...
(f) What are the preparation needed for DSA?
It is difficult to prepare for the test. However, it is critical to prepare for the Interview. As explained earlier, there are many GEP students applying for the same DSA, are well trained for the interview by their schools. If your kid is not from GEP program, you may want to consider to seek help. That's the reason training for DSA interview is not something new, per this report from todayonline.
Let me list down two DSA interview trainings that I know:
(1) Speak Venture - I engaged Speak Venture for my son. Gary and Sabrina teach very well.
(2) Jackeline Carter Centre for Public Speaking - I know about them after engaging Speak Venture. They have a lot of good information on their website. They are generous to share. Check out those free advises.
(3) There are others that look credible from their website. However, many of them do not give much information on the web. So, hard to tell whether their program are effective.
(g) I don't want to spend that kind of money for DSA interview training, what should I do?
There are a lot of information nowadays. Check the following out:
(1) J. Carter's blog
(2) DSA Interview Blog
(or Google for sample questions if you like)
I would say, teach your kids to treat DSA interview like Job interview, He/She should sell himself/herself. Practice explaining why the school should select you. Prepare your credentials well. But one point to remember is that some DSA interviews are group interviews. Make sure the candidate pay attention when others are answering, and they should fight for the chance to answer. Get few friends together, conduct your own trial interview. Record down the interview and show the students how they perform. This step is very critical. Make good use of your mobile phone camera because it will make a lot of different when the kid see their own expression/mistakes.
(h) Biggest Misconception about selection criteria
Each school may have different criteria looking for talents that they want. I know HCI more because I know at least 3 persons who managed to get into HCI through DSA. What I can say is that they do not select students who have the best results. Interview plays an important role. One common point I see in all the 3 successful candidates is that all of them are good at at least one thing other than studies. So, if you have one special skill, make sure you go and take part in competition and show good track record. Do not back off from applying to HCI (can't say so for RI) even if you do not have the best result. However, do consider whehter HCI is suitable for you.
(i) When should I start preparing for DSA?
I would say, the preparation should start from Primary 4. Why? You need time to join those competitions. DSA requires you to show results from P4-P6. Also, you should start preparing for DSA during P5 by visiting all those schools that you are interested in.
Good luck to you! Before you apply, please revisit point (d) in part 1.
Friday, December 4, 2015
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
What I did not know about DSA - Part 1 General Information
Direct School Admission (DSA) was very new to me 6 months ago. Here are what I have found out:
(a) What is DSA?
Direct School Admission (DSA) is a program in Singapore introduced in 2004 for students who are studying Primary 6 or Secondary 4 to be guaranteed a place in a Secondary School or Junior College respectively. You may check out more from MOE website. I benefited a lot from the free eBook provided by Koobits.com. For those of you who know little about DSA, those information are very helpful.
(b) What are the test?
Some schools such as Raffles Institute (RI) requires candidates to take Generally Ability Test. Some school such as Hwa Chong (HCI) conduct their own selection. In short, DSA needs preparation. Some parents even attempt to down load past exam papers for GAT or the secondary school's exam.
I find that preparing for those written exam is a waste of time. In fact, my initial thought is that DSA may be additional trouble or preparation. So, why taking it? Because of the fact illustrated in (c) below.
(c) Most top school offers half of the allocation through DSA
At least half of the allocation of top school like RI and HCI are offered through DSA. So, not applying for DSA would mean giving up good opportunity.
(d) Important considerations about DSA
Please apply the school you want, and not the school you can get. For example, many parents in my son's school get their son to apply for Catholic High School (a good school, but not top two at the point of writing). Some how, they were lucky that they did not get a place because when their sons get top score, almost all of them applied for RI and HCI. Good for them. I believe they will regret if their application was successful.
But, DSA application may work the other way, for example, you get into a good school through DSA but the PSLE result is not good enough to qualify for the school. So, think through this point well.
(e) Fierce competition from GEP students
Many students from Gifted Education Program (GEP) will apply through DSA. Generally, the GEP students are strong candidates. However, if your kid is from normal stream, please take effort to assure him/her that while it is true that GEP students are strong candidates, that does not mean they are definitely better and there is no chance for normal stream students.
But let me prepare you first, the competition is NEVER fair! Why? Most of the students from GEP are prepared well by the school for the DSA interview, but most normal stream students are not prepared at all from our experience.
