batch of templates for Mag Inc will be published on April 22 in The Star’s NiE pullout. Schools can start registering online from April 1.

Registration closes on April 30 and the deadline for entry submissions is June 20.

For details, check out The StarOnline. Just click on our Education tab and Mag Inc tile.

The contest is jointly organised by The Star and Pizza Hut in collaboration with the Education Ministry.