Our First Week--In Review

Pamela is clearly in a search for meaning. The other day, we were reading the introduction to Augustus Caesar's World, which began with the myth of Janus and Rome's city gates. The story shifted to Octavius, who was attending college in Apollonia. Pamela wrote on her graphic organizer, "Octavius, 18 years old." I told the year was 44 B.C. Then she asked me, "What is B.C.?"

I didn't know whether to praise God or Snoopy dance, but ecstatic does not begin to describe my emotions. Not only is Pamela thinking and trying to make connections, she is able to ask me for more information! She could not do this two years ago!

I drew a hasty timeline and wrote "Creation" at the beginning and Pamela said, "Just like Old Testament." Then, I wrote "Jesus as a Boy" with a the number zero below and asked where the New Testament would go. Pamela pointed in the right place. When I wrote "Today" at the end, she said, "21st Century." I finally explained that A.D. is Anno Domini, Latin for "Year of the Lord", while B.C. is English for Before Christ.

Full of inspiration from my friends at ChildLight USA, I matched our first week with the recommendation of Charlotte Mason very closely. The highlight for Pamela was poetry, especially reading Walter de la Mare's Tired Tim in the mopiest, boredest voice and the pouchiest lip! Imagine! A person with a history of severe language delays loving the pictures and images painted by words.

The keys to helping her love poetry are context and meaning. While Pamela had no problem with Tired Tim and The Horseman, the other three poems were tough. Pamela has no idea why a butcher shop would disgust the poet, so, before the reading, we talked about things we thought that were ugly. I explained to her that our meat is wrapped us nicely in packages we buy at the store. In those days, people might see dead animals at the butcher shop. As I read I Can't Abear, Pamela's facial expression showed me she understood the poem. Before reading Mrs. Earth, we cleaned a silver spoon with a white cloth so Pamela could see the black tarnish and we studied two cans of paint, one rusted and one shiny. I thought the hardest poem would be Up and Down because I had trouble following it. Then, I found a map of Dicken's London and printed it out for Pamela. Before the reading, Pamela colored all the places mentioned in the poem with a yellow crayon. While I read it to her aloud, Pamela astonished me with her auditory processing skills and pointed out things like Ludgate Hill, Fleet Street, and Temple Bar on the map. She sure has come a long way!

The following is a list of what we accomplished this week, according to plan. The keys are to have short lessons and to keep in mind what is really important (context, meaning, process, ideas). We are not at full schedule yet, but we managed to pull this off in less than 3 hours and 15 minutes a day. I do not have as much literature as other Charlotte Mason educators due to Pamela's severe language delays.

Mathematics
We did three short lessons, totaling an hour a day, on geometry, number theory, and algebra/arithmetic. In geometry, Pamela measured the length and width of small and large rectangular objects, learned what a square inch is, and discovered how to find the area of rectangle by counting square inches or multiplying length times width. She measured the base and height of right triangles and discovered how to find their area. In number theory, Pamela played various games that preview the concept of negative. Her B.C. question inspired me to invent a time travel game, too. She now understands how to add two negative numbers and how to add a positive and a negative, except when it crosses zero. Even though we said things like "going north/south" or "going back/ahead in time" rather than negative or positive, Pamela was practicing how to handle negative numbers. In algebra/arithmetic, we reviewed fractions and covered whole, equal parts versus unequal parts, fraction, numerator and denominator, the syntax of saying fractions, and equivalent fractions. I cleared up some gaps in her understanding and found out where she needs work.

History
We worked out of five books for our two threads of ancient history, and Pamela added pages to the book of centuries we started last year. For the most ancient of history, Pamela read and wrote a narration of Cain and Abel (Chapter 4 of Adam and His Kin and Genesis 4:1-15 from an illustrated version of Genesis). For the era leading to the birth of Jesus, she just started Augustus Caesar's World and typed narrations for 44 B.C.. She recorded some sidebars from The Amazing Expedition Bible and the meeting between Elizabeth and Mary at about 3-6 B.C. (Luke 1:39-56 of an illustrated version of The New Testament). I plan to blog her book of centuries down the road.

Geography
While formal geography was not on the schedule, we located Fleet Street, London and found Apollonia on a map of ancient Rome. I pointed out Sicily to Pamela and told her that her grandparents lived there for many years. Literature, history, and family reminiscing provide many opportunities to study maps!

Language Arts
Pamela did studied dictation of a one page story about Pandora and needed no special lessons. She started memorizing The Horseman for recitation and practiced her articulation in reciting, reading aloud poems, and singing songs. She typed narrations of Watership Down and her history readings. Pamela copied a poem she selected called "A Morning in Fall" by Reeve Lindbergh and part of a story she picked called Who Took the Farmer's Hat? into her copy journal for penmanship. Pamela completed Lesson 1 of Writing Strands Level 2 (emphasizing adjectives and commas). She took a picture and typed a story about her rabbit. Pamela learned syntax for saying fractions correctly by comparing the denominator to how we say singular versus plural nouns. She wrote out many of her answers in math in complete sentences. Pamela orally narrated her readings and two paintings by Monet.

