Thursday, February 28, 2013

Hingeless bendable speaker: #MadeWithPaper

A visual of the proposed hingeless, bendable speaker.
Inspired by the need to be simple, the hingeless, bendable speaker idea sketched above works on the idea of simplifying the practise of customising the users' experiences with their current portable speakers. Allowing the speakers to bend at almost all angles for customisability, whilst at the same time, leveraging on a flexible material type that one would use to clip excess wires of extension cords, I thought these ideas could converge to form the above design quite simple. The speaker itself is envisioned to be curved for added acoustics, and aesthetics.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

ForkSpoon+Knife: #MadeWithPaper

Version 1: ForkSpoon combination
Version 2: ForkSpoon+Knife combination
Inspired from my own personal experiences with my children, I think that there is a lot of potential for a combined Fork+Spoon+Knife utility product. With the advent of magnets in a lot more product uses, I thought the use of such adhesive-able element in the above combi would play nicely with making the combination more useful and utilitarian, but at the same time, without sacrificing the simplicity of its function!

Sunday, February 24, 2013

A-Sketch-a-Day 2013: The Paper app project #MadeWithPaper

Screen grab of my Design(ology) page on Facebook,
for my A-Sketch-a-Day (aSkaD2013) project
The screen grab above is taken from my design(ology) Facebook Page as part of my personal+Professional project for 2013, to sketch something...anything, at least once a day. I might have failed on certain days to sketch anything at all, but definitely I've made up for these 'dry' days by sketching things out on my more inspired days.

It has been quite a journey to be disciplined enough to allocate some time to work on these, but I realise that a certain degree of change of mindset would need to happen before I even work on these. It helps that I don't find sketching a chore, in fact I do find sketching these ideas, some random, and some intentional, therapeutic. Strange...yes, but that's how I feel for these sketches.

It would be good to get some comments from people out there regarding what more could I sketch..perhaps a theme, an object....or something that comes to your mind. Would love to hear something from you dear readers.

Friday, February 22, 2013

Google Glass in the classroom...some ideas


I thought it's really cool that Google is working on an experimental project with lots of potential like the  Google Glass, and I am sure it would just be a matter of time, perhaps really soon, before its initial potential could be seen in the classrooms. And perhaps to get the ball rolling, here are my 5 initial thoughts on how it can be used in the classrooms.
  1. Have the Glass networked with one another and the teacher's, and students would then be able to  see a virtual board on their screens, or see the Google Docs that the teacher has opened from his/her shared Google Drive. Very useful when used out of the classrooms, say during field-trips or school outings to locations out of the school premises
  2. Conference calls, hangouts, Skyping using the Glass would be an even better experience with the Glass. Students and teachers could work from different locations, even different countries, and lessons could be done via the video tool. In fact, recording the lessons would be a natural thing to do, followed up by perhaps a review of the lesson/s.
  3. Alternatively, the concept of a Flipped Classroom could be greatly enhanced here. Students would be able to learn content before their lessons, from other sources, and then present them to their classmates during lessons. In fact, why not enable multiple screens to appear on the Glass, so that there could be one-to-many interactions.
  4. Allow the teacher to form groups within the class through linking the Glasses together, and get students to then collaborate on working on a project whilst leveraging on it. It could be a small group of students working on a media coverage of a school event, but being in different locations and reporting in ala a news network, at different times of the event.
  5. Link up the Glass with sketching elements like a stylus, or why not enable the finger/s of the Glass wearer to be the stylus. Students would then work on sketching their ideas, on say, a subject area on coming out with designs to solve a physical problem. If networked, small groups of students would be able to work on these set of sketches concurrently! In fact, if computing power permits, why just work on 2D....let's have 3-dimensionality in these Glasses as well. SketchUp on Glass anyone?
These are just my initial thoughts of the potentials of Glass in classrooms, that I can think of at the moment. There's definitely more ideas out there, on top and above what I've read about in some of the comments and articles. Perhaps the above might work in the first versions...or not. But whatever it is, the Glass would definitely open up newer unimaginable possibilities to the teachers in the classrooms.


Thursday, February 21, 2013

Teaching concepts: Eliciting the 4 concepts in 1-point perspective

As part of the professional development (PD) exercise in my current institution, I recently volunteered to be a participant in a PD sharing session on Conceptual Teaching. It definitely is an elucidating session for me, and what I took away from that session is a clearer idea of what concepts are, and how a teacher can deepen the students' learning through the idea of teaching concepts.

Well, certainly teaching concepts in the classrooms is not an easy exercise on its own, as it does require a certain significant degree of preparation and set of examples, and counter-examples, of what concepts are. But what I do appreciate most is the idea that for learning to be really deep and significant, the ability to deepen the students' conceptual understanding, and then perhaps being able to get students to apply and transfer these concepts into other contexts, is THAT thing that would be the epitome of what effective LEARNING is all about. If students do not just merely regurgitate nor memorise, but more importantly, being able to have a deep understanding of the materials being taught, and then, being able to apply them into other contexts, that is perhaps the ideal model of what learning is all about.

I was initially a bit skeptical about how to apply Conceptual Teaching into a topic or into content areas that is primarily skills-centric, but nonetheless, being the adventurous me, I decided to give it a shot! Loo and behold, I did manage to work on developing concepts on what 1-point perspective is all about, or not. Here are the 4 concepts that I've managed to elicit from my interactions from my 2 classes of Year 1's (12-13 year olds). Here are the 4-concepts, taken from the white board.

4 key concepts to define a 1-point perspective drawing, plus an optional
working concept, for my students
What do you think of these 4 concepts? Are these enough to define that a perspective sketch is 1-point, versus one that is not? Let me hear your thoughts.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

iPadifying my classroom: Explain Everything...Part 1

I am currently very actively looking at a model of flipped teaching, and the likes, and am exploring the use of the Explain Everything app on the iPad as a tool that would help me to get to that eventuality in certain aspects or content areas of my lessons.

Screen grab from their web site
It has been a mix of both good and trying experience in using the app so far, but more good has so far come out of my experimentation, rather than the bad. In fact I have just managed to finish working on my second clip in class earlier today, and am definitely looking at a model whereby these recordings could be used again, and even retrieved by the students during their practise or revision sessions later on, or when I am not present for lessons.

In case any of the readers reading this blog have any experience using the app, or are also using the app for their own teaching and learning, please do share with me on some of your thoughts or ideas. We could perhaps learn from each other too. I'm contactable at the usual links that you read off the side of this blog page.