I will be talking about two interesting articles I found on www.olpcnews.com. The first article that I will talk about is related to low-priced school laptops in China market that competes with OLPC XO or even Intel’s Classmate PC.

While OLPC project (Give one Get one) aimed at providing inexpensive computers to poor nations such as Rwanda, Haiti, Peru, Uruguay, Afghanistan, etc. with this new form of information and communication technology for only $100 each, still there are places where two hundred million of people earn less than a dollar a day. This article suggests other low-cost options for people (adults or children) who cannot afford. Here are some of the low-cost laptop options:

Yellow Sheep River's Municator

• $150 Chinese Linux laptop with a 40 GB hard drive
• Offers similar performance to Pentium III chips that were around in the late nineties
• Offers an S-video port, in order to support television displays
• 
  

 Dream Dragon

• Designed specifically for primary and secondary school students in China
• Costs about US$131
• Aims at low income and rural Chinese students
• Utilizes a line of low cost central processing units
• Runs on Linux
• 
  

Sinomanic

• Chinese branded laptop that will go on the market for $129 to $392
• Designed for use as an educational aid and to introduce young students to computers
• Software applications include Mozilla Firefox browser, unnamed text editor, instant messenger, a PDF reader, email etc
• 

I think Sinomanic is good enough for students in primary and secondary school to use for learning and exploring around the world. Basically, the few applications I listed (and there are many more installed in this laptop) are the ones I frequently use at home or at school. Mozilla Firefox allows me to research on articles and find useful information in the search engine; to read the news and latest movies review; also to purchase things online. If there isn’t word processors (e.g. Microsoft World) installed in this laptop version, I can always use the text editor or PDF to write documents. And there is instant messenger and email for me to communicate and share files with friends and family across the world. Everything that one needs to do is all built in this laptop although OLPC XO has additional built-in webcam and microphone which may be beneficial for any video-conferencing purposes.

China isn't just working on cheap laptops for kids, but also cheap micro computers for homes, that can even plug into TV sets. It's part of a strategy to bring accessibility to the large poorer inland population.

Second article is called “Build Schools or Buy OLPC XO Laptops”. Personally, I would say build more schools to make quality basic education more accessible to children in undeveloped countries. If they each were to spend money on the OLPC XO (and possibly the cost of maintenance and software update), why not gather up those money for greater usage—building schools. Although it may take more money to build these schools (and they cannot afford to pay all of it on their own), especially if it were to build them across the cities, so children everywhere can get access to them; money collection is easier to achieve as opposed to having someone purchases a laptop in order for the second one to be free.

Plus, like I mentioned earlier, all the cost of maintenance and software update will be coming out from their own pockets. Whereas school supplies (e.g., pencils, rulers, papers, bags) can be donated through individuals, charity organizations, church community to help passed them to the places in need. There is no doubt that investing in education for children in undeveloped countries, in many ways, the key to development as it provides significant benefits and rewards for the larger community.

The article at last comments that countries where the majority of kids have no access to schools because there are not enough of them, first need to “build schools and employ teachers before they can make use of OLPC infrastructure”. True, most of us can operate computers without any tutoring, but the role of teachers is necessary when giving students direction, motivation and support.

“The One Laptop Per Child and the Inter-American Development Bank announced a pilot project in Haiti to test whether one-to-one computing can improve teaching and learning in Haitian schools” (Vota, 2008). Because Haiti is known to be the poorest country in the West Hemisphere, by giving each child a laptop can greatly provide those in undeveloped countries new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves. The article looks at the pros and cons of both sides of such endeavor, as well as the ugly side (let’s see what they mean by “ugly”)

Pros:

• Objective testing on the efficacy of one-to-one education (e.g. observe whether one-to-one computing has any influence on attitudes and behaviours regarding school management, how families value education, the use of laptops at home, and the educational progress of students)

• Conduct standardized mathematics and language tests before and after introducing the pilot project to evaluate any improvement in students’ performance.

• It is a necessity that helps benefit and educate children in Haiti

Cons:

• Requires lots of translation work for educational content in Creole

• OLPC and IADB did not “build on the efforts of grassroots programs like Waveplace Foundation" (Vota, 2008), a non-profit dedicated to delivering digital media skills and raising laptops for Caribbean children, as well as inspiring teacher to use computers in innovative ways.