Literature
Pamela read five poems by Walter de la Mare and one chapter of Watership Down.

Life Skills
Pamela helped me deliver hot lunches to eighteen elderly people through the Meals on Wheels program. She learned to rename and color-code tabs of Excel worksheets as well as add, move, and delete worksheets. She is creating a workbook with the calendar information she loves to track. She decided which way to turn while we were walking the dog, taking a different path every day. We talked about people we saw while we worked up a sweat (the neighbor's son getting off the bus and Opa driving to Sumter). She spent a little bit of time with her cousins who are visiting from Virginia.

Recreation
We exercised by walking the dog and took one nature walk sans pooch. Pamela painted a leaf in her nature journal and nearly has the melody for Blessed Assurance and Land of the Silver Birch. What astounds me is how expressively Pamela sings: when she sang in the choir a few years back, I could hardly get her to articulate and now she sings with gusto! We listened to Mozart in the car (Pamela nearly always puts on classical music in the car anyway) and did two picture studies on Monet: The Picnic and Camille Embroidering.

The Rabbit:

My furry, white rabbit with long, white ears, furry white hands, short, white feet, small, white tail, short pink bag and long, orange carrot was sitting on the grass. It slept.

Picture and Text by Pamela Glaser after her first lesson Writing Strands Level 2.

Unedited by Tammy Glaser, who is thinking her decision to go without the association method for language arts might be justified.

Geometry, Charlotte Mason Style

Have you ever looked on the Internet for original ideas in math? You can find tons of supposedly "fun" worksheets or kill and drill computer programs that focus on procedure or facts, not knowledge.

We covered area in our first week of 20-minute geometry lessons, Charlotte Mason style. She suggested giving a child "such problems as he can work, but yet which are difficult enough to cause him some little mental effort" (Volume 1, page 255). In other words, tedious long division problems or cutesy little worksheets are pointless. If a math lesson does not spark an original thought, then it is a waste of time!

Rather than make children memorize, Charlotte recommended making math so clear and understandable that any other way of learning a fact or doing a procedure would seem absurd.

"We remember how instructive and impressive Ruskin is on the thesis that 'two and two make four' and cannot by any possibility that the universe affords be made to make five or three. From this point of view, of immutable law, children should approach Mathematics; they should see how impressive is Euclid’s 'Which is absurd,' just as absurd as would be the statements of a man who said that his apples always fell upwards, and for the same reason. The behaviour of figures and lines is like the fall of an apple, fixed by immutable laws, and it is a great thing to begin to see these laws even in their lowliest application." (Volume 6, page 152)

How does this look in real life? My plan for this week was to introduce the concept of area and work through the area of various shapes. Most curriculum hand down the magical formula from on high that some smart dead guy figured out a long time ago. I wanted Pamela to discover it for herself.

Day One
I gathered a bunch of flat, rectangular objects (refrigerator magnet, sticky note, Netflix envelope, etc.) for Pamela to measure. First, I grabbed two items and asked her which one was bigger. She had no problems understanding this preview of area. I had a 7" x 10" grid (an Excel spreadsheet) that represented 70 square-inch blocks. I gave Pamela a piece of paper with columns for the object, length, width, square inches, and shape. We measured length and width with a ruler and outlined the object on the grid. Then, I introduced the idea of a square-inch and measured the sides of one. We counted up the number of square-inch blocks in the first item, and then Pamela recorded her observations for the first object. We continued the process until we hit the fourth object when she figured out the pattern: length times width yields the square inches.





We repeated this process for all seven objects so that Pamela could know through her own reason that the area of a rectangle is the length times width. Anything else would seem absurd to her. Imagine I said to ADD the dimensions. She would know that made no sense because she figured out the pattern for herself!

Day Two
This lesson took much longer because I wanted her to apply the same thinking to larger rectangular objects. At first, we covered the objects with the grids. You can see how we covered the top of the toaster with grids.



When the objects were too large, Pamela calculated the square inches for herself. She worked hard until she finished the fourth object and realized she was not even half of the way done. Measuring large objects with a ruler required her to skip count and do mental math in her head. She became tired and disheartened with five objects left. I checked the stopwatch and realized she had only four minutes left, so I showed it to her and said, "We only have enough time for one more problem!" Pamela's face brightened and she eagerly went back to work. Charlotte knew the value of short lessons: "Give him short sums, in words rather than in figures, and excite him in the enthusiasm which produces concentrated attention and rapid work" (Volume 1, page 261).



Day Three
Rather than jump to the formula right away, we worked on word problems today in which Pamela drew the items (and even colored them) and figured out the answers. Since we dropped the association method, I even encouraged her to write the answer in complete sentences. Often we jump so quickly to new symbols and formulas that meaning disappears. "I recommend strongly that no new symbol should ever be introduced before it is necessary to use it in practical work. A new labour-saving symbol is like a new machine, extremely interesting when you realize its usefulness, merely strange when you see it lying idle" (Parent's Review Article).

