hajhasan – EDUC 342: Child Development & New Technologies

Week 9 – On Maker Spaces

hajhasan — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 18:10:31 +0000

What I love most about this article is that it opened my eyes and introduced me to a whole new world that I hadn’t known existed! I had heard the term “Maker Space” before, but never really knew what it was until reading this article. So firstly, I am grateful for the opportunity to have read this article and learned about something so interesting.

“The maker mindset empowers people not just to seek out jobs in STEM or creative fields, but to make their own jobs and industries, depending on their interests and the emerging needs they see in a rapidly changing society.”

The above quote really resonated with me. I am an entrepreneur and I feel very strongly that entrepreneurship is a key element in finding a solution to a lot of problems in the world, especially in my neck of the woods (the Middle East). Entrepreneurship is a state of mind, and Maker Spaces foster this state of mind by giving the maker the opportunity to physically making something. I think that is very empowering and to see the physical manifestation of your mind’s creativity is both symbolic and powerful. I think this physical manifestation is even more important in our digital world, where concepts and creativity are becoming more abstract and I feel less accessible for children to grasp the true power of their minds. That is not to say that digital creativity isn’t important, the article goes deep into how diverse maker spaces can be, from software to robotics to design. However, there is a shared element of some celebrated “physical” manifestation, even if it is a software program it is a program that has a use-case as opposed to a cog in a system.

I also like the scrappiness that maker spaces embody, the “do what you can, with what you have, where you are” attitude. This inspired me to search for Maker Spaces in my own country Who knows, perhaps I will start one! I love the idea of educating youth while also bringing together a community and even solving issues for the community.

Week 8 – Explaining Science to Girls

hajhasan — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 14:49:52 +0000

As you can imagine, this study and its conclusions resonated with me on a very personal level and actually made me aware of the potential that I have to be bias with my daughter. Firstly, I was struck with how detailed and thorough the study was and how well the paper explained it. Secondly, I was surprised at how the drastic the difference was in the “explanation” that parents engaged in. It took me sometime to understand the subtle difference between the different types of engagement, and I presume that many parents may be unaware of these subtle differences in how they treat their boys versus their girls. This article made me aware and I hope that I can remain cognizant of explaining how things work to my daughter in order to insure that I am not playing a destructive role in her curiosity towards the sciences, and I am actually nurturing it.

Week 7: The Importance of Clear Representation

hajhasan — Tue, 16 Feb 2016 22:44:19 +0000

The fact that tablets allow for more efficient representation of math seems to be nothing short of revolutionary. I really liked how the speaker built his argument by showing us how math was done before the printing press, it was able to make the contrast between what we grew up learning and the potential of teaching and learning math in the future.
This made me think of how efficiency of representation is a driving force in learning. Is it fair to say that the more “loaded” an informational representation of content, the better it will be for the learner (assuming the representation is logical and not overwhelming)? I can’t help but think of infographics when it comes to learning something, and how effective they can be for representing a large amount of information at once. Bottom line: representation matters for learning.
On a personal note, I realized that I HAVE to write down notes by hand and HAVE to do it in color using erasable and neat pens. This is so important to me that I am almost unable to learn if I don’t do this. I realized after this talk that by organizing this representation, I am effectively organizing the information in my brain.

Week 6 – We are STILL social creatures

hajhasan — Thu, 11 Feb 2016 00:57:35 +0000

When reading the article “Writing in the Wild”, I couldn’t help but notice the striking similarity between fan-based and affinity spaces in promoting writing, growth and creativity. We are social creatures at heart, and these examples show the power of social interaction and feedback in empowering kids to become writers. The article does touch upon this a little bit, but I don’t think the point was stressed enough. It made me think that the most powerful technologies are those that facilitate social interactions and scale them on a grander level. When technology is used this way, the power is endless and the benefits are magnificent. However, when technology is insular and inherently lonely, I think it has the potential to bring out the worst in people and promotes regression of skills and interests.

Week 5 – Video Games as Designed Experiences

hajhasan — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 02:34:34 +0000

Reading this article made me think back to one of the most influential games in my life, which just happened to be the game I made my first post on: Sim City. The game is even mentioned in this article, and I played a lot of simulation games. I remember their early days, when they could be “hacked” and their logic could be exposed (as was mentioned in the article), although I still found it a useful learning experience to figure out the hack, because it has some underlying “truth” to how to model the real world. Actually, I believe finding these hacks was able to provide a better learning experience sometimes. For example, it was an easy hack to figure out that you should ALWAYS build clean power plants and NEVER build coal power plants if you wanted your city to survive, because you always needed to demolish your coal power plant as your city grew larger. This taught me a valuable lesson on pollution and the environment, and lessons like these really stuck in my mind. I could go on and on about these kinds of games and how I am a big believer in their potential to teach.

My Talking Angel

hajhasan — Mon, 25 Jan 2016 23:33:39 +0000

Application name: My Talking Angela

Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/my-talking-angela/id909351158?mt=8

Ages: 13+ (but actually most likely played by younger girls)

Description of Application: The app is very similar to the tamagotchi gadget of the 1990s. You have a cat (called Angela) that you need to feed, pet, bathe, etc. The difference is that this app is more interactive and has a bunch of game mechanic elements. These include the ability to earn coins if you “take care” of the cat and the ability to earn stickers as you “level up”.

Assignment 1 – Mohammad Alhaj Hasan

Thoughts on emotional robots

hajhasan — Sun, 24 Jan 2016 02:30:04 +0000

The Kahn et al article really had an impact on me. It made me think about how our logic can be hijacked by our emotions, and how vulnerable young children’s emotions are and where the world is heading. It makes complete sense that the children would feel an emotional attachment to the robots, but what is it about the robots that cause this emotional attachment? Is it the fact that they are communicating with the robots? I mean, we are very social beings, and the fact that we are interacting with the machines on a social level and communicating with them and getting feedback, perhaps this is the trigger that hijacks our logic (i.e. they ARE machines and not “alive” after all, and we know it). The world seems to be heading in this direction, whether we like it or not. How will our emotional growth be effected by the advent of this new NOC? In short, I think this article does a great job at shedding light on what I think will be a very important issue in the not too distant future.

Holistic design for new technologies

hajhasan — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 01:25:45 +0000

I love the idea of designing technology with the entire family in mind, and as I parent I appreciate the recommendation of “guilt-free” parenting using technology. This resonated with me, because my wife and I are actually taking the other extreme when it comes to technology for our daughter and the idea of a more engaging and immersive application/technology that can be a family bonding experience sounds really great.

On the importance of paper for focus

hajhasan — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 01:11:20 +0000

While reading about the impact of e-readers on literacy, I couldn’t help but think of the “distraction” that the devices offer to readers and how this can impact their learning. With paper, you are kind of “stuck” with the single dimensional content and this has the effect of focusing the reader on the task at hand. With an electronic device, there is a constant background “urge” to move to something else and I wonder how that impacts learning.

Rami

hajhasan — Thu, 14 Jan 2016 20:28:06 +0000

This soccer player character was HUGE in my childhood. I used to day dream being like him He was a character from a Japanese cartoon that was translated into Arabic (and called Rami). He used to come on TV at 4:30pm every day and he was a part of my day as I used to watch the cartoon right after school (and having lunch at home) and would then tend to my homework after that. That “tradition” had a real impact on me and as I write this I can relate to how I actually felt during that time