OLPC is all about “pick up and learn” but Waveplace is all about mentoring; enabling each child to view their own education, and feel a new ownership and interest in exploring the world. We normally don’t expect a child to learn mathematics or basketball on their own but those skills and knowledge are rather learned from experienced facilitators who has a passion for teaching younger generations. This is exactly what Waveplace does yet OLPC does not recognize the importance of this.

Ugly:

• The country is run by local mafia and strongmen who brutalize their subjects. Thus, it may not be safe for Haitian children to walk around the neighbourhood with such laptops.

“How will the XO create a long-term change? So what if a poor, rural child ‘learns learning’ in Haiti? What middle or high school could they attend?”  (Vota, 2008)

I stand in the middle of this argument. I feel like yes, the XO provides a rich and full learning experience for students, as well as bringing them a world of new ideas, images and materials. But my question is what are they going to do with the skills they learn, if the state cannot even offer basic services to its citizens? With no job opportunities out there, how can they apply such skills and knowledge to their lives? On the other hand, we shouldn’t see learning as only a means to get us a successful job in the future. In fact, we value learning because we hope to have continuous professional growth and reflection. Even if they cannot apply any computer skills to their lives, these children may one day be parents who are able to support and encourage their children in ways they are not supported and encouraged. One generation to the next, soon enough, I think Haiti will be more likely to be composed of a population of competent learners in using technology and adapts a new way to collaborate, create, and transform works over time.

This is another interesting article that I found using Google Scholar a couple of days ago. In this article, Peter Webster raises very important issues in our curriculum and instruction today. He argues that most educators (and even the public) nowadays put too much emphasis on fact-centred curriculum with "scores on standardized tests and compare those scores with national and international norms" (Webster, 1990, p.35). They simply forget the most important part of learning—process learning takes precedence over product. Teachers must design experiences that engage students and enrich the learning environment. They encourage students to pose questions, communicate understanding and reflect upon their own learning. All of the above reflect a great deal of a constructivist approach as I have learned in Early Primary Programming. This kind of experiential learning relates a lot to many of the things we have been doing in this course. Take the SongChild assignment for example: we research on copyrighted music and fair use, search for a copyright-free melody and lyrics that are in the public domain, create new lyrics, record and upload the final piece of music to the wiki. This whole process has taught me how to write and share children’s music using public domain materials and using MixCraft to put the music together. In addition, such self-directed project enables me to realize my own progress and be able to self-evaluate my creative thinking. It allows me to interrogate my work and seek inspiration to improve my work.

On the other hand, the final product is actually not importance at all (how well you sing, how creative your lyrics are, how many languages you can translate the song into); it does not support much effective learning. It is similar to creative thinking in music education; it is not all about the facts, as in the ability to read music, the number of public performances, or first prizes at solo and ensemble contests. But what’s important the most is engaging children in active, structured, reflective and imaginative thinking about a subject matter with the expectation of some product or solution at the end of the process. “School should help students to learn how to recognize and solve problems, comprehend new phenomena, construct mental models of those phenomena, and given a new situation, set goals and regular their own learning” (Jonassen, Howland, Marra & Crismond, 2008). Sounds familiar to you? That’s because we discussed in Chapter 1 already about the five main characteristics of meaningful learning: active, intentional, constructive, authentic, cooperative, will help students make more meaning of their own learning experiences.

Webster also points out that “technological advances in music hardware and software are used as a meaningful avenue for engaging the minds of children at the deepest level of cognition” (Webster, 1990, p.37) He gives examples of students using MIDI equipment to create and save their own examples of texture. They also use graphic notation systems to “draw” melodic and rhythmic patterns and hear what they sound like, kind of like the Musical Sketch Pad software (p. 186) where “strings of notes are drawn with a pencil tool that in turn play a small number of instrument voices (trumpet, clarinet, piano, or drum)” (Jonassen, Howland, Marra & Crismond, 2008).

