Random Stories

I feel extremely depress over my friends death and would like to wish my deepest condolence to his family members - Abhishek Agrawal who passed away on Friday last week, at 3:15 AM due to car crashing in Kolkata (West Bengal in India). He went coma for a few days and leave the world just like that. The last time he ever spoke to me was on phone a couple of months ago, saying that he will be coming back to UK to complete his few final chapters of his PhD thesis, and ready for submission. I am extremely upset over this. I am extremely upset for not having a photograph taken with him, else I would have post it here. Abhishek will always be remembered.

Life is getting busier for me, rushing to complete my studies, and at the same time busy with some personal stuffs. Though some friends are returning to the UK to further their studies, but that should happen in a months time. Thank god I still have some 'left-over' friends who would spend some of their time to keep me accompanied. Last week, a friend and I went for some movies. Though I might be a little outdated since most people have already watched these 2 movies, Harry Potter 6 and GI-Joe.


Caption: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince


Caption: GI-Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Previously, someone told me that the latest harry potter is not worth watching. After watching, i realized that is not true. Maybe I am really addicted to harry potter's series so I feel the movie was great, except the movie towards the end. I can't believe Rowlings actually end the story like this (if you want to know more of this movie, then watch it). Thank god there is this final series of harry potter releasing next year, though I heard they could not fit in the whole story from the book (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows) in three hours, so they are splitting the movie into 2 sections: Deathly Hollows I (in year 2010) & II (2011). I am sure it is going to be an exciting episode :P On the other hand, GI-Joe is a really great action movie that is worth watching. I recalled my elder brother who showed me some GI-Joe toy's and comic books since 1980's. Though I do not know much about GI Joe but I really love the animations. Finally, I would leave one compliment for Sienna Miller here: She is really cool in the movie. Both the movies are worth watching to me :)


Caption: Nokia e71x (the new model)

Okay, this is relatively new for me although I heard this phone was launched sometime around May 2009. I think the previous model (e71) looks better though, this looks a little more bulky? Lets take a look.


Caption: Nokia e71 (the previous model)

There are some comments written by different Nokia e71x users in different forums. Overall, they still prefer the Nokia e71 than the e71x since there are some major restrictions and cons found in e71x, such as non-free GPS and the battery life could possibly be reduced significantly since the 3G on e71x is turned on automatically the moment the phone is on (the x version also does not has this little icon indicating that 3G / Wifi is turned on). Finally, I assume only two improvement of Nokia e71x over e71, that is the feature pack 2 (e71 only has the feature pack 1) and cheaper in price for the x version.

Blogging Opens New Learning Possibilities

Catch teens enjoying social media tools and help them gear that spark toward learning and growth! Since teens are savvy Internet users, it makes sense to have them interact with teens from other schools and experts in knowledge fields to enhance skills in high school subjects. As teens exchange knowledge, information and ideas with peers and others through weblog, they can stimulate literacy skills and higher cognitive thinking. Consider weblogs as the means...

Blogging helps encourage teen writing, according to a recent Pew Internet and American Life Project study. Interestingly according to the survey findings, 82 percent of students "believe that additional instruction and focus on writing in school would help improve their writing even further--and more than three-quarters of those surveyed think it would help their writing if their teachers used computer-based writing tools such as games, multimedia, or writing software programs or web sites during class." It makes sense then that teachers use blogs as a way to stir students' writing skills.

"For a group of my English literature students," teacher Will Richardson notes, "the latest buzz in educational technology began with bees. I had my class read The Secret Life of Bees (Penguin, 2003), then offered a new way to create dialog around the book with literary weblogs.

Richardson adds these insights about the success of using blogs....

The "blogs" are gaining traction in education as an online forum for classroom discussion, and to develop students' critical thinking, writing, and reading comprehension skills. Here at HCRHS, they have even more reach. For instance, my lit students created an online reader study guide for Bees, using the weblog format. In two years, the site Weblogs.hcrhs.k12.nj.us/bees has had more than 2 million hits, including a 2,300-word response from the book's author, Sue Monk Kidd.

The weblog traffic has since grown to encompass different students and schools, making it clear to our students that others are reading and learning from their work. This "sense of audience" gets students excited, and helps to facilitate discussion, debate, and participation, even among reticent students. Blogs also motivate students to become more engaged in reading, think more deeply about the meaning of their writing, and submit higher quality work.

Richardson advocates using blogging software for "advantages in control, security and functionality. We license Manila, a content management system from Userland.com (manila.userland.com). A $499 annual license lets us build as many blogs as our server can hold (up to 2,000), and we can navigate between an open audience (a blogging benefit), versus security and privacy (to keep our students safe)." While other brands are certainly available, teachers want to know possible options when security is an issue.

Blogging can improve student writing skills when teachers facilitate students to connect these meaningfully to content. "As students engage new tasks they enhance literacy skills," Rebecca Weinstein notes. Many texts can be used... such as magazine articles, book excerpts, poetry, news articles, recipes, song lyrics and others they locate. Even cartoons can represent bigger ideas. And today students can create digital videos on investigative themes.

