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.

Blogging for Kids?

After reading Vicky's blogging post, I got inspired to talk about this topic! It's true and quite an interesting and exciting idea to implement blogging to children.. especially after knowing how fun it could be getting them to reflect and post up pictures and videos etc in their kids blog usually done in a classroom. However, after going into school and doing implementation of integrating PowerPoint presentations for children to type words and create sentences on my laptop.. I found out that they were not yet ready for blogging! I couldn't believe that these children have not been exposed to typing much on a keyboard before. Even during their Computer Lessons every week, their computer educational CD program only requires them to type very few words like following their sample word given e.g. "tooth brush". I found this sample of a KidBlog written by Tom, a 6 and a half years old boy who really knows how to blog about anything and everything he learn and of his interest like writing movie reviews! Amazing! You can read about it in Tom's adventures. My 6 year old students in class are barely starting to learn to type and find it exhausting finding the letters on the keyboard 1-by-1!!

Week 8 Project Noah

After looking through Vicky, Carla & Swee Peng's blog about Project Noah. This Project Noah is a tool to explore and document wildlife and a platform to harness the power of citizen scientists everywhere. This website offers many sample lesson plans and encourages children to spot the different organisms and animals around their backyard or even around the area.It really encourages me to try using it out in my class.. however the downside to it is it consists mostly on Aussie Animals and plants that we do not have here in Malaysia.

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.

Paving the way for creativity using ICT

This interesting article story (CLICK HERE for first article story) written in the star newspaper about how a guy as young as 15 was able to develop games which were of demand as part of a hobby from his bedroom and how from there was scouted by Yahoo and even offered him a job after graduation. Its really inspiring that how we as teachers should be there to cultivate these 21st century children in using ICT starting from young as they grow older and learn more, with the basics they had previously would eventually be able to come up with greater ideas/ games/ technology for the future. Also I liked this 2nd website where the creativity in people could even come up with inventions like a game using excel spread. (CLICK here for article link).

References

From bedroom to boardroom: UK teen turns tech millionaire. (2013). Retrieved March 27, 2013, from http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=%2F2013%2F3%2F27%2Freutersworld%2F1303270638-from-bedroom-to-boardroom-uk-teen-turns&sec=reutersworld#.UVKbNOHlPKY.facebook

Excel spreadsheets turned into video game. (2013). Retrieved March 28, 2013, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21938171