Google Glass & Last Post for EDE3100

Jia Lerk's post in her blog about Google Glass interested me.. so here I am writing my point of view on it! Wearable computers - You can walk around and have a mini-computer in front of your eyes! How cool is that! It records videos, take pictures, give directions, video call etc just for your own eyes only! This Google Glass does amazing things! Acts like a smart phone + spectacles ! Google Glass displays information in a -like hands-free format, that can interact with the Internet via voice commands. This Google Glass currently consist of a mini computer attached to the frame and does not currently have lenses fitted to them Apparently this can only be used by adults (above 13 years old) as they fear that kids may break the glass or it may affect their eye sight written inside this article > click here for the artice < This post ends my journey through EDC 3100 ICT & Pedagogy.. and the beginning of new things to come! =)

Technology taking over our lives

Fancy your pizza being delivered to you using the newest robot copter (sounds like robocop the robot + cop as in police)? Check out this Domino's Pizza test ride video! As the years passed technology becomes better and more advanced. Technology is making us lazier as it now is designed to ease the burden off people. Sometimes you may wonder if it has snatched the priority given for everything else in our lives. A common scene you may find anywhere during meal times especially in a family. Children are too absorbed in their games on their tablets, parents and adults would be hooked on their smart phones or games too and it kills all possible communication as Nazmeela also talks about it in her blog. Who knows maybe next time we have robots taking over our world!!

 

Leap Motion

Leap Motion is now the LATEST technology that seems to be waaaayyyy.. better than our old Playstation 2/3/4 (whatever versions!) or even the rather new Nitendo Wii which Michael talks about how fun it is where it can be used to play virtual sports such as tennis/ golf etc.

Imagine if you could do things on your computer just like you do in real life.. this device uses natural movements replacing all those clicks and taps and drags and drops. It senses your hands and fingers and follows their every move. It lets us move in all that wide-open space between you and your computer. So we can do everything without touching anything. Best thing is that this Leap Motion Controller is able to sense the movement of the hands, so you can point, wave, reach, grab and even pick something up and put it down just like in real life. It’s an amazing device for the things you do every day and for things you never thought you could do. Imagine how much fun it would be to work with the children using this technology tool like the sample shown below.

A day into Future Technologies

As I came across Mrs Morgan's blog about how much technology has changed since a few years back, makes you want to also have a possible look at the near future and how much our technology now would be advanced to such great extend like what you will be seeing in the video below..

Wouldn't it be so cool when the future technologies become such like this in the video. The use of our transparent looking tablets would not only be an educational tool made of glass where things like sending the music to a radio, being able to explore colour mixing on a lighted table, sending files just by swiping it across to a nearby device to play music, watching a dinosaur simulation and even sending out the lessons into each individual child's tablet just with 1 swipe! Just too cool and awesome!!! I wish I can have tech-savy lessons like these in the near future! I'm sure our students will definitely have no problem concentrating on the lessons taught!

Blogging for Kids Part 2

I really wanted to implement kid blog in my classroom during my practical, however after judging their skills in ICT, even typing a sentence onto a PowerPoint and creating their story on my story maker. Due to short of time too, the class teacher restricted them from working on their story. I feel so sad for the kids! Anyway you can check out their short story on My Story Maker website and use this magic code "JEJ336" and see their cute story which was done with my help in class. The school does not have Internet available for their computer lab thus making it difficult to implement my lessons such as Kidblog. However, I would like to try it out in another school next time! My fellow course mate Sarah talked all about the benefits and also the dangers of blogging referring to this website "The Dangers in Blogging". Let's not be too hooked on blogging for our Mums to be begging us to get off the computer like the comic! =P

Schema

I was going through some of my fellow course mate, Kat's blog on schema, I decided to blog about it too. A Schema is said to be mental representations of an associated set of perceptions etc. The influence how you see what is going on. Last week, our lecturer, David gave this experiment activity to test our schema based on it.

An experiment

Read the following paragraph and fill in the blanks. If you’re really keen add a comment below with what you got. Actually, gathering a collection of responses from a range of people would be really interesting.
The questions that p________ face as they raise ch________ from in_________ to adult are not easy to an _________. Both f______ and m________ can become concerned when health problems such as co_________ arise anytime after the e____ stage to later life. Experts recommend that young ch____ should have plenty of s________ and nutritious food for healthy growth. B___ and g____ should not share the same b______ or even be in the same r______. They may be afraid of the d_____.

Now, take a look at the original version of this paragraph.
Is there any difference between it and what you got? Certainly was for me.

Lego Robotics

I came across Jennifer's blog about this Lego Robotics. Lego Robotics seems so fun to work with, but it is usually used with children from Grade 5 onwards. The Lego Mindstorms NTX offers a wide range of activities you could use it for especially in your classroom. This video below shows how to incorporate these with the younger age groups of Year 1 & 2 students with the help of the Year 6 students who will fix it up and work together. It is not suitable for the younger age group like those in Foundation year for it would be too complex to understand. Recently when I was watching Running Man, a Korean TV Variety Show, I found out that this is the Top 5 toys that children want for their Christmas present!! If I were a child of their age (year 5 onwards) I think I would love to try my hands at it too!

Class Dojo

Class Dojo is just so cute an app or a website you can use be it if you are a parent, teacher or a student in a class. Class Dojo is behavioral management software…something like a digital reward system which reminds me of how we used to be given sticker stars whenever we do something good/ come early for class etc previously when we were a kid too!. This app/ website really stimulates the children to behave themselves and fully participate in the classroom as they are given points every time they do something good and minus points if they misbehave. Best thing is each child is given an account of their own and they are able to create their own avatar monster and are able to keep track with what they need to improve on during class. Marilyn talked about how she would love to try it out the next time we go out into the kindergarten as now we discovered this too late - after practical is done! I too feel I should try it out one day but I think the downside of it is that you would need to have WiFi access to the necessary and that it would be only suitable for ages 5 & up.

Reflection from the 15 days Practical - Teacher training

I really enjoyed myself during the time I spent at Grace kindy where I had to implement the use of ICT to the children of a class who are not often given the opportunity to work with other technology materials such as cameras, laptops etc in school. In one of the lessons implemented in the class, I got the children to take turns to come up with a sentence each to describe the situation found in the picture given and then typing it out onto a PowerPoint presentation. I  had even taught the children how to use a hand phone camera to take pictures of their plant's growth everyday and we would record it's growth in a Microsoft word document table. The children really enjoyed most was the Video stories that are downloaded into laptop for them all to see and the process of crating their own story in the "My Story Maker" website. Overall, this process of using ICT was a success in teaching children with new ways and methods as Angela had also pointed out in her blog post.

Interactive White Board (IWB)

I have been to a few places in Malaysia like the National Science Center where they have interactive whiteboards for children to play with, however unfortunately.. I was not given a chance to once teach in a school that had one! Most Malaysian kindergarten schools do not have them as it is quite a hassle into learning this new technology and it's also very expensive, whereby most normal schools are pretty much unable to afford! the harsh and sad reality.. on the bright side, there are many uses of this interactive whiteboards where even our college Segi's classroom is equipped with one too! yay! Even our Lecturer uses it ! Especially enjoyed reading Mrs Poulter's blog about how it was implemented to teach children and could even read about some of it's benefits when used in teaching >> here << great read! Here's a picture taken by my friend Hsing Hua who did this lesson with Neena using this IWB in their class.