Day Four
Pamela discovered how to find the area of a triangle. I spotlighted the difference between the area of a rectangle and triangle with similar dimensions by having Pamela doing them together and filling out this chart.


To figure out the area of a triangle, we identified and counted the whole blocks first. Then, I cut out the partial blocks and Pamela matched them. We counted the matched partials and added it to the whole blocks to get the number of square inches.



We found an alternate and easier way to do this with a square!


As you can see on the video, Pamela did well. She caught onto the pattern by the third and fourth set.



Day Five Plan
We continued to work on triangles, which are tricky because of the concept of base and height, which I plan to flesh out next week. We had a wonderful week and Pamela's opinion of geometry is that, "Great! Fun! I measured." Now, that is what I call an accurate gestalt of our week.

Let his arithmetic lesson be to the child a daily exercise in clear thinking and rapid, careful execution, and his mental growth will be as obvious as the sprouting of seedlings in the spring. (Volume 1, page 261)

Original Thinking about Geometry

Warning: You are about to enter the Land of Original Thinking. If you like the security of following exactly what a text book says and marking your own trail makes you feel dizzy, find another math guide!

Last June, I presented the topic of how Charlotte Mason taught math. Inspired by the soundness of her ideas, I will attempt to implement them this year with Pamela, who is taking Pre-Algebra. Judging by the reaction of people in my audience, the most controversial recommendation was the following:

Pronounce a sum wrong, or right––it cannot be something between the two. That which is wrong must remain wrong: the child must not be let run away with the notion that wrong can be mended into right. (Volume 1, Pages 260-261)

What! No partial credit? But . . . but . . . but . . .

I know!

I even admitted to my class I had never really attempted this. Someone suggested a brilliant way to do it, so I went home and immediately adopted her idea with David, who was working his way through the final third of MUS Algebra II. We loved it!

What she suggested is to assign only half of the problems and mark what is right right and what is wrong wrong. Then, assign an extra problem for each wrong one, keeping in mind Charlotte's admonition that "he may get the next sum right, and the wise teacher will make it her business to see that he does" (Volume 1, page 261). How? Assess what went wrong and resolve this issue before trying more problems, whether it be careless execution, misunderstanding one little thing, or completely missing the boat.

Charlotte believed that arithmetic trained children to be accurate and clear-thinking. We foster slipshod habits of mind by "the copying, prompting, telling, helping over difficulties, working with an eye to the answer which he knows" Volume 1, page 260.

While Charlotte Mason's books do not go into great detail on math, clues are scattered online. The latest complete PNEU schedule for the highest form available online is for 1922: Charlotte Mason broke math up into three short lessons (Arithmetic, Geometry, and Algebra), using different books for each. I modeled our plan around this idea and spread Math-U-See's thirty-lesson schedule for Pre-Algebra over 36 weeks. The following is my plan for Geometry (roughly one-third of the book) in 20 minutes every school day, five times a week:

Week 1 - Assess and fill in gaps for the area of a square/rectangle/triangle/circle.
Week 2 - Introduce surface area of cubes, rectangular solids, and rectangular and triangular pyramids by using concrete objects. Transition to pictures of them by making shapes from paper and unfolding them to figure out surface area.
Week 3 - Transition from unfolded shapes to labeled pictures to drawing surface area for word problems.
Week 4 - Do selected surface area problems from Lesson 15 of MUS Pre-Algebra.
Week 5 - Introduce the volume of rectangular solids by slicing up blocks of cheese or using building blocks. Transition from blocks to slices and transition to labeled pictures.
Week 6 - Transition from drawing pictures for rectangular solid volume to word problems and working through the equations.
Week 7 - Introduce Pythagorean theorem by measuring by hand, squaring each side, and looking for a pattern. Transition to figuring it out from a labeled picture.
Week 8 - Transition from solving the Pythagorean theorem for labeled pictures to drawing right triangles for word problems.
Week 9 - Do selected Pythagorean problems from Lesson 10 of MUS Pre-Algebra.
Week 10 - Introduce volume of cylinders by finding the volume of stacks of coasters, pineapple, etc. Transition to labeled pictures.
Week 11 - Transition from labeled pictures to drawing cylinders for word problems.
Week 12 - Do selected volume of a cylinder problems from Lesson 24 of MUS Pre-Algebra.
Week 13 - Introduce volume of pyramids with a square base and cones by filling different-sized objects of these shapes with rice and pouring them into rectangular solids and cylinders with the same dimensions. The goal is demonstrate that one is one-third of the other. Transition to labeled pictures.
Week 14 - Transition from labeled pictures to drawing pyramids and cones for word problems.
Week 15 - Do selected volume of a pyramid and cone problems from Lesson 27 of MUS Pre-Algebra.
Week 16 - Assess memory of ratios and proportions. Using concrete activities like cooking and whole/part pictures and thinking to reintroduce ratios and proportions.
Week 17 - Transition from whole/part pictures to drawing them for word problems.
Week 18 - Do selected ratio and proportion problems from Lesson 19 of MUS Pre-Algebra.
Week 19 - Measure the sides of similar polygons (while practicing knowing their names) and look for a pattern. Transition to doing the same for labeled pictures.
Week 20 - Transition from labeled pictures to similar polygon word problems.
Week 21 - Do selected similar polygon problems from Lesson 20 of MUS Pre-Algebra.
Week 22 - Practice carrying and borrowing in inches, feet, and yards using strips representing each. Transition to labeled pictures, drawing, and equations.
Week 23 - Transition to labeled pictures, drawing, and equations. Then, try it with adding and subtracting time.
Week 24 - Do selected adding and subtracting time problems from Lesson 26 of MUS Pre-Algebra.
Week 25 - Read temperatures of various liquids in Fahrenheit and Celsius. Measure freezing and boiling temperatures of water too. Show the logic of how the conversions are made using two strips of paper with these two temperatures in both units.
Week 26 - Transition to drawing and equations.
Week 27 - Do selected Celsius to Fahrenheit problems from Lesson 16 of MUS Pre-Algebra.
Week 28 - Show the logic of how the conversions are made using two strips of paper with these two temperatures in both units. Transition to drawing and equations.
Week 29 - Do selected Celsius to Fahrenheit problems from Lesson 17 of MUS Pre-Algebra.
Week 30 - Show the same civilian time and military time until she sees the pattern. Develop a formula for converting time.
Week 31 - Try adding and subtracting multary time as was done with measurements and civilian time previously.
Week 32 - Do selected adding and subtracting military time problems from Lesson 28 of MUS Pre-Algebra.
Week 33 - Add and subtract measurements through concrete activities: feet and inches, yards and feet, pounds and ounces.
Week 34 - Add and subtract measurements through pictures: feet and inches, yards and feet, pounds and ounces.
Week 35 - Add and subtract measurements by drawing for word problems: feet and inches, yards and feet, pounds and ounces.
Week 36 - Do selected adding and subtracting measurement problems from Lesson 29 of MUS Pre-Algebra.