Weblogs offer new opportunities in language teaching and create additional spaces to teach a target language beyond the classroom context. Some points which language teachers must consider (e.g. time devotion, students’ privacy, the Internet access, etc…), but it is nevertheless worth using the technology as an efficient way to promote autonomous learning in educational settings.

Amazing possibilities open in science through student weblogs. For instance,

Biopac Science Lab allows High School students to display, record, and analyze data from their own bodies. This approach promotes scientific inquiry and student participation and engages student minds to develop critical thinking skills through real and exciting lab experiences. The software includes a series of guided science lessons for students to record and analyze their own heart signals (ECG), brain waves (EEG), muscle activity (EMG), and eye movement (EOG). Lessons support national science standards and easily align with Biology textbooks. The system includes detailed lesson plans that guide the student through self-paced and independent investigative experiments.

Business administration, political science, journalism and philosophy are enriched through student experiences with weblogs according to recent research in the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. "Liberal learning depends on students taking responsibility for their education. Instructors in any discipline can use blogs to begin conversations about course materials before students arrive in the classroom and continue them long after a class has ended, thus fostering a sense of active learning both inside and outside the classroom," the researchers conclude.

Blogs are a means to enhance many many math skills in practical ways. "In math the emphasis has shifted from teaching rules and procedures," reflects Jamie Tubbs, "to helping students create their own understanding of the mathematics they are learning. To do this, students must be active and engaged, reasoning through problems, justifying answers, and communicating their understanding to others." Student blogs include...

Traditional writing activities such as journals, learning logs, and math autobiographies are all possible on a blog. But blogs also allow users to incorporate links, images, audio, video, spreadsheets, graphs, linear and nonlinear patterns into posts, increasing the potential for creative project-based learning.

Podcasting is just one way music students can enhance performance. Opportunities are open to add digital backgrounds to their performance. These can be shared online with a wider audience.

While many teachers may face teen disengagement in class due to too much teacher talk or boring PowerPoint presentations, student blogging with a focus in your subject area, is one possibility to engage and empower teens as they learn.

What lesson suggestions do you have for your subject area? Your ideas and suggestions will help start a tool chest for others.

Free , really free

Watch out, it's a bit hyped right now :)

Extremely good review of Chris Anderson's new book called ''Free''.
Chris might be pinpointing some extreme trends in the digital marketplace. I just downloaded free audio version, although there's a book at Amazon.

Part 1: Extraordinary Brain and Process to Measure IQ

It is really interesting when it comes to reading and perhaps, writting articles related to brain and processes. Why? Because a person's brain is remarkable. Anyway, some friends have asked me to briefly explain how human brain works, especially when dealing with intelligence and IQ. Why a twin brother who looked so similar would have such huge differences in their IQ level? I think I will start explaining from scratch. For adults, it was stated that their brain consist of at least 100 billion neurons, connected to at least 5000 synapses. In summary, a brain can store information from centuries (if you live long). It can also reconstruct our surroundings, perceiving different cues with it's ability (sound, tactile, ofactory etc.). In neurology wise, the brain coordinate with at least 640 muscles for essential energy generation. Because human brain involved many different sections of studies, therefore, for this post, I will only explain factors that determine a person's IQ level.


Caption: a picture of a brain

There are plenty of questions related to human brain. For instance, does size of the brain influences a person's IQ. In fact, the answer is no. Though there were plenty of studies claimed that the linkage of brain size, weight, volume and perhaps the head circumfereence will determine intelligence, but no consistent pattern has emerged. Some researcher conducted several experiments with a large volume of students to determine their IQ, including their gender and found no obvious linkage to determine their level of intelligence. Anyway, women's brain are smaller than men's, yet there is no consistent difference in men's and women's IQs. This has proven in the Guinness World Records, listed that Marilyn vos Savant (women) has the highest IQ between 1986 - 1989. Therefore, it is so hard to measure a person's IQ. However, if size does not matter, then what determine a person's IQ?


Caption: brain / head size does matter?

Okay, according to some research in the cognitive and brain sciences unit in Cambridge, UK, they found that there is this thing called the brain's G-spot. This spot was identified to determine a person's general intelligence, which is that IQ tests are thought to measure. Let me use an example to explain about this G-spot. A person will feel extremely weak when asked to read a text book at around 2:00 AM, but feel extremely excited when play video games. Why? Because playing game will promote excitement and whilst stimulating the G-spot, and not reading text book at 2:00 AM (this could be referred to hot cognition in psychology). They uses the PET scan to measure different general intelligence activities, but that task did not measure brain intelligence very well. It does not clearly explain what the finding means or what that particular region in the brain does (the region of the brain measured is the lateral frontal cortex, somewhere in the front of the brain). However, the experiment does hint efficiency, connectivity and focused activities may be more important to determine a person's intelligence level than the size of the brain itself. PET stands for Positron Emission Tomography, a type of scan that show how body tissues are working, as well as what they look like.


