Candy Crush

With the old hit game, Bejeweled which stormed the world in playing this addictive puzzle with it's own challenges now comes the latest hit Facebook game called Candy Crush Saga (CCS) by King.com has 12 million likes on Facebook and more than nine million daily active users.
This game looks like this generally and you are to swap the came colour candy to get 3 or more in a row. The fun thing about this game is whereby you are given a certain number of moves and in some levels time limit or an objective to fulfill in order to pass the next stage with only 5 tries per 30 minutes. The game also encourages you to Facebook your friends for life or extra moves if you finished your 5 tries per time. Below are the info-graphics of the game.. quite interesting!

Oh and someone creatively created 8 Life Lessons Thought by Candy Crush by Joni Cham which pretty much gives a very interesting take of life values! I recommend you to have a read!
Alternatively, you may want to take a look at my pal Neena's blog on how children are nowadays also has hidden talents ^^

Week 8 : What to Write about?

Everyone's been so busy busy busy.. like a buzzing bee.. haha with all the assignments popping up and needing completion all within same week gosh! This uni assignment dates are so hectic! Now struggling to even blog about something worth blogging has taken a lot of precious time away even with all the weekend plans and church activities! I'm so lagging behind time to finish completing everything! Thankfully I have lovely friends who are much hardworking then I am..kakaka.. the holiday mood has really kicked in leaving me so lazy and tired! After reading Vicki's and Hsing Hua's blog Bee bot post which is so cute and interesting! This bee bot seems very useful in teaching children over a wide variety of lessons.. here you will see an introduction of how it is introduced and used in a classroom setting. Bee-Bot is an award winning programmable floor robot, perfect for teaching control, directional language and programming to young children. In the 2nd video you will see how it can be incorporated into a numeracy lesson with snakes and ladder game. Video 1 & Video 2 links can be found here ^^.

Modern Day Camera Functions

Been going through some post from my friend's blogs about this topic and the effects it has caused many people.. JO & MEI YIH's blog tells a very interesting write up about how crazy the trend of people nowadays needing to express themselves through the Instagram and other similar camera apps such as the Insta- Weather too!  Many would be addicted to post about the weather and at the same time with a picture that describes how they feel at the moment. I must admit it's quite fun to use Instagram with all the different filters to make an original picture look classy or just nicer! The posters they put into their blog too tells alot more information! I would recommend you check it out! OK now this video below talks really about the current Asian culture trend that's been going around with people young and old and the things we tend to do when taking pictures! It's really funny and worth the watch! Think about it for awhile.. are you anyhow like them?


For many of us, especially as an educator, walking away from the Internet isn’t an option. However, I do think it’s important for us to remind ourselves from time to time that watching other peoples’ post-worthy moments on Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest is always going to yield a prettier version of life than the one you’re living right now. It may be a conversational killer as we know what goes on in the person's life on social media or for example, we may think that life looks better on the Internet than it does in real life. Everyone’s life looks better on the internet than it does in real life especially through pictures that maybe could have been edited. The Internet is partial truths—we get to decide what people see and what they don’t. I believe it is about time we stop doing so much of social media and actually have more face-to-face sessions with our loved ones without causing them stress of delaying their meal times especially ;P

Reference:

Jinnyboy TV.(2013, April 8). Asians at Work [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SBtpGWaXkI

Week 5: Writing an Unit Plan

In  preparation for Assignment 2, This week we learnt about how to write up an unit plan. Building a unit plan is sometimes like being an architect. As educational designers, we develop a blue-print in a similar way that an architect might. The architect works with the client, building codes, research materials and labour costs, to create a design that fits within a blueprint. The design emerges through a process of trying out ideas, getting feedback and finally, matching the proposed ideas to the reality of the available space and client wishes.The steps below taken from Carmen's blog which I found very useful in carefully designing out a suitable unit plan.

Step 1 - Consider the context.

Information should include:  
• Students
• School
• Special Events
• Staff

Step 2 – Understand the alignment process: Curriculum, Assessment and Pedagogy

Head to the source for Curriculum documents, Structural models and Constructing/Transforming knowledge.

Step 3 – Plan units by considering the following questions:

1. What curriculum will we use?

2. What evidence do students need to produce?

3. How will we foster learning that uses the curriculum to produce evidence?

Books Vs Ipads/ Tablets?

Now with such things as Tablets or Ipads adults and children no longer need to journey to the library for books! Books now are all now evolved over time into tablets/ Ipads which one can carry around easily whenever one needs to read. Even children's stories are now virtually read to them with images for them to see and play around with each background as something would pop-up making it more exciting for children. As fellow classmate, Jo talks about the various applications like kindle to do their reading. Malaysia is starting to use such technology in their daily lives but some people like my sister still prefers to have the "feel" of holding and reading the physical book anytime to Ipads/ Tablets. You may want to visit these 2 websites from the newspaper Books or Digital Tablets and Engaging the virtual guru.

Holiday Mood

I must admit I have done very little over the Easter period as I was in Japan! Yay!! besides having so much fun shopping and traveling.  The break has been much needed though and has enabled me to re-energize for the next stage of the course: Assignment 2! Now packed with assignments all to do within these next 2 weeks I don't really know if I can cope. However, as I slowly re-focus I have taken the chance to review other student’s blog sites.  I must say I have come across many different ones and one that really stood out is mrsfrintzilas blog page. It seems she has put in a lot of effort trying to understand the course material and has posted some very useful blogs.

Other than that, during the holidays had a chance to play with my 4 year old niece who is very much in love with the Ipad games which teaches her to be a doctor, tailor, hairstylist and chef in the Toca Boca series of Ipad/ Iphone games which consist of many simple game/ activities with instructions of how to play the first time you try it out. For those of you who are contemplating what Educational apps an Ipad has, I would highly recommend you download these (some are free).

Ipads n Kids

Too young to play I-pad? Nah! Think again! My 4 year old niece already is quite the expert at playing an app game called Fruit Ninja only after watching me play it once! She loves to watch some interactive stories and play the other games on the I-pad! Even the local Malaysia newspaper articles (click here to view it) suggest that books are no longer of much interest to these 21st century digital learning children! She would be at every opportunity trying to go up to me for permission to play my I-pad or her mother's I-phone! However, too much digital technology time without intervals in between may be also harmful for the health/ well-being of the child. Hsing Hua also talks about whether anot to start children young on Ipads.