In the following posts, I will include my plans for Algebra and Number Theory and what we covered in our first week of each.

Sailing through the First Day of School

Because we spend three weeks ramping up to a full blown schedule, Pamela breezed through her first day of school today! Attending ChildLight USA's annual conference last June renewed my enthusiasm about applying Charlotte Mason's methods even more thoughtfully than I had before. I have changed some aspects of our homeschooling program:

• I let go of the daily hour of the association method because Pamela has made such wonderful progress in overcoming her aphasia that I think a combination of Relationship Development Intervention, Charlotte Mason language arts (oral and written narration, copywork, studied dictation, recitation), Writing Strands Level 2, and picture study will be enough to spur more gains in language.
• I split Math-U-See's Pre-Algebra into three twenty-minute tracks a day to allow more time to ground Pamela in new ideas (up to two weeks) before having to work in abstract symbols: number theory, arithmetic/algebra, and geometry. I promise to blog more later.
• I cut some classes back to two or three times a week (as Charlotte Mason did) to add a few important subjects or to have time for things that seemed to get neglected (*ahem* exercise).
• I am thinking very hard about how to apply the dynamic thinking skills listed in Chapter 2 of The RDI Book in all subjects of our curriculum and daily life. I even put on the schedule carved out time for chores and life skills to motivate Pamela (who loves crossing things off our weekly list).
• With the help of free courses online, I am guiding Pamela through how to get the most out of spreadsheets so that we launch her love of writing lists and making connections between calendars, the Chinese zodiac, places we have lived, PBS television stations, favorite movies, roman numerals, etc. into the digital age.
• I split up history into short blocks with a block of notebook time every day to continue two book of centuries from last year for Ancient History (The Story of the World, Volume 1, The Amazing Expedition Bible, and Adam and His Kin) and Roman History (Augustus Caesar's World and The Amazing Expedition Bible) and start two new ones for English History (Our Island Story) and American History (The World of Columbus and Sons).

So, how did our three-hour-and-fifteen-minute day look?

Morning

• Covered columns/letters, rows/numbers, and cells and renaming and color-coding the tabs of worksheets in Excel to make a calendar spreadsheet for 20 minutes.
• Copied part of a story that she choose in her copy journal for 5 minutes.
• Measured length and width of seven flat, rectangular objects and used a grid of square-inch blocks to figure out the area for 20 minutes--she figured out how to calculate the area halfway through the activity!
• Reviewed whole numbers versus fractions and the need for pieces to be the same size using the concrete idea of pizza, pie, and cookies for 20 minutes.
• Played the map game and recorded her movements north and south to introduce the idea of negative numbers for 20 minutes.
• Typed a narration of Chapter 11 of Watership Down for 10 minutes and read a page and a half from Chapter 12 for 15 minutes.
• Typed a narration of Cain and Abel based on a storyboard from last June for 10 minutes.
• Wrote three sentences from a story about Pandora for studied dictation with no mistakes for 10 minutes.
• Read half a page from Adam and His Kin plus Genesis 4:25-5:4 for 10 minutes and started a new storyboard about Seth's family for 5 minutes.
• Sang three verses of Blessed Assurance for 5 minutes.
• Read aloud Walter de la Mare's poem The Horseman for 10 minutes.
• Use the poem as a springboard for understanding adjectives and doing the first day of Lesson 1 in Writing Strands Level 2 for 15 minutes.