Caption: a simple sketch of the working memory (WM) model

According to the cognitive psychology handbook, intelligence may be associated to working memory. Working memory originally integrates with the Short Term Memory (STM) and Long Term Memory (LTM). The picture above is a simple sketch of the working memory (WM) to briefly explain what WM is. This in fact is not the real working memory model. The real working memory model (i.e. Baddeley's working memory model) is much more complicated. Both the STM and LTM are processess of the WM. In brief, they are just two separate components found in the working memory. I will explain the working memory in more detail in the next few upcoming posts so stay tune. The working memory is located in the middle of the frontal gyrus (in neuro sciences, the working memory lies in a region near the brain's G spot). Well practiced task will be beneficial for IQ since it increases the processing speed and accuracy. This is also why most people uses the phrase: "Practice makes perfect". In fact, practice do not make perfect, but increases the speed and accuracy of a particular task as mentioned.


Caption: brain structure and regions


Caption: brain regions and processes

As a summary, efficiency, connectivity and focused activities is the nearest possibility to determine a person's IQ level instead of the size of the brain. A group of scientist studied more than 300 children (ranging from age 7 to 18), divided the group into few; high, average, and low IQ childrens. They looked into these students cerebral cortex and found no differences in the overall thickness attained by age 18. Therefore, they conclude that intelligence is a dynamic process related to particularly high level of plasticity.

Call 999 for Fire Bots !

It was reported in the news, sometime around the end of July, saying that some kind of robots that were initially used for bomb detonation in Afghanistan, recycled to help put down fire in the UK.


Caption: QinetiQ's Fire Bot

You may ask, why not human instead of robots? Well, the answer is fairly simple. The person incharged with operating the service suggest to try not sending human to somewhere extremely dangerous, guess will sacrifice them. Well, this make some sense to me, but can robots replace a human in such condition? Anyway, QinetiQ (the firebots operating firm) suggests that these robbots can be ferried anywhere within the M25 highway in the UK within 3 hours. Therefore, do not feel puzzled when you see these robots anywhere within the M25.


Caption: Fire Bots in operation (in some experiments)

At least 2,500 fire bots were supplied to he British and US govenments throughout their countries since the end of July 2009, and are in operation to assist fire crews in London. These robots are quite special, though providing a small, manoeuvrable machine with thermal-image cameras. Besides that, it was well equipted with the Black Max, which is similar to quad bike that possesses high-pressure water hose, and Brokk 90 to handle heavy-duty digging tasks to remove debris. This project is currently funded by Network Rail, Highways Agency, TFL (Transport for London) and London Fire Brigade.

Isolation

Finally everyone left me alone in the UK. Most of my friends have left the country a while ago and recently, my mom and brother left me too :( Though I am feeling a little upset to be alone, but on the other hand, probably much more freedom.


Caption: an upset face from mom and Daryl


Caption: Daryl seemed happy to leave the country

I could see Daryl's face changes from time to time on that day. He looked upset at the very beginning but changes significantly at the end, lol. I was wondering: "What's up with that face" in the second picture while uploading it on blog.

I received a very bad news yesterday. That is, my grandma's elder sister just passed away in the morning. No one told me how she died yet, but will try to find it out soon. Why am I sad? Because she is an extremely soft and nice person who can sit down and listen to every single words that you spoke to her, either something happy or sad. Hope she will rest in peace :( Therefore, as a lesson, do treasure people around you when they are still around.


Caption: Cyberkinetic research - Braingate

Anyway, I managed to spend some time to look at T3 magazines the other day, and spotted some really interesting futuristic technology. I am sure everyone know what a pen drive (or memory stick) is? A while ago, I wrote a post regarding to the design of technologies which concerns both the brain and the functioning of a particular machine to solve different bottlenecks (click HERE). In that post, I did mention the interaction between the brain and microchip to control computer applications, and perhaps more ambitiously, controlling limbs. If so, people with motor-impairment (unable to move their legs, hand and / or other parts of their body) may now control different applications with the computer.


Caption: a memory card microchip for brain usage

Now, these scientists upgraded the usage of these microchips into something more advance. The engineering and computing scientist forged the memory stick and the microchip concept in one, which makes this a much powerful technology ever. In many cases, we could deliberately suggest to able to eat our knowledge with our brain. Okay, this is how this so called "pen-drive microchip" works. A computer professor, Richard Granger says "Replicating memory is going to happen in our lifetimes". If we able to replicate memory, then human should be able to upload whatever information they want directly into their brain :O This is also a very important approach not only to help minimising stress, but also a very supportive research to help people with various disabilities such as the alzheimer (alzheimer is a disease that results in the gradual loss of memory, speech, movement, and the ability to think clearly, and that is common, especially among the older people).