For example, a training provider told me that they did training for 10 lessons for some GEP schools!!!! Many GEP students whom I meet told me the same thing. The hard truth is, due to this, normal stream student may be at a disadvantage position, because it makes a lot of difference whether one know or does not know how to handle interviews. Do not forget, we are talking about 12 year old kids here.
.... to be continued
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Python for Kids
I am a believer that kids should start early on programming. I started my son with raspberry pi and he showed a lot of interest in Scratch programming. That was relatively easy for him. I find that modern days programming is much easier than before. No need to check or track the if statement, for statement etc.... The editor is even graphic base and he just need to drag and drop. Everything comes with graphics user interface. He can easily create a few games for himself.
Now that his major exam is over, I started him with Python as I read that Python is a relatively easy book.
I download the program from this website. I installed the program on Mac while he installed on another windows machine. Everything was very smooth sailing. In fact, perhaps he could have done that all by himself. The next question is, how to teach him the program, as I don't have much time to do coding anymore. So, I took up a promotion from Udemy and sign up tthe "Python for Beginner" course for $10. I am sure that there are other good courses too. To be fair, the program is quite good, easy to understand. But, my son just skip everything!
He did those exercise provided by the course. He just wants challenge. So, I told him to write a program to generate as many prime number as a user wanted. Immediately he came up with this program:
-------first program---------------
import time
print('How many prime numbers would you like me to list for you?')
limit=int(input())
t1=time.time()
prime_numbers=[2]
a=2
numbers=1
while True:
a=a+1
b=prime_numbers[0]
x=0
while True:
ans=(a/b)
if ans==int(ans):
break
b=b+1
if a==b:
prime_numbers.append(a)
numbers=numbers+1
if numbers==limit:
print(prime_numbers)
break
t2=time.time()
print('I took %s seconds, definitely faster than you!' % (t2-t1) )
----------------------
He picks up the language and become familiar with this much faster than I do. I did not touch programming for many years and I was struggling to complete the program. I told him about the concept of programming time and taught him about algorithm that he did wrongly above. Just 30 minutes later, he rectify with this version which is much faster than the previous one:
--------------faster version-------
import time
print('How many prime numbers would you like me to list for you?')
limit=int(input())
t1=time.time()
prime_numbers=[2]
a=2 #a is the number to be tested
numbers=1 #number is the no. of numbers in the list
while True:
a=a+1
x=0
d=0
for y in range(0,numbers):
c=prime_numbers[x]
ans=(a/c)
if ans==int(ans):
break
else:
d=d+1
x=x+1
if d==numbers:
numbers=numbers+1
prime_numbers.append(a)
if numbers==limit:
print(prime_numbers)
break
t2=time.time()
print('I took %s seconds, definitely faster than you!' % (t2-t1) )
--------------faster version-------
What I want to share here is not about the achievement. But about how fast younger generation can learn. They no longer look at books. As you notice, he use "list". For me, I was worrying whether he knows how to use that. I mentioned "list", he found that from his book, and "tah-dah".... 30 min later, the first program was done using list.
While he completed the faster version in 30min, I was still struggling to debug mine. So, lesson learned, we parents should not write program with them. But what we can contribute is the algorithm part.
So, I challenged him to write a multiplication training program for his sister. He breezed through that and came up with the following:
--------------------
import time
import random
import pickle
from tkinter import*
def start_now():
print('3')
time.sleep(1)
print('2')
time.sleep(1)
print('1')
time.sleep(1)
print('START!')
t1=time.time()
score=0
for x in range(0,10):
a=random.randint(2,9)
b=random.randint(2,9)
ans=a*b
print('_____')
print(' %s' % (a) )
print('x %s' % (b) )
i=int(input())
if ans==i:
score=score+1
t2=time.time()
y=t2-t1
y=round(y,2)
if (t2-t1)<=30 and score>8.9:
print("Not bad, you took %s seconds" % (y))
else:
print("You took %s seconds, better luck next time" % (y))
print("Your score is %s" % (score))
with open("progress.txt", "a") as f:
f.write("On %s:\n" % (time.asctime()))
f.write("-ykh completed the drill in %s seconds\n" % (y))
if score==10:
f.write("-ykh got all correct! :)\n")
else:
f.write("-ykh got %s correct\n" % (score))
f.write('\n')
tk=Tk()
btn=Button(tk,text='start drill', command=start_now)
btn.pack()
--------------------
Luckily I did not kill his interest by giving him a class, or insist him to go through step by step all those functions through Udemy courses. Millennium kids really learn programming very differently. So, we just show the way. Running out of idea, I direct him to this book:
I think I better get lost and leave him alone when he plays with his new play ground using Python. I am sure he will like minecraft and get a lot of ideas on what to do from the book below. So, I hope this post gives you an idea if you want to teach your kids programming.