Afternoon

• Walked the Arwenator (our hyperactive dog) for 30 minutes.
• Listened to Mozart for 10 minutes while running errands.

I was especially pleased with Pamela's very succinct narration of Cain and Abel:

Adam and Eve had two babies called Cain and Abel. Cain and Abel was burning some animals. Cain Fought Abel. Abel was dead. Abel went to Heaven. Cain was homeless.

She also wrote a neat sentence for Writing Strands 2 with very little guidance from me:

This is a pink hat with moon, stars, and patches.

We will be phasing in literature, chores, science, geography, and the new history material in the next three weeks, so stay tuned!

Blogging Expands Minds

Blogs open minds... People of all ages find voice, express ideas, learn to organize, analyze, synthesize and gain vision -- all in a world community.

People generally do not "know" others, let alone themselves. Blogs can open a window to "know and be known." Parker Palmer

Even as I decided to blog on blogging, since Ellen Weber nudged the idea, I went to Joanna Young's Confident Writing blog since she earlier inspired me with how to become a fire-breathing writing dragon. Amazingly today, Joanna wrote on creating, sharing and the breath of possibility in relation to blogging. And Brad Shorr, another internet friend, wrote today that consistency, even if only to blog every week, is important to keep readers interested.

Coincidence - no!

Others' minds stretch us. Blogging takes us to new realms of possibility.

Some Amazing 3-D Paintings

I received an email from a friend yesterday, and got a shock when I looked at the images. I also decided to share with people who have not seen such amazing paintings before. You may click on the pictures to enlarge the size.


Caption: the artist

This is the artist who is so famous with 3D paintings on buldings. According to the email, his wife is an artist too. Anyway, there are few before-after images posted below, where you can observe how brilliant their drawing is. How is it possible to be some artwork? I mean, I might be those people who have not seen great artwork before, especially painting on buildings. This is probably the first time seeing all these (those brilliant artwork found in cathedrals in places like Italy are crafted, and not really painting). For me, his work is really amazing, and so, I think it is really worth sharing them here.


Caption: picture 1: before the painting


Caption: picture 1: after the painting

How can this be real? Oh my god! Anyway, here are the remaining pictures (below).


>Caption: picture 2: before the painting


Caption: picture 2: after the painting


Caption: picture 3: before the painting


Caption: picture 3: after the painting

There are questions written in the email: "How many birds or human will bang on the walls as if the painting is so real?". I don't know, I might probably be one of them? Lol.


Caption: picture 4: before the painting


Caption: picture 4: after the painting


Caption: a closer view of picture 4

Amazing isn't it? If so, the images below might amaze you more. Probably due to the environmental light inside the building, which makes the painting looks much realistic.


Caption: picture 5: before the painting


Caption: picture 5: after the painting

Take a closer look (click on the image to enlarge the size) at the painting. Look at the texture of the wall painted. Impressive!

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Caption: side view (picture 5) of the painting


Caption: a closer view of picture 5

Technologies Convergence

I was surprise when a friend send these video links to me. It looks like Microsoft is producing a new generation of computer. If you watch the video clip in the below, you may see some new technologies, interacting computer with banking, purchasing something with credit card, transfering an image to your phone by just dragging the picture to the mobile. This is something very interesting, yes?


Caption: new technologies developed by Microsoft

In fact, I attended some conferences at Cambridge university in 2007. The Microsoft representer demonstrated something similar to this. However, they have no concrete idea of how are they going to utilise the technology developed, as yet. So, they started with some minor research, producing an augmented reality notice board. Augmented reality is referred to some new technologies, emerging computer generated graphics onto the real world. In other words, it represents the augmentation of artificially synthesized graphics into the real-world environment.


Caption: an example of augmented reality


Caption: another example of augmented reality

These are new technologies which has attracted many researcher to set a focus on it. In the past few years, researcher manage to interact the augmented reality (AR) technology into the design of haptic interface, with which we could now touch the computer generated graphics with a data glove.


Caption: data glove

Sometimes, I was imagining if the AR technology could be useful in minimising some security related issues. If shops selling gold jewelery implemented AR technology in their shop, will that help to reduce security issues? Well, this is just an opinion :)

In the conference, the Microsoft presenter suggest that this electronic notice board will be useful in school (but he only explained very briefly, guess the lack of idea at that time). Anyway, this new technology is a depiction of future computers, where we do not need to have a keyboard or mouse as controller in the user interface.


Caption: a demo of Sony's pocket-sized unknown technology

On the other hand, Sony came out with some relatively similar technology. I personally believe that this technology would be very beneficial for people especially when dealing with e-commerce.


Caption: latest Japan technology

Recently, BBC reported some kind of mechanical technology developed by the Japanese. Equipting some machines such as talking device and GPS system, this machine is definitely not a normal one.

Very cool isn't it?

Iphone Glass and LCD Repair

Hi everybody.