In fact, a person's brain is something very complicated. It is true that it is extremely difficult to understand human's brain completely. However, to produce some kind of microchip to gain access to brain memory, we do not need to understand every section of the brain completely. This concept is so similar to this: "To fix a cd player, we do not need to understand music". Similar to existing cyberkinetic researches such as the Braingate that will enable two way communication between the brain and the computer, which is also going to be launched in the market soon, the brain scientist utilises some tiny wires and insert this artificial chip into the brain, and therefore, we may upload any information we want into the microchip (something like a memory stick) and then inserting the microchip into our brain. Specialists were unable to reveal where this microchip will be slotted in order to make this microchip functioned. I questioned myself, probably the back of the neck?

Anyway, I think I missed uploading some stories of what happened to myself several month ago.

When Liz and my mom came to the UK at that time, we hang out quite often. Nothing really special, just walking around some famous places such as Oxford Street and some historical places and famous monuments in London. We did not really spend much time elsewhere since Liz only able to apply for approximately 10 days leave. Hopefully I would able to graduate my studies next year, and then she promised to spend more time in the UK with us.


Caption: trying on some jackets


Caption: Liz was trying on different sunglasses

A day before my mom and brother leave the country, they cooked plenty of foods, wrapping them into plastic containers and keeping them into the fridge for me. My mom knew I missed her cooking very much, and going to further missing it for the next few months :)


Caption: the foods that mom cooked before leaving the country

Anyway, the photos below are two random images found on my mobile. Firstly, I missed the steamboat (some people called that as Hotpot) in Malaysia where we can bring-in our own food (usually you cannot do this, but we are exceptional since the restaurant manager is our friend). It is extremely addictive for me :O I told myself, "wait till I go back for steamboat again, lol".


Caption: steamboat or hotpot

Oh by the way, I think I have totally skipped this in my previous posts. I have suggested to travel to different places with Ting-Ting since I promised to be her tourguide before. Initially, we planned to travel to some UK tourism spots such as Windsor, Slough etc. but I found those places quite common and bored. Therefore, we went for a different alternative, that is to travel to Egham, a place that is popular with its green surrounding. Besides that, the University of Royal Holloway was positioned somewhere in Egham. Royal Holloway University was ranked somewhere around 25th in the UK Universities League table in year 2009, and 30th in year 2010.


Caption: Royal Holloway University

We spend half a day walking around the RHUL (Royal Holloway University London) campus, taking photographs everywhere since that university has a very beautiful surrounding as shown in the photos. This place is really beautiful. Too bad Ting-Ting has one university in mind for her postgraduate, else I would strongly suggest her to submit an application form to this university. The photo below was taken somewhere the middle of the university. If you watch a movie called "Basic Instinct 2", then you will see the university near the end of the movie.


Caption: the middle section of the university


Caption: Ting-ting was stunned with the charming view of the university


Caption: somewhere near the entrance of the university


Caption: myself at the entrance of the university


Caption: Ting-ting standing at the entrance of RHUL

This is the second picture found in my mobile. Liz took this photo for me to show it mainly for my brother, Daryl since his favourite anime character is Doraemon and Gian (but I could see no statue of Gian anywhere, as yet) :)


Caption: myself and Doraemon

Rhetorical Question of the Season

If you could plan the ideal school for your special needs child, how would it look? What would the setting be like? What must the school teachers do or the school have for it to be a lovely day for your child? How would the day flow? What extra needs must be addressed and how it they be addressed?

The Map Game and Inklings of Negative Numbers

We started a new game yesterday to work on the concept of negative. Sometimes, people express South latitude and West longitude with a negative sign. I want to Pamela to see negative numbers in a "same, but different" framework. I found a map with straight lines marking latitude and longitude, so that the intersection of two lines on the map is a spot upon which a player can land. Crossing the equator is the same conceptually as crossing zero on a number line. It is different because you are working with maps, instead of money.

I chose a region of Africa where you can travel along the equator and still be on land for many moves. The area is covers a rectangle from (10 N, 0 E) to (10 S, 0 E) to (10 N, 45 E) to (10 S, 45 E). Crossing the equator is the same conceptually as crossing zero on a number line. It is different because you are working with maps, instead of money. After much finagling in Excel, I managed to create a document with grids that marked every degree of latitude and every five degrees of longitude. I made the equator red. I copied it into Word and uploaded it here in Google Docs if you want to give it a try.

The game uses two die: one regular dice with one to six dots on each side and the other with two N's for north, two S's for south, and two E's for east. That way players bounce around the equator more than they head east, but eventually they head east. The game ends when the first player arrives in Kenya.

Suppose a player is at (4 S, 5 E) like the blue peg. If the player rolls S 3, then he moves three jumps to the south and ends up at (4 S, 20 E). Click each picture for an enlarged view.


Suppose the next player at (2 N, 10 E) like the yellow peg. If she rolls S 5, then she moves five jumps to the south and ends up at (3 S, 10 E). Conceptually, this player started in positive territory and landed in negative territory.