Now that his major exam is over, I started him with Python as I read that Python is a relatively easy book.
I download the program from this website. I installed the program on Mac while he installed on another windows machine. Everything was very smooth sailing. In fact, perhaps he could have done that all by himself. The next question is, how to teach him the program, as I don't have much time to do coding anymore. So, I took up a promotion from Udemy and sign up tthe "Python for Beginner" course for $10. I am sure that there are other good courses too. To be fair, the program is quite good, easy to understand. But, my son just skip everything!
He did those exercise provided by the course. He just wants challenge. So, I told him to write a program to generate as many prime number as a user wanted. Immediately he came up with this program:
-------first program---------------
import time
print('How many prime numbers would you like me to list for you?')
limit=int(input())
t1=time.time()
prime_numbers=[2]
a=2
numbers=1
while True:
a=a+1
b=prime_numbers[0]
x=0
while True:
ans=(a/b)
if ans==int(ans):
break
b=b+1
if a==b:
prime_numbers.append(a)
numbers=numbers+1
if numbers==limit:
print(prime_numbers)
break
t2=time.time()
print('I took %s seconds, definitely faster than you!' % (t2-t1) )
----------------------
He picks up the language and become familiar with this much faster than I do. I did not touch programming for many years and I was struggling to complete the program. I told him about the concept of programming time and taught him about algorithm that he did wrongly above. Just 30 minutes later, he rectify with this version which is much faster than the previous one:
--------------faster version-------
import time
print('How many prime numbers would you like me to list for you?')
limit=int(input())
t1=time.time()
prime_numbers=[2]
a=2 #a is the number to be tested
numbers=1 #number is the no. of numbers in the list
while True:
a=a+1
x=0
d=0
for y in range(0,numbers):
c=prime_numbers[x]
ans=(a/c)
if ans==int(ans):
break
else:
d=d+1
x=x+1
if d==numbers:
numbers=numbers+1
prime_numbers.append(a)
if numbers==limit:
print(prime_numbers)
break
t2=time.time()
print('I took %s seconds, definitely faster than you!' % (t2-t1) )
--------------faster version-------
What I want to share here is not about the achievement. But about how fast younger generation can learn. They no longer look at books. As you notice, he use "list". For me, I was worrying whether he knows how to use that. I mentioned "list", he found that from his book, and "tah-dah".... 30 min later, the first program was done using list.
While he completed the faster version in 30min, I was still struggling to debug mine. So, lesson learned, we parents should not write program with them. But what we can contribute is the algorithm part.
So, I challenged him to write a multiplication training program for his sister. He breezed through that and came up with the following:
--------------------
import time
import random
import pickle
from tkinter import*
def start_now():
print('3')
time.sleep(1)
print('2')
time.sleep(1)
print('1')
time.sleep(1)
print('START!')
t1=time.time()
score=0
for x in range(0,10):
a=random.randint(2,9)
b=random.randint(2,9)
ans=a*b
print('_____')
print(' %s' % (a) )
print('x %s' % (b) )
i=int(input())
if ans==i:
score=score+1
t2=time.time()
y=t2-t1
y=round(y,2)
if (t2-t1)<=30 and score>8.9:
print("Not bad, you took %s seconds" % (y))
else:
print("You took %s seconds, better luck next time" % (y))
print("Your score is %s" % (score))
with open("progress.txt", "a") as f:
f.write("On %s:\n" % (time.asctime()))
f.write("-ykh completed the drill in %s seconds\n" % (y))
if score==10:
f.write("-ykh got all correct! :)\n")
else:
f.write("-ykh got %s correct\n" % (score))
f.write('\n')
tk=Tk()
btn=Button(tk,text='start drill', command=start_now)
btn.pack()
--------------------
Luckily I did not kill his interest by giving him a class, or insist him to go through step by step all those functions through Udemy courses. Millennium kids really learn programming very differently. So, we just show the way. Running out of idea, I direct him to this book:
I think I better get lost and leave him alone when he plays with his new play ground using Python. I am sure he will like minecraft and get a lot of ideas on what to do from the book below. So, I hope this post gives you an idea if you want to teach your kids programming.
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Haze - How to protect ourselves?