Although introducing technology into traditional music teaching will most likely benefit both teachers’ and children’s learning, creative thinking can occur even without the wonders of technology. I remember in my previous blog I mentioned that technology is not always greatest tool to use. And we should not be dependent solely on hardware and software technology today.

[edit]

I found this on the metro newspaper today. This drummer, Mohamed Diaby, was showing the kids at Sunny View Junior and Senior Public School how music was made back in the days before any electricity and technology. This supported what I said in the above paragraph; without any technology, we can still create music through the old traditional way (e.g. banging on the drum like Mohamed did).

TOTAL WORDS: 581

Jonassen, D., Howland, J., Marra, R. M., & Crismond, D. (2008). Meaningful Learning with Technology. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Webster, P. R. (1990). Creative Thinking, Technology and Music Education. Design for Arts in Education, 91(5), pp.35-41

The title of this article is called “The referent of children’s early songs”. The study looks at “some observed affiliation between young children’s learned song achievement and the multiplicity of their self-generated song performance” (Mang, 2005, p. 3). They gathered a sample of eight girls aged 2-4at the start of the study (there wasn’t any parent of a male child that is interested in participating in this study). Prior to the study, these eight girls were asked about their favourite songs and to my surprise, they have chosen traditional nursery rhymes and popular North American children’s songs such as Itsy Bitsy Spider; The Wheels on the Bus; Bingo; It’s Raining, It’s Pouring; Pop Goes the Weasel; and This Old Man (Now that I know these songs are among the most popular for toddlers and preschoolers, I can perhaps consider using one of them as a melody for my SongChild project).

Here are the findings:

• Children aged 2-3 mostly performed incomplete renditions of learned songs with words freely substituted and nonsense syllables in abundance. When words of a learned song were forgotten, a child failed to recall the melody.
• Some children recalled a song through body movements or imaginative play rather than singing it aloud
• Many self-generated songs were observed, especially ‘pot-pourri’ songs combining fragments of learned and improvised songs, sometimes regardless of different languages.
• Children at the age of 3-4 sang most melodic and rhythmic patterns correctly, but when only the words were forgotten, the entire song was often considered forgotten as well. In some cases, they do use nonsense syllables to fill in missing words.
• For self-generated songs that consisted of integrated narration and adaptation of learned songs, were sometimes improvised with movements and musical instruments, or resembled singing games and other play activity such as drawing.

These observations from this study allow me to understand that words are still the biggest challenge to young children when they are at the initial stage of learning to sing. The sounds of words tie strongly to the musical elements, especially the melody and formal structure of learn songs. In addition, this study confirms that the meaning of words contribute as resources for imaginative play, whereby children move into activities such as role play and movement to express the storyline of the song.

So when deciding which children’s music to use for the SongChild assignment or when making up my own lyric to the song, it is important to think about the words and phrases I’ll be using. I will definitely choose a song with repetitive patterns because this is often sung correctly in children. I will also make sure the words in the song are somewhat tie to a story or with body movements. I often see children at my placement started off singing a song and gradually adding body movements into it. Hence, connecting movements with singing can be beneficial for young children, especially those that connect more easily with tactile experience during developmental stage. I will also consider presenting the songs in monosyllables because research findings suggest that young children sing more accurately in monosyllables. Lastly, when I have everything ready and it’s time to sing over the melody, I will keep in mind of good vocal techniques because I believe that having control over pitch, volume, timbre, breath, and articulations are beneficial to children learning to sing.

Mang, E. (2005). The referent of children’s early songs. Music Education Research, 7(1) pp. 3-20.

CHAPTER 10- ASSESSING MEANINGFUL LEARNING WITH TECHNOLOGY

Chapter 10 covers the topics of authentic and performance assessment, but what caught my attentions the most in this chapter is the "clicker" device. “You use them with your class by distributing them to your students to allow them to respond to questions not by raising their hands but by selecting buttons, and the results can appear on a screen in the front of the class” (Jonassen, Howland, Marra & Crismond, 2008). In a way, the device encourages students to participate more in class, particularly those who feel uncomfortable speaking publicly without feeling conspicuous by committing to the wrong answer. I am reluctant to speak up in the classroom or even raise my hand when I am in a room full of people. I know for sure that if I have this device with me in class, I would be more actively involved in class discussion and increase participation levels, instead of being one of those few people that remain silence throughout the whole lecture.