Sometimes, a player reaches an edge. If he rolls something that would take him off the map, the player stays put and hopes for a better roll next time. We found this heightened the anxiety and anticipation during the game.

This game works on many levels. First, Pamela is exploring the concept of negative. Once she is experienced, we will start keeping track of all movements south and north by writing it down like the money game. While playing the game, we sometimes talked about where we were on the map, which is geography, of course, not to mention exposure to the ideas of latitude and longitude. We worked on likes and dislikes because Pamela was trying to guess which peg I wanted by reading my facial expression. She is not much of a game player, but, as I pretended to grow frustrated about being stuck in the Indian Ocean, she started to reference my reactions. Pamela saw what I needed to roll and, before I rolled, she began to anticipate what might happen and laughed when I got a bad roll. When the same thing happened to her, she found it funny, too.



The other exciting moment occurred when Pamela played the money game. Since Pamela understands the play of the game, I reduced my verbals greatly and let her take responsibility for keeping the game going. She had five cents (a nickel) and wanted to buy a fish for nine cents. She knew she did not have enough money, so she found an IOU for four cents and paid for the fish that way. In essence, she just applied the following equation in her mind:

5 - 9 = -4

Dieting: 5 Portions a Day

I am sure dieting is extremely important for most people. In fact, everyone in this world would have different dieting approach for themselves. Some suggest that critical exercises, let says 5 hours of exercises may significantly reduces chalories from our body and / or to keep their body shape more fit and proper. Although exercise is fairly important, but some researches have proven that human prefer quicker approach in dieting since human are naturally lazy. This is true since not many people may stick in the gym room for 5 hours or more. Anyway, there are other simpler approaches in dieting. Many surveys (and polls) have been conducted. They suggests that people believe that consuming only ONE portion of meal a day may reduce their calories significantly. This is not validate although it might make some sense to you. The lack of nutrition in our body may cause the reduction of protection in our immune system, and finally infected by various diseases.


Caption: a clip that explain chalories by comparing McD burgers with fruits

The department of health (NHS) in the UK conducted various research, and concluded that a person's body require the 5 portions a day. It was proven as one of the most effective dieting approach. Although exercises are necessary to keep our body active, but consuming a variety of vegetables and fruits everyday should be our aim. Fresh, frozen, chilled, canned, 100% juice, dried fruit and vegetables are all counted.


Caption: 5 portions a day

You need at least "5 combinations of fruits and vegetables portion a day" to have a healthy diet and life. The below is a list of fruits and vegetables included as a part of the 5-Portions-A-Day scheme:


Caption: fresh fruits of different sizes

1. Fruits: You need 2 small-sized fruit for 1 portion everyday. For example, two pieces of plum (equivalent to 3 appricots, or 2 kiwi's, or 7 strawberries, or 14 cherries, or 6 lychees) is considered as one portion. You need 1 medium-sized fruit as one portion a day. Some examples of medium-sized fruits are 1 apple, or 1 pear, or 1 orange, or 1 nectarine. If you prefer large-sized fruits, then I would recommend 1 portion of the following fruits: 1 grapefruit, or 1 slice of pineapple, or 2 slices of mango, or one piece of 2-inch slice of watermelon.

Remember, to have a balanced diet, you need 5 of these portions everyday.


Caption: dried fruits

2. Dried fruit: Some people would prefer dried fruits for some reasons: they can eat even at workplace compared to fresh fruits. If so, one portion of dried fruit is as follows: (examples) 1 tablespoon of raisins, 3 prunes, or one handful of banana chips.


Caption: canned fruits

3. Canned fruits: For people who prefer canned fruits, then go for: 2 pear or peach halves, 6 apricot halves, 8 segments of tinned grapefruit. The outcome is similar to fresh fruits.


Caption: fruit juices

4. Juices: Drinking fruit juices is healthy. Research suggests that a glass (100ml) of 100% fruit / vegetable / smoothie juices is counted as 1 portion. However, you can only count juice as 1 portion everyday no matter how much that you drink. This means that drinking 20 glasses of fruit juices are equivalent to 1 portion. One reason is that juices contained very little fibre. On the other hand, the juicing process squashes all the natural sugars out of the cells that normally contain them, and could sometimes be harmful for our teeth when drinking a lot of juices in between meals. So, reduce significant consumption of juices everyday.


Caption: a variety of vegetables

5. Vegetables: There are many different types of vegetables. The first type that I would like to discuss is the green vegetables. Evidences have shown that 2 brocolli spears, 8 cauliflower florets, some spring greens or green beans is considered as one portion. For cooked vegetables, 3 heaped tablespoons such as carrots, peas and sweetcorns are considered as one portion. If you prefer salad vegetables, then 3 sticks of celery, 2 inch piece of cucumber, 1 medium-sized tomato, 7 cherry tomatoes must be included into your salad as another portion.