In previous post, I explained about Haze. Now, let's talk about what action we can take to protect ourselves. Here are the actions I took
(1) Wear N95 Mask when you are outdoor
During Haze season, N95 mask should be used instead. Check out this website from MOH in Singapore For those of you in US, if you are traveling to South East Asia between Aug and Oct, get yourself ready with N95 mask from the 3M N95 mask
">Amazon link here, especially these:
Children may require smaller size mask meant for children:
During Haze season, these items may be out of stock as most people will buy last minute. On the other hand, you don't want to stock these too much as the items have shelf-live of few years.
(2) Stay in air-con room as much as possible
Air con room has better air quality than outdoor during haze seasons. When the air is cooled down, condensation takes place as the particle matter may be trapped in water droplet.
(3) Get yourself an air purifier
Don't buy last minute. Get one ready if you are living in South East Asia. If you have allergic and other chronic health issue,there are professional equipments such as those from IQ Air. My boss bought one of these. But it's bulky and expensive. May be few thousand dollars.
There are many portable air purifiers around. See the list provided by National Environmental Agency in Singapore. But this list may not cover those cheaper and more affordable consumer oriented purifier that we find in electronic department. You may want to be careful as not all devices are effective. In particular, you may want to buy a "hepa filter" based purifier (not hepa type filter). The good news is Consumers Association of Singapore (CASE) had conducted the test on those. Check out their results that I downloaded for your convenience below:
2014 test
Clik here for 2013 test
Based on the above, I bought one from Novita (NAP611) and my second one from Delonghi (AC150). Considerations (not in sequence) are (a) whether the device is effective and to me, it is important that the device is listed at least in one of those websites above (b) capacity of the device, i.e. the coverage area (c) Performance as listed above (d) a sensor that indicates air quality (e) price
I know that both the devices I bought are effective because the sensor is pretty accurate in sensing the air quality. When the air is bad, the light indicator correctly indicate those. For example, if I cook, or if I open the door or window, I can see reaction from the device.
(1) Wear N95 Mask when you are outdoor
During Haze season, N95 mask should be used instead. Check out this website from MOH in Singapore For those of you in US, if you are traveling to South East Asia between Aug and Oct, get yourself ready with N95 mask from the 3M N95 mask
">Amazon link here, especially these:
Children may require smaller size mask meant for children:
During Haze season, these items may be out of stock as most people will buy last minute. On the other hand, you don't want to stock these too much as the items have shelf-live of few years.
(2) Stay in air-con room as much as possible
Air con room has better air quality than outdoor during haze seasons. When the air is cooled down, condensation takes place as the particle matter may be trapped in water droplet.
(3) Get yourself an air purifier
Don't buy last minute. Get one ready if you are living in South East Asia. If you have allergic and other chronic health issue,there are professional equipments such as those from IQ Air. My boss bought one of these. But it's bulky and expensive. May be few thousand dollars.
There are many portable air purifiers around. See the list provided by National Environmental Agency in Singapore. But this list may not cover those cheaper and more affordable consumer oriented purifier that we find in electronic department. You may want to be careful as not all devices are effective. In particular, you may want to buy a "hepa filter" based purifier (not hepa type filter). The good news is Consumers Association of Singapore (CASE) had conducted the test on those. Check out their results that I downloaded for your convenience below:
2014 test
Clik here for 2013 test
Based on the above, I bought one from Novita (NAP611) and my second one from Delonghi (AC150). Considerations (not in sequence) are (a) whether the device is effective and to me, it is important that the device is listed at least in one of those websites above (b) capacity of the device, i.e. the coverage area (c) Performance as listed above (d) a sensor that indicates air quality (e) price
I know that both the devices I bought are effective because the sensor is pretty accurate in sensing the air quality. When the air is bad, the light indicator correctly indicate those. For example, if I cook, or if I open the door or window, I can see reaction from the device.
Haze - What you should know
What causes the haze? You can read the details from Wikipedia here. In short, The haze is largely caused by illegal agricultural fires in Indonesia. Burned land can be sold at a higher price illegally, and eventually used for activities including oil palm and pulpwood production. Burning is also cheaper and faster compared to slashing and cutting using excavators. Obviously, these are selfish economy activities who disregard the health of public. While the source is from Indonesia, it is believed that many foreign companies such as those from Malaysia and Singapore are also involved.