This is just to help somebody who is out there who needs some advice and convincing on how to replace the broken glass and the LCD in iphone.

I have a 3G iphone which I must say is such a useful gadget to have. To me iphone is the ultimate phone, organizer and many more.

Unfortunately one common thing that could happen to your iphone is the damage to the digitalizing glass the LCD following a fall. Sometimes one fall is enough to cause such damage.It will look horrible if this happen and you'll get dead scared.Just take a look at this picture !.

Most of the time with the broken glass you may end up damaging the LCD screen as well adding more to your misery. If that happens it will look something like this.

As most of us would do I contacted Apple for possible repair/replacement for my phone since I was still in my warranty .

Guess what !.....

The Glass and the LCD is NOT COVERED with your warranty. To repair them the charge was over £200/=.

Now I for one was determined to not to pay this very unfair charges even if I have to throw the phone away. You know what I did? I DID IT MY SELF !. And I will advice you to do the same. IT IS DOABLE. My phone looks as a new one now.

This is what you should do.

1. Do some googling and search in you tube. There are lot of advices in the format of images and videos. There are many ways of doing it. But this video shows the way I did and I think it is the easiest way.

2. Search in ebay for the required parts. Make sure you buy genuine parts. Not the low quality stuff coming from Hong Kong China etc.

3. Make sure you buy the glass together with the digitalizer. NOT separately

4. For the glass make sure you buy the ADHESIVE STICKERS.

5. Choose a nice and peaceful time to do this . It is handy to have somebody near you to help you and to give second opinions.

Before you start rehearse the steps in your mind few times. Then take a few deep breaths and get on with it

The procedure is nerve wracking but enjoyable.

Do not loose the small screws. you wont be able to find them.

Try to handle the electronic parts minimally.

Don't let some other idiots to profit by your mistakes. Do it your self

If I can, you can also do it !

Happy to help if you have any questions. e mail me

Monitoring May Be Too Much of a Good Thing

We spent many hours in the car on Saturday, and I was able to take three terrific shots that spotlight some interesting things about Pamela's development. Pamela took sign language homeschool co-operative classes for about three years (ages 9-11 and age 14). She struggled with the same issues in sign language that she struggled with autism: problems reading and using facial expressions, word order and syntax, and intricate details in gestures. Now that she is more adept in nonverbal communication, Pamela is starting to recall her favorite signs and is becoming creative! A few weeks ago, she invented her own sign for "old woman": instead of signing woman and then old. She made the wrinkled face pictured on the left and signed "woman"! Pretty clever, huh?
One thing that struck me about Pamela on this trip was how well she connected to her brother and her cousin. She always looked the person in the face, turning her face to them, whenever they were talking. At one point, she played a game with them. Jose whispered something to Pamela, and then she whispered something to David. Then, David whispered to Pamela and she turned around and whispered to Jose. She enjoyed playing these silly games with her brother and cousin.
Two years ago, Jose's younger brother Antonio stayed with us for about two weeks when Pamela was only six months into our RDI journey. She was not able to interact with him in the rich manner she interacts now. Jose told me that this is the first time he has ever been able to make connections with her. He finds it novel interacting with her like this for the first time in twenty years, so he plays along well: he knows that she likes to "cure" people with her magic finger, so he coughs and she zaps him and says, "Hocus pocus!" Jose has already figured out her favorite songs and tries to encourage Pamela to sing along with him. Sometimes, she joins him and, at other times, she makes a raspberry. He gets a kick out of her desire to interact, and he will say, "Pamela, give me five" or "Pamela, can I see the old woman face?"

Today, Jose and I howled with laughter at something Pamela did at the Post Office. We were standing in line, and this little girl touched the fan. Not only did Pamela monitor what the four-year-old did, but she also scolded her in a gentle but serious tone, "Don't touch it . . . you be in big trouble . . . you're a naughty girl!" A year ago, Pamela would have been oblivious. Today, she noticed the action, she realized it could be harmful, and she took an appropriate step (appropriate being based on her level of social development, not her age).

Fortunately, the grandmother of the little girl took it well and the girl looked up at Pamela with wide eyes, unsure of what to do. I thank God the little one did not cry or get flustered!

Daddy's Girl

Pamela and Steve are sharing joint attention, a cognitive skill often lacking in autism, as they look at his Blackberry, while he checks his email. Joint attention, a triangulating relationship between two people and an external stimuli, is much more than a snapshot in time. By the age of twelve months, a baby desires "to broaden her own subjective impressions by learning those of her partners. She is borrowing the perspective of another person's mind to enhance her own ability to obtain meaning" (The RDI Book, page 120). We are using this ability to guide Pamela through three cool milestones right now, captured in a very brief conversation caught on video at Walmart the other day.

Pamela is more able to tolerate things that might be broken. I dropped the camera when I tried to turn it on. While I was picking it up, Pamela asked, "Is it broke?" A few years ago, such an incident would be cause for a meltdown. Instead of flipping out, she noticed that I was calm so she referenced my reaction and stayed calm, too.