Caption: the combination of fruits and vegetables

6. Other fruits or vegetables: Since potatoes and other root vegetables (i.e. rice, pasta, bread etc.) are considered as starchy nutrition foods, so please DO NOT count them in your 5-A-Day. I am not suggesting you to not consume these nutritious foods because they are a part of dieting, but they should form the starchy carbohydrate part of your meal and perhaps breaking your dieting plan when consume too much.

Here are some further examples. A cup of orange juice for lunch is considered as one portion. Adding some lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers or some grated carrot is another example.

As a summary, most researches have suggested the combination of vegetables and fruits in the 5-portions-a-day scheme. They also suggest that the 5-A-Day scheme should only be used as a guide for all adults and / or for children age 5 and above.

I assume many people out there know about this dieting scheme. However, I feel this is extremely useful for people who only think exercising is the only way to diet properly. For me, exercise is extremely useful not only for dieting purpose, but was proven to reduce cancer rate so exercising is necessary. You may want to try other alternative dieting plan incase you assume this is much useful / easier for you (i.e. busy people who work whole day long, and too busy to participate in exercise).

Apple and RIM are profit cows

5 % market makes total of 58 % operating profits

Wall Street Journal: Smart indeed

The two accounted for only 3% of all cellphones sold in the world last year but 35% of operating profits, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Modoff. The disparity will become even starker this year when, he estimates, the two will take 5% of the market in unit terms but 58% of total operating profits.

I Did Chores (Introduction to the Concept of Negative)

Since June, I have had math on the brain, partially because Pamela will start pre-algebra this year. At the ChildLight USA conference, my presentation covered Charlotte Mason's ideas about teaching math. I had never examined her views closely until then because I have very strong views of my own since I have a degree in mathematics. My goal this year is to test her ideas through pre-algebra with Pamela. What makes it difficult is that Charlotte Mason did not go into great detail about teaching post-elementary school math in any of her books. However, Parent's Review articles do shed some light, especially the ones published during her lifetime as she edited the magazine!

Charlotte Mason definitely believed in the zone of proximal development: "Care must be taken to give the child such problems as he can work, but yet which are difficult enough to cause him some little mental effort" (Volume 1, page 255). She understood that assigning tedious drawn-out problems kept children occupied for too long, ending up with nearly right answers, burnt out minds, and discouraged hearts. She worried about children who knew their tables backwards and forwards but did not understand their purpose nor rationale.

She found that children could uncover mathematical truths by exploring and explaining concrete objects and real-life applications to pictures of these ideas to mental images to abstract written numbers and symbols. Mill’s Logic summarized what she learned during her years teaching the children of English coal miners, "All who wish to carry the child's mind along with them in learning arithmetic, all who wish to teach numbers and not mere ciphers, now teach it through the evidence of the senses in the manner we have described" (Volume 1, page 262). The typical process for the mind to visualize a new concept would be to go from concrete manipulation to explaining pictures to describing mental pictures to written equations.

My goal is to extrapolate her ideas to pre-algebra. The first lesson is about negative numbers, and I have been inventing games that develop the concept without actually using the term negative. Whenever we go shopping, mail packages, or eat out, we talk about spending money. We also talk about how Dad earns money when he goes to work, while David earns money for taking care of people's lawns. Up until recently, we have not focused on chores and earning money and, with Pamela's growth in dynamic thinking, I thought it a good time to start.

Practicing concepts about money has captured Pamela's imagination. I have little trinkets for sale and spending money is like subtracting. I have chores ready to go and earning money is like adding. IOU slips are on hand so that Pamela can go into debt to buy trinkets, which means she ends up with a negative balance. She can pay back any debt by doing chores. I made a graphic organizer for Pamela to place her coins ("in my purse") and her IOU slips ("in the hole"). I also have a slip to help her keep track of what happened and figure out her balance. The following video is 10 minutes long, but I think it will give you a good idea of how it works.

Even though we focus on math, I try to take advantage of any opportunities for relationship building as shown in the following video.



Pamela has latched onto the idea of chores rather strongly. Yesterday, I told her I would pay her a nickel if she put her clothes in the laundry room after she took her shower. She came up to me a half hour later and told me, "I did chores." Today, I did not mention a thing and she came up to me as soon as she stashed her dirty clothers, "I did chores." So, we figured out how much money she earned all together. This dovetails very nicely with one of our long-term goals for Pamela to monitor things we have requested and let us know when certain events have occurred.

Part I


Part II

Three Steps Backward in the Annuals of Guided Participation

When it comes to guided participation, Steve prefers a benevolent dictatorship with Pamela in charge. He has a very hard time sticking to what he prefers and the moment Pamela senses him waffling, she runs him over with a bulldozer.

We continue to work on her desire to control him, and the lastest thing to address is iTunes. She does not want him listening to iTunes on the computer, for no good reason other than to wield power over Daddy in my opinion. We were listening to music on Steve's computer when the dragon lady emerged from her den. She started to rant, "Turn it off! X! X! X! Turn it off!"

Steve decided to placate her by playing her favorite songs: a good move if your strategy is to scaffold Pamela into accepting us listening to iTunes. I supported him by snapping my fingers and saying declarative things about the wonderful music.