Comment from a Indonesia politician saying that Singaporeans and Malaysian should be thankful for 11 months of good quality air and not complain much during the 1 month of Haze period is totally irresponsible and absurd. The problems had been for at least two decades, and we do not see material attempt to resolve the issue, except that Singapore has local law to punish Singapore companies responsible for forest fire in Indonesia. I heard that those bureaucrats in Jakarta are enjoying blue sky every day and I can understand that there's no urgency in them to solve the issue. So, sadly, I believe the problem will persist for at least few more decades.
Unfortunately, many people do not understand the precaution well. While most of us in Singapore are well informed, I don't see the same level of understanding in other parts of South East Asia. For example, I am very shocked to see Indonesia's preseident, Jokowi gave interview after visiting Haze affected area wearing surgical mask. Many people in Malaysia wears surgical mask too. But do you know that surgical mask is not effective in protecting you?
From what I read, one major harmful particles in the Haze are particle matters less than 2.5micron, or PM2.5. These fine particles are even smaller than bacteria or virus.
PM2.5 is fine enough to enter the bloodstream, and being exposed to PM2.5 increases the risk of death in general and from heart and lung illnesses – and for every 10-microgram increase in annual PM2.5 concentrations, the added risk of dying from overall causes, cardiopulmonary disease and lung cancer goes up 4 per cent, 6 per cent and 8 per cent respectively over a 16-year period.
You may want to check out more information from the following websites
(1) Environment Protection Agency (USA) website about pollutant in particular "particle matter"
(2) FAQ on Environment Protection Agency Website
(3) Health Exchange Website about PM2.5
(4)Singapore National Enviornment Website on Haze : Haze reading in SG available here
(5) Malaysia Air Pollutant Index - Department of Environment
Please read the next post about what action can we take to protect ourselves.
Sunday, September 6, 2015
One common mistake in parenting : Limiting Belief
I will share few relevant learnings about NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) in parenting. This is the first one:
One important lesson I had learned is about our limiting believes or limiting thoughts. Like it or not, we all are brought up with many limiting believes that will hinder us from success, or will slow us down. I have a lot of these limiting believes. I will eliminate all these believes as soon as I can find one. I am sure many of you have limiting believes too. E.g. "I am not good at Math", "I am not educated, my son cannot be top boy", "It is too stressful to be a top student", "Only rich person can do this" etc... The list can go on forever.
When I was young, one of my limiting believes was, "kids should only read books according to their age". Following this thought, primary 1 student should not do secondary school Math. In fact, he should stop at primary 1 Math. So, when my kid showed his talent in Math when he was in P1, my action was, "OK, do less Math and catch up with English and Chinese". Looking back, that was one major regrettable decision I made. His classmate, whose father did not have such limiting belief, proceeded to do secondary school Math in P2! Certainly his classmate did very well in Math thereafter.
Unconsciously adopting limiting belief is something that we should guard against. Often, we may not even realize. For example, my son always made 2 careless mistakes in his Math exams and his practice papers. Initially, there were even more. We worked on this. His careless mistake count came down from 6-8 to a consistently 2 careless mistakes in each paper. After learning about limiting belief, I spoke to him as I realized that both of us had this limiting belief. Unknowing, both of us kind of accepted that it was OK to make 2 careless mistakes and we thought that kids could never get rid of careless mistakes in Math.
I asked him, "son, why is it that all this while, you made 2 careless mistakes and not 1, not 3? Are you committed to do better, or are you just interested to do better?" He assured me that he was committed and he agreed that he could have done better. We went through the issue again and applying visualization technique, plus a full analysis on those careless mistakes on how he could do better, his marks improved! 99.5! I am sure he will get 100 (zero careless mistake) soon. Hopefully before PSLE!
To get rid of limiting believes and negative thoughts, we need to change the limiting thought to a positive one. To do that, we need to feed our mind with "healthy intellectual food". So, I gave him this book, "You Can Win" by Shiv Khera!
This book will show him, and motivate him that he can win. I have read the book in late 1990s. I am glad that he is so interested in the book that he reads this as and when he has time. I can see that the book inspires him to do better. For your convenience, please allow me to quote from the official website. You can read about Shiv Khera here
“Winners don’t do different things, they do things differently.”® An easy-to-read, practical, common-sense guide that will take you from ancient wisdom to modern-day thinking, You Can Win helps you establish new goals, develop a new sense of purpose, and generate new ideas about yourself and your future. It guarantees, as the title suggests, a lifetime of success. The book enables you to translate positive thinking into attitude, ambition and action to give you the winning edge. - See more at: http://www.shivkhera.com"
You may also like to look at this amazon site for reviews, price and preview of the book.