For some reason, Pamela switched topics to Steve and his running schedule. Because Pamela did not like his unpredictable departure times for going to work she practically stalked him until he was out the door. Last January, as part of our whac-a-mole campaign, we started working on her anxieties and very slowly, but surely, she learned to embrace the idea that he leaves for work at a different time every day and some days he even works at home. Her final tactic was to talk Steve out of running because she observed a pattern between running and later departure times. We guided her out of pestering him about that too once he realized that his soft spot for Pamela allowed her to manipulate him, knowingly and deliberately.

Tuesday morning, Steve's touch pad on his work laptop died. Pamela walked into the room while he quietly tried to figure out the problem. She stayed calm as we searched the drawers for a wireless mouse, located batteries, and realized the mouse was no good. She asked, "Is it broke?" Steve calmly replied, "I am going to give it to the techie at work. He's really good. He can fix anything."

Pamela is also learning to monitor my movements. When we dropped David off at the dentist, she sprinted ahead of me into the waiting room and let the door close on me. Her cousin Jose and I stood outside the door, peering at her through the glass, waiting for her to realize what happened. On the way in to pick up David, Pamela showed much more caution. In the second and third clips, filmed the next day, we are going in and out of a new building and Pamela monitors me much more carefully this time.

Pamela shares a close bond with her cousin Jose, who is only six months older than her. She cracked up him up the other day when he was chatting with one of his friends via webcam on his laptop. Jose asked her to say hi to his friend. Feeling a bit jealous of competition, Pamela said, "P-U! You stink!" Then, she fired her magic finger (seen in the picture to the left) and said, "Shoot her!"

What Do You Know About Dreams?

Do you dream? How often do you dream? A dictation from the cambridge dictionary, stating that dream is "a series of events or images that happen in your mind when you are sleeping". However, there are some facts stated that the term 'Dream' derived from the word Dreme, a term used for joy and music. Sometimes, it is very hard to explain brain works since human mind itself is complicated, and usually overloaded with massive information at all time. This is why human do dream even when they suppose to rest during sleep time. If you try to observe carefully, a person's eye ball will keep rotating when they are dreaming :O That is visible even when he/she closes his/her eyes while sleeping.


Caption: dreaming

In fact, many researcher stop focusing on certain factors of the creation of dream. They do not believe that dreams are expressions of our unconscious desires. In many cases, we are concious with our dream. This is why we sometimes dream of something we like. Some people think dream is meaningless, but some strongly againsts the statement. For me, I believe dreams are definitely not meaningless and not useless. Instead, I do treasure every dream I have had if that dream concerns my family members, and of course, striking lotto in the other day after dreaming is not exceptional :)


Caption: lucid dream

There are many types of dream.

Daydreams: Concious dream or imagination. You should have at least 70-120 minutes of day dream a day. As your mind begins to wander and your level of awareness decreases, you lose yourself in your imagined scenario and fantasy.

False Awakening Dream: Have you ever thought of waken up, doing daily activities and finally realized that it was just a dream? I usually have this dream when I start dreaming of writting :O

Lucid Dream: This is probably one of the most common dream. You know you are dreaming. When you wake up, you know this was just a dream, but you are usually happy with the dream. This is because you are able to control your dream. For example, in your dream, you know walking to workplace is tiring, so you controlled yourself to fly instead of walking.

Nightmare: Nightmare is usually disturbing. It causes you to feel anxious and frightened. We classify nightmare as post-traumatic Stress Nightmare. Research shows that most people who have nightmares regularly have a family history of psychiatric problems, are involved in a rocky relationship or have had bad drug experiences.

Recurring Dreams: Have you tried dreaming something for one section, and continuously dreaming of the same thing in the following day? This dream usually contained nightmarish content. Dreams may recur because a conflict depicted in the dream remains unresolved or ignored. In other words, once you solve the problem, your recurring dreams will cease.

Signal Dreams: This type of dream usually help you to make critical decision in your life.

Healing Dreams: Research shows that asthma and migraine sufferers have certain types of dreams before the attack. Your body are able to communicate with your mind through dreams. The dreams will inform you that something is not right with your body even before any physical symptoms show up. If you have this dream, please take good care of your health.

Prophetic Dream: This dream will help to forecast your future. One rational theory to explain this phenomenon is when your dreaming mind is able to explain bits of information and observation that you may normally overlook or that you do not seriously consider. In other words, your unconscious mind knows what is coming before you consciously merge the same piece of information.

Epic Dreams: The details of such dreams remain with you for months, or perhaps years, as if you just dreamt it again last night. These dreams possess much beauty, providing happiness and normally contain many archetypal symbology. When you wake up from such dream, you feel that you have discovered something profound or amazing about yourself or about the world. It feels like a life-changing experience.


Caption: dreaming

Dreams are interrelated to emotion. This means we can hardly understand how dream works because emotion is not easy to be explained since there is no direct attempt to explain emotion support in cognitive psychology. However, many new research believe that the amount of rapid eye movement during sleeping will determine the greater processing of dream in memory. But why is that so? I believe the amount of eye movement will allow us to relief powerful emotional memories without stress. That is why we keep what we observe or believe in the memory, but the emotion accompanying it gradually lessens.