After four song switches, he said, "I am tired of listening to iTunes. I am turning it off because I want to."

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Marshmallow man strikes again.

I fussed at him for letting Pamela win that round. He acted sheepishly and evasively about her not winning because it was his choice.

Then, he made a fatal mistake. He turned to Pamela and asked her, "Did you win or lose?"

She shot up her arms in the symbol of victory and said, "I win!"

Just now, I recorded Pamela who convincingly shared her testimony of said win (even though she is using the computer, she is cognizant enough of her victory to share this tidbit with me):

Pamela 1, Dad 0 . . .

Okay, I'm over it! Deep cleansing breathes . . . calm and neutral, Tammy . . .

Monitoring Other People

Pamela surprised us by taking our pictures. She framed them very nicely, I might add!

During the RDA, our consultant noticed that Pamela emotionally engages with us and others much more often now. Two things we did last year really helped Pamela reach a point where she could stay engaged: (1) we addressed her anxieties by teaching her to reference us and use self-talk to calm down and (2) we helped her move out of static, scripted conversation loops into talking about what was going on in the moment. She now seeks out information about us: what we are doing, feeling, and thinking. She is trying to figure out relationships with our neighbors by asking me questions: one neighbor has autistic twins that are David's age while other neighbors are the grandparents of one of David's friends. She saw a woman she did not know in the other neighbor's yard and asked, "Who's that?" I told her it was the young man's mother, and they are visiting from their home a few hours away.

When we walked to the car to leave for the store, we heard a neighbor call, "Hi, Tammy! Hi, Pamela!" Pamela asked me, "Who is it?" I shrugged my shoulders, and she asked, "Is it Will's grandmother?" I turned in looked in the direction of the neighbor and said, "It's Charlotte!" I waved and Pamela ran up to me and waved too. She noticed that Charlotte and her husband were getting out of their car, so she said, "Good! They're back!"

Pamela wants to join us when we chat with our neighbors. The couple next door calls to see if we want fresh corn on the cob. Pamela wants to know who called and if she can go too. She greets them and carries the bag of corn home for me. The grandparents of David's friend invites us over to sit near the garden and chat, and Pamela wants to come too because "I'm an adult." The door rings and Pamela has to know who is at the door, "Is it UPS? Is it Will?" When I offer to take David and the neighbor's grandsons to dinner, Pamela wants to join us. She sees a man in a sling at church and asks, "What happened to arm?" and says to the hairstylist with a different sort of hair color, "Purple hair!"

The lady who usually cuts Pamela's hair said to me, "Pamela looks tired." I told the beautician about Pamela's busy June and how VBS and a trip to Raleigh wore her out. The hair cutter, who loves talking to Pamela, asked, "How are you doing without cable?" Pamela said, "Good! We don't need it!" She followed up with, "I heard you did VBS. What did you do?" Pamela said, "Ripped paper," which was not the answer the Brit beautician expected and she looked confused. Pamela added, "It's over." I briefly mentioned that Pamela took down the decorations. "Oh, I see! You liked helping them clean up?" Pamela smiled and said, "Yes!"

Do you see the fundamental shift in Pamela's approach to people and conversations? Not only is she interested in knowing people better, she is more equipped to be competent in brief conversations with them!

Right now, I am juggling two objectives: giving Pamela opportunities to monitor me by being a ditz which comes naturally and spotlighting differences between her and my likes and dislikes. Lately, I have been doing things like forgetting to remove the seal from a new bottle of ketchup, making wrong turns, leaving bags at the check out, forgetting to get a shopping cart, and not going through doors when Pamela is ahead of me. Yesterday at the post office, she went through the glass doors and got in line without me. She was there for about 20 seconds before she realized I was not with her.

You can see that the beginning of the first clip that she is improving in her ability to monitor me at transition points. In the store we sometimes go our own ways and do things. I am hoping she will learn to enjoy finding me and keeping tabs on me. So, I spotlighted the joy of her finding me and that I was hiding. She smiled when I told her about hiding the second time. When Pamela got hyperfocused, she lost track of me. It helped to close the distance when she was absorbed in looking at a video.



I also look for chances to share our likes and dislikes to strengthen Pamela's concept of self versus other. In the clip below, she had an easy time with talking about beans and shopping cards. She was reading me pretty well and sharing her thoughts too. However, Pamela struggled when we were looking at the DVDs. I suspected she was thinking I was going to buy the videos I was liking (Jimmy Neutron or Horton Hears a Who), and she was really interested in Madagascar - Escape 2 Africa. We ended up buying neither because we were really just browsing. Remaining calm and neutral, stopping the action and waiting for her to reference me, and explaining the difference between looking and buying helped calm her down.

Protecting from Swine Flu

The death toll of swine flu (explanation of what swine flu is: HERE) increases significantly, and are expected to reach 65, 000 death over the next few months. It was reported by the BBC that approximately 100, 000 people were infected by the swine flu disease every single day. They believed that 30% of the population throughout the world will affect by this virus at the end of 2009.