Reading this book is just a good start. I will work on all my limiting believes, and his as well. One challenge is to eliminate his limiting belief that "GEP (Gifted Education Program) students always do better". I want to eliminate his inferiority, and make him aware, sky is the limit!
In order to coach him, I know that one essential condition is that I must also do the same. I need to repeatably remind myself about that and feed my mind with positive reading materials. I must take action now.
P/S:
This book is meant for adult, and clearly may not be suitable for young children. You may want to start with other motivational books meant for younger readers. I would think that you may want to start with the following books first if your kid is below 12 years old. Let him be familiar with motivational books first before buying this one. Please see also my review about "I am Gifted, so are you" and "7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens". You may find the product links at the end.
One important lesson I had learned is about our limiting believes or limiting thoughts. Like it or not, we all are brought up with many limiting believes that will hinder us from success, or will slow us down. I have a lot of these limiting believes. I will eliminate all these believes as soon as I can find one. I am sure many of you have limiting believes too. E.g. "I am not good at Math", "I am not educated, my son cannot be top boy", "It is too stressful to be a top student", "Only rich person can do this" etc... The list can go on forever.
When I was young, one of my limiting believes was, "kids should only read books according to their age". Following this thought, primary 1 student should not do secondary school Math. In fact, he should stop at primary 1 Math. So, when my kid showed his talent in Math when he was in P1, my action was, "OK, do less Math and catch up with English and Chinese". Looking back, that was one major regrettable decision I made. His classmate, whose father did not have such limiting belief, proceeded to do secondary school Math in P2! Certainly his classmate did very well in Math thereafter.
Unconsciously adopting limiting belief is something that we should guard against. Often, we may not even realize. For example, my son always made 2 careless mistakes in his Math exams and his practice papers. Initially, there were even more. We worked on this. His careless mistake count came down from 6-8 to a consistently 2 careless mistakes in each paper. After learning about limiting belief, I spoke to him as I realized that both of us had this limiting belief. Unknowing, both of us kind of accepted that it was OK to make 2 careless mistakes and we thought that kids could never get rid of careless mistakes in Math.
I asked him, "son, why is it that all this while, you made 2 careless mistakes and not 1, not 3? Are you committed to do better, or are you just interested to do better?" He assured me that he was committed and he agreed that he could have done better. We went through the issue again and applying visualization technique, plus a full analysis on those careless mistakes on how he could do better, his marks improved! 99.5! I am sure he will get 100 (zero careless mistake) soon. Hopefully before PSLE!
To get rid of limiting believes and negative thoughts, we need to change the limiting thought to a positive one. To do that, we need to feed our mind with "healthy intellectual food". So, I gave him this book, "You Can Win" by Shiv Khera!
This book will show him, and motivate him that he can win. I have read the book in late 1990s. I am glad that he is so interested in the book that he reads this as and when he has time. I can see that the book inspires him to do better. For your convenience, please allow me to quote from the official website. You can read about Shiv Khera here
“Winners don’t do different things, they do things differently.”® An easy-to-read, practical, common-sense guide that will take you from ancient wisdom to modern-day thinking, You Can Win helps you establish new goals, develop a new sense of purpose, and generate new ideas about yourself and your future. It guarantees, as the title suggests, a lifetime of success. The book enables you to translate positive thinking into attitude, ambition and action to give you the winning edge. - See more at: http://www.shivkhera.com"
You may also like to look at this amazon site for reviews, price and preview of the book.
Reading this book is just a good start. I will work on all my limiting believes, and his as well. One challenge is to eliminate his limiting belief that "GEP (Gifted Education Program) students always do better". I want to eliminate his inferiority, and make him aware, sky is the limit!
In order to coach him, I know that one essential condition is that I must also do the same. I need to repeatably remind myself about that and feed my mind with positive reading materials. I must take action now.
P/S:
This book is meant for adult, and clearly may not be suitable for young children. You may want to start with other motivational books meant for younger readers. I would think that you may want to start with the following books first if your kid is below 12 years old. Let him be familiar with motivational books first before buying this one. Please see also my review about "I am Gifted, so are you" and "7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens". You may find the product links at the end.
Saturday, August 1, 2015
Good children books to share - 1
In the previous post, I have shared about Amazon Kindle. Now, which are those good books? There are indeed a lot of good books available. Today, I am going to introduce you these:
These are my daughter's favourite, the Buddy Files Series! She read these twice! She told me that the books are about a lost dog solving mysteries and she said the book is pretty interesting. I find the vocabulary are quite easy, and suitable for kids age 7-8. Some parents may say that the book is too easy for 8 years old in Singapore. I agree. But to me, kids should choose books suitable to their taste and vocabulary strength. This would be good book to start with as my goal is to cultivate the habit of reading books.