This devise also allows instructors to get a quick pulse on what students understand and what topics might need further review. For example, teachers can pose a multiple-choice question, and students can use the clicker to instantly answer and be able to see the answer up on the screen. Thus, it is great that clicker can give immediate feedback about whether students truly understand a concept and whether you can move on to the next.

In a class of 200 students, I can see this "instant assessment tool" beneficial to teacher and students as they receive quick responses with regards to the discussion. But, is it necessary to provide this type of technology to a class of 30? Is it necessary to provide one of these clickers to children in elementary school? The reason why I ask that is because we are in Early Childhood Education; we mainly work with children of a younger age. Since this form of device is introduced in our textbook, how important is clicker to young children? How would this device benefit their learning? Would you integrate this technology device in your classroom? I want to hear your opinions on this!

Sometimes, a new technology is not always the best tools to use. I feel that I am more attached to plain, old-fashioned chalkboard than PowerPoint presentations when it comes to learning.  A lot of the times when lecture is presented as a PowerPoint, I find myself less likely to add any additional notes, believing that most of what my instructor will be talking about is all written down on the PowerPoint slides. But when a professor uses a simple blackboard to deliver his/her lecture, I do pay more attention in class, and would jot down more notes as he/she is lecturing.

CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS MEANINGFUL LEARNING?

• Creating spreadsheets
• PowerPoint for class presentations
• Microsoft Word
• Adobe Photoshop to edit photos and images
• Weblogs to express my thoughts and experiences with the online community
• MSN Messenger/SKYPE to communicate and keep in touch with the closest people in my life
• Photo sharing websites to organize my photos and share them among my family and friends

Photo sharing has become increasingly popular in recent years as a means for individuals to public or distributes their digital images online. My initial impression of Flickr was that it resembled other photo sharing applications on the web I have previously used (e.g. Photo bucket, Image station and SmugMug). They allow users to upload their digital photos online, and enable them to share with others either publicly or privately with specified users or selected groups (e.g. friends and family). I am so glad that these online community tools are around to allow us to edit and organize our photos more ubiquitously. Many sites are also geared towards delivering prints or “photo gifts” such as calendars, mugs, t-shirts etc.

After spending a good period of time exploring the use of photo sharing services such as Flickr, undoubtedly it does provide quick and easy access to billions of images from millions of contributors around the globe. I like how Flickr uses a photo uploader tool which is used for easy batch upload to Flickr, adding tags and later on giving each photo a meaningful title and so on. It speeds up and simplifies the batch uploading process significantly while enabling some useful additional functionality before photos are even uploaded on the web. I also like Flickr very much because of the fact that it is focused on one and only one aspect of media to deal with (i.e. photos). FaceBook is about faces essentially, MySpace about music, while YouTube is about videos. Flickr is definitely about photos and that is exactly what I need when it comes to sorting my photos in a set or group, and sharing them with the Flickr online community.

One thing that made it easier to learn about Flickr is the similarity to that of LiveJournal, which we are using in class. For example, Flickr provides a "contact list" which can be used to control image access for a specific set of users. It also allows users to add comments underneath the photo, just as you would in LiveJournal, when leaving comments in people’s blog entries.

Lastly, something interesting caught my eyes when I was exploring around Flickr, and clicked into one of Jason’s photos of a cat. What caught my attention is the additional information at the lower right-hand corner. I can see the type of camera and the camera model with which the photo was taken. I am also presented a link for the camera to get a full understanding of what that specific camera is capable of and the additional information the page provides (e.g. price, megapixels, optical zoom, LCD size, media type, etc).

 TOTAL WORDS: 440

Japanese technology is among the most advanced in the world. I came across a very interesting website for those of you who are fascinated with today’s Japanese technology. I am one of them. So I would like to share with you some of their inventions that you probably don’t see anywhere else.

