Every year parents and kids prepare themselves for exams. Especially for those facing those big exams. Nevertheless, sometimes parents can get carried away and are already stressing out their kids tests from the first year of school. But are exams and tests that are really going to help our kids equip themselves with life skills such as problem solving, teamwork, creativity and develop character like patience, courage, discipline. Exams and tests are great for imparting knowledge and perhaps technical skills but whats important is how are they able to use those knowledge and skill in the real world, when they start going to work and when they leave their parents home and try to make a life for themselves.
Teaching is a very noble profession that shapes the character, caliber, and future of an individual. If the people remember me as a good teacher, that will be the biggest honour for me.A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
Do you have a library of books? How about a DVD or music collection. How many ways are there to sort your collection. What if you have a huge collection? What is the fastest way to sort?
The following are 3 different types of sorting algorithm
- Bubble Sort
- Insertion Sort
- Quick Sort
During #TEDEdChat, Sonya Sharififard (@ssharififard) co-hosts on inspiring leadership in the classroom. Education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education — the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize our thinking.
When we think about our childrens education, we also need to think about what are the skills that they will need in their future when they are in their working years.
A lot of times we cannot look at the current job market requirements because in ten years many things could change. Especially with the advancement of technology, it would have change they way people work in ten years time.
…five years from now, over one third of skills (35%) that are considered important in today’s workforce will have changed.World Economic Forum
We need to teach our kids design thinking that nurtures both creativity and critical thinking around complex challenges. In that way, they can develop core skills for the future workplace.
Design thinking comprises three core approaches to education:
Design thinking aims to improve student's empathy, their comfort with ambiguity and their ability to resolve conflicting ideas through solutions that are stronger than individual ideas.
Read the full article from World Economic Forum here
How do fast-paced video games affect the brain? Step into the lab with cognitive researcher Daphne Bavelier to hear surprising news about how video games, even action-packed shooter games, can help us learn, focus and, fascinatingly, multitask.
Daphne Bavelier is a professor at the University of Geneva, who studies cognitive neuroscience. Watch this TEDx talk.
This video was published on 19th November 2012.
Well, I guess I'm off to go play some Call of Duty.
Tech firms are going back to school. Find out what middle-school kids have got to do with populism—and why "learning to learn" will be key to many people's futures, whatever their age.
This video was published by The Economist.
Well done games are literature. They’re amazing and it’s just a different kind of a way to experience something.Liz Fiacco, Video game designer
Video games has had some bad reputation in the past. Mainly due to the effects of violence and lack of moral values that some games have. Unfortunately this generalize classification to video games is inaccurate. Video games are a media consumption just like other media consumption like movie, books or music. As much as there are "bad" games, there are also some "bad" movies, "bad" books or "bad" music. And when we say we shouldn't play games too much, likewise we shouldn't watch movies too much. Doing something excessively is always unhealthy. And just like movies, books and music, there are quite a lot of good quality games.
Games do have their educational values and can benefit. Watch the video to know more.
Can we learn from playing video games? Watch this video and see how we video games can be use in learning.
Play World of Warcraft to learn about cross functional teams in real life work environment
James Gee is an American researcher who has worked in psycholinguistics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, bilingual education, and literacy. Gee is currently the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University, originally appointed there in the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education. Gee is a faculty affiliate of the Games, Learning, and Society group at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and is a member of the National Academy of Education.
Remember the survey conducted by JobStreet? It as about how employers were asked why it was hard for fresh graduates to get hired and the top cited reason by 68% of respondents was that fresh graduates ask for unrealistic salaries and benefits. Well, it is understandable that their expectations was driven by the higher cost of living. There are other matters to be considered. And the main issue are the skill gap from a graduate to an employee.
In general there are many stages in life from childhood, to the teen years, to adulthood and finaly our retirement years.
When it comes to education, children have clear and straightforward transition. In Malaysia, kids start off in pre-school for 2 or 3 years depending on when their parents want them to start. Then comes their primary education which takes six years. Children usually start primary education at the age of seven. At the end of year 6, they will sit for the Primary School Achievement Test (UPSR). Students then go in to Secondary school for 5 years (form 1 to form 5) with a test at end of form 3 (PMR) and form 5 (SPM). Then to be able to further their studies to college and universities, they can either go into form 6 to take the pre-university examination (STPM) or, the shorter and prefered route, matriculation programme or foundation studies or A-Level. Then off they go to universities or colleges with a major of their choice.
However, after that, there is usually the tougher decisions when it comes to their first job. A well-informed graduate will probably know what they want to do in life. For many of them, they may not even be equipped to start in the workforce.
An article from from forbes.com highlights several missing skills most sought of in fresh graduate. Here are the summaries.
Hard Skills
Soft Skills
Hope this post has been informative. As a parent myself, we need to equip our children not just with academic qualification but the necessary life skills to succeed in life and be able to contribute to society.