If the 6 book series are available, go for it but sometime these are not available.
Here are the link to all the 6 books!
If the 6 book series are available, go for it but sometime these are not available.
Here are the link to all the 6 books!
Note that the link and the price above are for physical books. You need to select from the link whether you want kindle version or actual physical books.
Thursday, July 9, 2015
Amazon Kindle ---which model to buy for kids?---
Amazon Kindle is a great product. Why?
Why Kindle and not iPad or other smart devices
First of all, there are many kinds of Kindle. What I would recommend is Amazon Kindle PaperWhite.
See the link below:
Kindle Paper While is equipped with backlight. There is a cheaper version without backlight which may be adequate for most purpose: Amazon Kindle.
I am pretty sure you can't tell the difference looking at the pictures except that the one without backlight, the price is at least $20 cheaper. At the time I write this, it's $40 cheaper.
Each of these are with options of with or without Special Offer and WiFi vs "WiFi + 3G".
If you don't like those Ads, before you add to Cart, you just click on "Without Special Offers" and you will see the price increases. (For now, $20). Similarly, you can choose a "Wifi + Free 3G" version. But I don't think those are necessary if you have WiFi at home. In addition, I am not sure whether the Free3G would work.
If you want a higher end version, you can purchase Kindle Voyage!
As you can see, it's $100 more. I am sure Voyage is a better product, but I don't see why I want to fork out more money as Kindle PaperWhite 6" with backlight will meet my purpose. I will go for 2 Amazon Kindle Paperwhite devices instead of one Kindle Voyage.
So, my recommendation would be
1) Kindle Paper with Backlight. ( I find that with Backlight, the brightness can be adjusted to ambient light), easy to eyes.
For your convenience, let me copy the link again:
------------------ I bought this ---------------------------------
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2) Kindle (no backlight, cheaper)
3) Voyage (if money is nothing to you)
However, Kindle Fire looks like a normal smart device and not as smooth to the eyes for me. Unlike the rest, this one has color and equip with normal LCD with stronger backlight. Knowing that kids may read books for long hours, I really don't recommend these.
------------- I don't recommend this one for long serious reading-------------------
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
My eyes will get tired easily reading iPad or other conventional LCD display. I believe if the device strain my eye, it will definitely harmful to my children, if they were to spend long hours reading from those device.
For parents who will be approaching 40s, you may want to buy another device for yourself. You will find this helpful because you can "zoom" and choose a larger font. I find it easier to read from Kindle compared to books! I have 2 devices, all with same user ID. My kids can read from one device, I can read from the other. If the kids want to read together, they can borrow mine, and thanks to Technology, Kindle will show you where you stopped at another device when you read the same book! Isn't it amazing? For none native speaker, Kindle comes with a dictionary, where you can look up the meaning by just pressing the word!
Again, Kindle is not sold outside US. You can't buy these if you are located in Singapore or Malaysia. For those of you in Singapore, you can try Qo010.sg.
I bought mine in US when I was there. Again cheaper. Wonder why things are so expensive in Singapore or Malaysia. And I also created my US account on Amazon when I was there. I bought Amazon Card for the book purchase. See my next post about eBook purchase. Having US account will be much more convenient for me. If you stay in Japan or UK, you can consider having an account of Amazon Japan or Amazon UK.
Kindle Paper While is equipped with backlight. There is a cheaper version without backlight which may be adequate for most purpose: Amazon Kindle.
I am pretty sure you can't tell the difference looking at the pictures except that the one without backlight, the price is at least $20 cheaper. At the time I write this, it's $40 cheaper.
Each of these are with options of with or without Special Offer and WiFi vs "WiFi + 3G".
If you don't like those Ads, before you add to Cart, you just click on "Without Special Offers" and you will see the price increases. (For now, $20). Similarly, you can choose a "Wifi + Free 3G" version. But I don't think those are necessary if you have WiFi at home. In addition, I am not sure whether the Free3G would work.
If you want a higher end version, you can purchase Kindle Voyage!
As you can see, it's $100 more. I am sure Voyage is a better product, but I don't see why I want to fork out more money as Kindle PaperWhite 6" with backlight will meet my purpose. I will go for 2 Amazon Kindle Paperwhite devices instead of one Kindle Voyage.