We may be very familiar with pop, snack, or even phone-card vending machines. But have you ever come across with vending machines that sell goods such as rice, egg, hot ramen, toilet paper, instant cameras? How about an umbrella or a pair of underwear? Probably not eh. In fact, Japan has one of the world's highest vending machine densities. In Japan, "with a high population density, limited space, a preference for shopping on foot or by bicycle, low rates of vandalism and petty crime, and a small and decreasing number of working-age people, there seems to be no limit to what is sold by vending machines " (Wikipedia: Vending Machine). These vending machines and much more other unusual ones can be found all over the cities, smaller towns and even in the countryside. Estimates suggest there are 5.6 million vending machines which works out to be one for every 20 people in Japan.

Take a look at these pictures.....

These vending machines sell 10 kg bags of various kinds of rice.

Fresh farm eggs

Hot bowl of ramen

Who needs to visit a florist shop when you can purchase a bouquet of flowers easy and quick on your way home at the station

Includes fries, dumplings, hot dogs, etc. hmm.. I wonder how they fry these inside a machine and how good can they really be?

If you are interested in taking a look at other vending machines they have in Japan, visit this site http://www.photomann.com/japan/machines/. It will take your breath away

“Design is a ubiquitous activity” (Jonassen, Howland, Marra & Crismond, 2008). Design plays a large role in our everyday context of lives; it is considered almost everything in our society.  Some ubiquitous samples of graphic design we see everyday are posters, banners, billboards, architectural buildings, design of shops, our clothing. Chapter 8 introduces several kinds of computer-aided design (CAD) programs that I have not even heard of, and I am surprised they are introduced in the textbook that is used for a course with regards to children and technology. I am only familiar with using MS Paint Software and Adobe Photoshop for photo and image editing; but such simple and easy-to-use tool has now evolved into much more complicated and “define” programs that support a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. One that I come across with in this chapter is the Pro/DESKTOP program. I am absolutely blown away by the incredible work students at Gateway Regional High School did. The 3-Dimensional images were indeed very realistic looking.

Chapter 9 presents a class of visualization tools that allow learners to “reason and represent ideas visually without the artistic skills required to produce original illustrations” (Jonassen, Howland, Marra & Crismond, 2008). As a visual learner myself, I do find these visualization tools very helpful, especially when dealing with problems around mathematics and sciences. Appropriate use of visualization tools aid users/learners in understanding complex data relationships; and easily extracts meaning from the information being visualized. McSpartan program seems the far too complicated to operate and understand, unless students have a very good background of Chemistry. I was overwhelmed by Figure 9.1 and 9.2 on pages 193-194, the tool bar looks complex, and it contains icons that look alike to each other; thus, learners may find it difficult to differentiate individual function.Indeed, technology enables us to do our work faster and easier; in this case, it saves us a lot of time to not draw these molecules out by hands, especially the large molecular structures. However, how much information can students actually extract from this kind of visualization?

 I can see TinkerPlots as a powerful learning tool to be integrated in school curriculum for fourth to eighth graders, great starting points for introducing data analysis in class. It is easy to learn and use. It also offers students a new way of making graphs and building their own plots to analyze data. They can represent their data in multiple ways: dot plots, map graphs, histograms, scatter plots and box graphs. I personally believe that TinkerPlot is absolutely beneficial to students as they develop a strong understanding of how data works, what numbers mean, and how graphs can represent data.

What I prefer to use the most is visualizing with video-recording, and I was very fortunate to have used my dad’s camcorder when I was small, to document the nature and things that I found interesting. I remember following an ant was what I enjoyed to do at the park the most, although I was too young to learn anything from those pictures and videos at that time, but now looking back at these images made me realize the little details an ant or a fly has that normally cannot be seen with our naked eyes. This type of visualization tool also benefits children in documenting the whole process of a science experiment; an example of this is in planting a seed. Children can review these pictures or videos after their project to reflect what needs to be improved, or the most interesting observation they find (e.g. the day that the seed blossoms), etc.

CHAPTER 7: COMMUNICATING WITH TECHNOLOGIES

There are so many things in our everyday life that keep us occupied. There just aren’t enough hours in one day to do everything that one has to do. If we look at a traditional “stay-home” mother’s schedule, it revolves so much around household upkeep, running errands, making meals, child rearing, caring for aging parents, etc.  As a result, she may feel that her time is becoming too overwhelming; her family commitments and social schedules become a lot more hectic and busier. Or even as students, we dedicate our time to many things; part-time job, on a sports team, volunteer work, extra-curricular activities, studying for tests, or the pet at home. It’s difficult to not get caught up in today’s hectic pace.  But it is also because of this, we easily lose touch with old friends and people whom we were once close to.