Caption: the structure of the influenza virus

Anyway, I read from the newspaper the other day, stated that British scientists in Hertfodshire started the production of a cure for the swine flu disease. However, the cure is initially incomplete. They will start proceeding to the next stage of experimentation next week. According to them, they are trying to produce some kind of vaccine that would help preventing from the swine flu virus entirely. This vaccine should be ready and produced in bulk next month. The creation of the vaccine has been shown by the scientists in the clip below:


Caption: the production of swine flu vaccine by British scientists

The british govenment is expecting to spread the vaccine all over the UK for swine flu patient as soon as the vaccine is released. They believed the first seed of swine flu vaccine should be ready in 3 to 4 weeks from now.


Caption: a picture of the Tamiflu pill

On the other hand, Tamiflu (the number one doctor-prescribed flu medicine for flu treatment) was pronounced as one of the most current effective resistant for swine flu. This has been proven by a Canadian who has successfully prevented from swine flu. Anyway, besides the Tamiflu antiviral, we may have easier preventation methods to prevent from swine flu, that is to learn protecting ourselves from infecting with such dangerous disease

These are the methods suggested by experts:


Caption: De-stress

1. De-stress: Stress is considered as one factor which causes the rose of swine flu attempts. How? Stress will subsequently attack our immune system to weaken the immune system. In many cases, swine flu virus may attack our body very easily in such condition. Therefore, besides getting plenty of sleep, rest, massage, making yourself happy, you may want to read more about stress-reliever in one of the post on this blog (HERE) a while ago.


Caption: sufficient exercises

2. Sufficient exercises: Exercising regularly will strengthened our immune system and protect us from falling ill. Exercising is also the best way to boost our body defense from most disease. According to some articles, a person should at least have 30 minutes of exercise per day to increase the circulation of blood within your heart.


Caption: Dieting structure

3. Dieting: A good diet will help to boost your immune system. Therefore, taking plenty of vitamin and minerals, and perhaps plenty of fruits and vegetables will increase a healthy flow of your body.


Caption: some fruits enriched with antioxidants

4. Antioxidant: Antioxidants can help to clean the cylinders of our immune system. To do this, we need to consume plenty of excellent antioxidant sources / foods such as berries (i.e. wolfberry), fruits (i.e. grapes), green tea, dark chocolates, soya etc. The antioxidant may help to fight againsts free radicals (something that damages our body, such as illness) in our body.


Caption: cleanliness

5. Stay Clean: experts suggest us to stay clean to prevent or limit the spread of the H1N1 virus. They suggests us to cover our mouth when sneeze and cough, or probably sneeze in a piece of disposable tissue and throw it inside a bin when done. Most importantly, we should wash our hand with soap and water regularly. They also reminded us to clean hard surfaces (i.e. door, wall etc.) at home. This method would help to kill the H1N1 virus.


Caption: ginseng

6. Ginseng: I heard consuming ginseng will substantially destroying any invading viruses, such as the H1N1 virus.


Caption: drinking water

7. Drinking water: Drinking plenty of water is initially important since your body is much stronger when it is hydrated. Therefore, please consume at least 2.5 litre of water everyday. Drinking water is also important for to keep your body functioning more properly and providing a much clearer and softer skin :) So, please drink plenty of water everyday.


Caption: Selenium

8. Selenium: Selenium often synergy with vitamin E, acting similarly like antioxidant, needed for proper immune system and heart functioning. It also protect the membrane cells in our body. Anyway, consuming foods that contained selenium would help preventing cellular damages from free radicals. Foods that contain selenium includes chicken, prawn, fish, oysters etc.


Caption: foods contained zinc

9. Zinc: Dairy products and eggs are best sources that produces zinc to our body. For many reasons, Zinc is important to prevent premature ageing which may subsequently reduces wrinkles on your face. On the other hand, it help protecting our immune system if we consume it regularly.


Caption: good bacteria contained in yogurt juice

10. Bacteria: Bacterias are categorized into two; the good and bad bacteria. The two types of bacteria can be found in our body. Experts suggest us to consume daily probitic regularly to improve the balance of microbes in our intestine. An example would be yogurt juices. This may help to boost our immune system and help to fight againsts different infections.


Caption: fruits enriched with vitamin C

11. Vitamin C: This is probably one of the most important vitamin to prevent the invasion of swine flu in our body since originally, our body cannot produce vitamin C itself though our body require vitamin C to keep our immune system healthy and preventing diseases. Oranges, kiwi, broccoli and other dark green leafy vegetables are sources that produces vitamin C to our body.

So, guys and girls out there, as usual, I would still suggest you to wear a mask (although I am not planning to wear one since it is ugly, lol) when travelling somewhere. Stay safe, drink plenty of water, and as usual, when someone start sneezing and / or coughing, please stop breathing and run as far as possible :)