This is exciting and I think it is important to understand the concept of dream. Dreams may usually be influenced by external factors such as scent. To those people who snore oftenly, the good news is that a person will not dream while snoring. There are some facts stated that most people will usually have a long and intense dream when they are trying to stop smoking and / or have some disease. Some articles stated that children of age 3 to 4 will not dream. Men usually dream more of their same gender. Women on the other hand will dream equally about men and women. Sometimes, a friend may say they do not dream. In fact, everyone dreams everyday. You might have forgotten what you dream but that does not mean you don't dream! In medical view, a healthy person will usually dream (though the understanding of dream in psychology suggest that the dreamer dream because he/she does not provide suffice rest to their brain). There may be a sign indicating the lack of protien if the person does not dream regularly. You might sometimes be able to tell what you have dream, but usually approximately half the content of the dream is forgotten if you are able to recall 5 minutes after the dream ends (or when you wake up). However, 90% of the content of the dream is usually forgotten if you are able to recall the dream 10 minutes after the dream ends. It is very normal thing for males to experience an erection (and female experiences increased vagina blood flow) when dreaming, even when they are not dreaming anything related to sexual. This simply means that "wet dreams" is a very common thing and may not necessarily coincide with overtly sexual dream content.

Of course, if you dream of 4-6 numbers, and striking the lotto (or jackpot) the other day, then that would be really great. I've read some psychology books, stating that dreaming is not good for a person. Guess that referred to the lack of resting for the brain. Therefore, do drink plenty of water every day. I heard that helps to relax your brain more.

Wordless Wednesday: Pamela Hits the Jackpot at Walmart

Chat Panel About Startup Financing

MiFi and 3G router for on-the-go

Wi-Fi Everywhere And In Your Pocket

Interesting device is on the market ( or will be ) in the US and the UK. Verizon Wireless launched ( Sprint too ) Mifi 2200 card for personal and mobile hotspots, and 3 UK is doing the same in the UK.
The need certanly exist. You can connect up to 5 devices to your personal mobile broadband network.
This brings another good point in the connectivity puzzle. As Reuter's editor explains in a short video:



Related news and blog articles:
The Telegraph about MiFi journalism

EWeek about MiFi

Working from the pub with MiFi

Facts: Blood Type

There are some interesting facts of human blood. Recently, I have read some articles of different blood types and the compatibility. Many of us might know a little of these facts. The transfusion of animal blood into human was first attempted sometime around 1600. These experiments were proven disastrous. In 1900, the 4 major blood types (AB, A, B and O) were identified by Karl Landsteiner. This is why today we have the blood bank all over the world, providing some blood donation and services to people who really need them.


Caption: blood cells

Anyway, the 4 main blood types were divided into 8 different types: AB, AB-, A+, A-, B+, B-, O+ and O-. The picture in the below explained the four types of blood. Clearly seen in the below, there are distinct molecules called agglutinogens attached to the surface of the red blood cells. A broader level of specificity added to the blood type chart. This is done by examining the presence or absence of the Rh protein in our blood. Each blood type were subcategorised either in positive (+) or negative (-). A positive blood type shows that the person's blood contained the Rh protein. On the other hand, negative blood type by mean no Rh protein. For example, a person whose blood type is B+ has both B and Rh proteins on the surface of their red blood cells. This is why there are some restrictions for recipients from donors, depending on their blood type.


Caption: molecules and red blood cells


Caption: blood types compatibility chart

I think this is quite general, and therefore, I will only explain briefly. The chart above shows that recipients may only receive blood from compatible blood donors, such as: recipients with 0- blood type may only accept blood from O- blood type donors. AB receipients on the other hand may accept blood from any blood donors. According to research, there are only approximate 7% people on earth having O- blood type. This makes it much more difficult for people to look for blood donors for this blood type.


Caption: ABO blood plasma chart

Okay, this is interesting. Blood type is genetic. The A and B blood type are called codomimant alleles. In other words, the A and B antigen molecules on the red blood cell surface are produced by 2 different enzymes. O blood type is recessive, it is not apparent if the person inherits an A or B allele along with it. Therefore, this has generate some possibilities of blood combinations in particular blood type. Since everyone on earth inherit their blood type from their parents, there are some possible outcome of blood type from these combinations. For example, Mr. A whose dad has O blood type whilst his mom has a A blood type. The usual outcome is A blood type for Mr. A. However, I will not deny some other possibilities of Mr. A having O blood type, since there are random issues, specifying the combination of A (mom) + O (dad) blood type may result in O. However, this is certain. If one of your parents has O blood type, you (and / or your siblings) can NEVER have AB blood type as outcome. If they do, then something dealing with their DNA is definitely wrong.


Caption: blood type and inheritance

The Rh value in the red blood cells work similarly to blood type groups. If you are Rh (+), you may have genes for both positive and negative. If you are Rh (-), you have two genes for Rh negative. In the chart above, the child's Rh value is written in the white area.