Thank goodness there is Facebook and other social networking websites that allow users to reunite with old friends, 24 hours access to update our profiles, communicate with your friends: on their “wall” or by sending a private message. It is growing increasingly popular among people of all ages; I was even surprised to find out that a few of my professors own a Facebook account there.  The downside of this social utility is that it replaces telephone and face-to-face conversation, and all the important non-verbal communication cues that present in a face-to-face meeting. Yes, we do make important phone calls; we do make the efforts to call our friends out for a coffee; a movie; or a chat. But Facebook allows us to contact and reach anyone in an instant. For example, we can organize a social gathering—“event”, list out all the details that one needs to know and invite any of our friends with just a click on the name. It saves us so much time and efforts to dial 50 phone calls and repeat the same message to everyone. This is what technology does to us—makes us lazy and all. However, I also believe it Is more that our laziness results in technology because we tend to not work so hard for certain things (e.g. dialing 50 phone calls); hence, we invent things that do the work for us: email, social networking pages, text and forward message to a large group of people, and have discussion board.

I think one of the greatest instant messaging software ever made is Skype. Like all the other ones, it allows users to send and receive messages; file transfer; video conferencing, and most importantly, what I like about it is that you can also make free calls to people anywhere in the world, as long as you have them on your friends list. This is how I communicate with my relatives in Hong Kong. Extremely convenient!

It was very intriguing to read these two chapters. They mentioned many websites and software that I have never heard of or come across with before. And majority of them are easily accessible and simple to use by all ages, particularly young children who are first introduced to use technology. Chapter 2 begins with introducing two commonly used search tools on the Web—search engines (e.g. Google) and directories (e.g. Yahoo). Each tool has a distinct way of searching and organizing huge amounts of information. They also provide additional features such as image search, map search, current news, user groups, etc. Personally, I prefer using Google over Yahoo. Google is my top choice because of the following reasons:

• Most relevant information will be shown at the top
• Helpful with misspelled words
• Highlights the key words in bold
• Filter search results to find needed data (that contain those keywords)
• Simple one or two key words produce excellent result

Near the end, the chapter discusses about the types of features found in mobile technology.

• Cell phones
• Laptops
• IPOD
• Mp3 players
• Handheld computers

They all have the function to store and transfer information. Modern technology has become an important part of our everyday lives. First, ask yourself or look at the people around you, how many mobile technology listed above do you or your friends own altogether? Then you will realize how reliance we are on technology. In a competitive and fast-paced society like Hong Kong, individuals take advantage of every second they have to complete their work. This includes, talking on the phone in subway, getting their work done on palm pilots, etc. No doubt that technology and its multi-purposes usage have become more of our necessity. Although technology makes our lives efficient and stress-free, there’s also a drawback. Technology makes us lazy; it makes our work too simple and effortless to complete. If technology were removed from us one day, people would not know what to do or how to complete tasks manually the same way it’d be done technologically. For example, children today should not be given calculators to do any math problems. Instead, parents and teachers should encourage them to write out the solution steps. As fast and easy-to-use calculators are, meaningful learning comes from exploring and discovering the underlying mathematical concepts on our own.

Beginning of chapter 4 introduces us to computer-based semantic networking tools, which allows users to group ideas together in a web and label the relationship among those ideas. This kind of software is a great planning tool for Early Childhood Educators when arranging a web of interrelated and interconnected ideas that fall under a particular theme of the week. Of equal usefulness, this software helps students visualize the connection between and among ideas. I remember doing one of these concept mappings in a second-year course manually on a piece of paper. Not only did it take a while to complete the whole web, but I also got frustrated when the paper ran out of space for additional ideas.

With the software—Semantica, it is much easier to re-arrange the nodes; add or make any changes; refine link descriptions. It can be stored as a file for a long period of time; unlike a thin sheet of paper which can be easily displaced.