So, my recommendation would be
1) Kindle Paper with Backlight. ( I find that with Backlight, the brightness can be adjusted to ambient light), easy to eyes.
For your convenience, let me copy the link again:
------------------ I bought this ---------------------------------
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2) Kindle (no backlight, cheaper)
3) Voyage (if money is nothing to you)
However, Kindle Fire looks like a normal smart device and not as smooth to the eyes for me. Unlike the rest, this one has color and equip with normal LCD with stronger backlight. Knowing that kids may read books for long hours, I really don't recommend these.
------------- I don't recommend this one for long serious reading-------------------
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
My eyes will get tired easily reading iPad or other conventional LCD display. I believe if the device strain my eye, it will definitely harmful to my children, if they were to spend long hours reading from those device.
For parents who will be approaching 40s, you may want to buy another device for yourself. You will find this helpful because you can "zoom" and choose a larger font. I find it easier to read from Kindle compared to books! I have 2 devices, all with same user ID. My kids can read from one device, I can read from the other. If the kids want to read together, they can borrow mine, and thanks to Technology, Kindle will show you where you stopped at another device when you read the same book! Isn't it amazing? For none native speaker, Kindle comes with a dictionary, where you can look up the meaning by just pressing the word!
Again, Kindle is not sold outside US. You can't buy these if you are located in Singapore or Malaysia. For those of you in Singapore, you can try Qo010.sg.
I bought mine in US when I was there. Again cheaper. Wonder why things are so expensive in Singapore or Malaysia. And I also created my US account on Amazon when I was there. I bought Amazon Card for the book purchase. See my next post about eBook purchase. Having US account will be much more convenient for me. If you stay in Japan or UK, you can consider having an account of Amazon Japan or Amazon UK.
Monday, June 8, 2015
Raspberry Pi
I need to thank W for introducing Raspberry Pi and Aduino to me last year. At that time, Raspberry Pi (Model B+) was just released. Ok, what is this Raspberry Pi? In short, it's a mini-computer. Much powerful than a Intel 286 computer that we used back in 80s. Kids can learn basics of programming using Scratch, Python etc. The output pin of the Pi can be connected to a breadboard to control LEDs, and other electrical components that you can buy from your hardware store.
I will share how my son learn this programmings in the next post if I can find time... (quite a while I did not write)..
Again, buying this via shops is much more expensive. You can buy from Element14 in Singapore, the price is much better compared to buying from retail shops.
Price may change, currency conversion rate may change. I won't recommend any particular one, but you may find the following ads from Amazon very useful. Basically those from CanaKit and Sunfounder offers everything you need. Not only that, it comes with bread board, LEDs, circuit components, case etc at very good price. After buying this, all you need is a USB keyboard, and a USB mouse, and your TV or monitor. You are all set!
If you want just the Pi (Not recommended especially if you are beginners), this may be what you are looking for:
You may want to check the price because buying from Element14 in Singapore may be cheaper then. Note that you may need to buy cables to connect to your TV, power adapter etc.
If you already have a Pi, and you want all the accessories, this may be good.
If you don't have a casing, I would advise you to get a proper one. My son's friend just damage his Pi using a DIY cover. DIY cover is good, but you need to make sure that your finger cannot touch internal portions of the Pi. Depending on your clothes and the weather, you may carry 8kV of electrostatic charge and will kill some components on the PCB.
I will share how my son learn this programmings in the next post if I can find time... (quite a while I did not write)..
Again, buying this via shops is much more expensive. You can buy from Element14 in Singapore, the price is much better compared to buying from retail shops.
Price may change, currency conversion rate may change. I won't recommend any particular one, but you may find the following ads from Amazon very useful. Basically those from CanaKit and Sunfounder offers everything you need. Not only that, it comes with bread board, LEDs, circuit components, case etc at very good price. After buying this, all you need is a USB keyboard, and a USB mouse, and your TV or monitor. You are all set!
If you want just the Pi (Not recommended especially if you are beginners), this may be what you are looking for:
You may want to check the price because buying from Element14 in Singapore may be cheaper then. Note that you may need to buy cables to connect to your TV, power adapter etc.
If you already have a Pi, and you want all the accessories, this may be good.
If you don't have a casing, I would advise you to get a proper one. My son's friend just damage his Pi using a DIY cover. DIY cover is good, but you need to make sure that your finger cannot touch internal portions of the Pi. Depending on your clothes and the weather, you may carry 8kV of electrostatic charge and will kill some components on the PCB.
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