iPad Apps - Singapore Math, Bar Models Grade 2

Date:  Mar 1, 2014

Time flies.  Today is first day of March of 2014.  Already.

Today going to introduce one of the app I like and I think Jay Jay not so fond of it, but he has no choice but must learn to like it.

His father say so.  Muahahahahaha.

Oh ya, I do let my kids play iPad from time to time, only before bed time.

And some times I will say “Education Games” for 15 mins, and after education games, you can play any of your game for 10 mins.

This actually works!

The kids actually will get the chance to learn more things from the iPads, before they play the games.

Kay Kay will play his “Sight Words” games.  Very awesome games.

Jay Jay will play this Singapore Math game.  Actually is not a game, it is more like an assessment app.  HaHaHa.

Anyway, the title is called “Singapore Math, Bar Models Grade 2”.  It’s free for few questions, to unlock all questions, you need to pay US$9.99.

A bit pricy, but I think it is a very well done App for kids in P2.

 

By the way, if want to know more about other math apps that is suitable for Singaporean kids, go to below link.

http://singaporemathsource.com/resources/singapore-math-ipad-apps/

If you want to know more about this “Singapore Math, Bar Models Grade 2” app, click on below link.  It is quite cool.  And you may have guess, there are Grade 3, Grade 4, and so on.  I am very sure the person who wrote this will be rich.  I got to spent some time to write apps too.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/singapore-math-bar-models/id461707896?mt=8

In primary 2, Jay Jay started to learn bar model diagram to solve addition and subtraction problems.

This is what they called “Word Problems” in school.

What I found is Jay spent a lot of time in “drawing” “perfection” rectangle in the word problem instead of trying to figure out what is the problem.  So, it actually “slow” them down in that sense.  As they need to use ruler to draw perfect rectangle and so on.

So, this app helps in the sense that he does not need to draw perfect rectangle as it will always become a perfect rectangle.  So, he can focus in is workings.  And understanding the question.

On Singapore Math app, you are given a problem, and you simply need to solve it using a bar model diagram.

The process involves drawing two rectangle, size it, add a text in each block, and then add a bracket and show the total, and mark down the question mark for things you need to solve.

Then, pull up the working area to write your equations and do your workings.

Then, you fill in the answer.  If you get it right the first time, it will be 3 stars.  If you get it wrong, each time, 1 star will be deducted.

Cool, isn’t it?

Here is the video of me trying to solve the word problem.  Quite fun!  Easy to learn.

And most important thing is the concept.  The more question he does, the more bar model diagram he drew, the more better he grasp the concept.

Also, running the app on iPad serve as an incentive for him.  After doing 2 questions per day, he gets to play iPad games such as Minecraft, fieldrunner, monopoly, and so on.

Check out the tutorial, it also teach them how to solve each type of the problems.

When you go to harder questions, it has the necessary tutorials too.

This is the introduction video about this Singapore Math Bar Model Grade 3 app.  Take a look and you get what I mean.

Not only you can play the game in order, they also shuffle the questions so that each time you get a group of different questions.

So, you have comparison model, you have part-whole model, and all these are according to MOE P2 syllabus.  Which is a very cool app.

Later part, there will be money and measurement question too.

Multiplication and division will reintroduce slowly too.

So, with this app, not only the child will be happy using it, by giving a little incentives after each lesson, it also encourage them to learn.

Try it!

How to Let Your Kids Learn on iPad/iPhone

Date:  May 21, 2013

This is always my favourite topic.  

iPad & iPhone always have this "love & hate" relationship with the parents.  We love the iOS devices  as it really has a lot of lovely educations apps that we are very sure it can teach our kids well.  However, we also sometimes hate it because of the risk of kids being "stuck" or addicted to using the iOS devices that we like.

Here is a great tip that a lot of parents did not even know about it.  

Paisei… even me, also learn this only recently.  hahahaha

Our Kay Kay needs to learn how to write the alphabets.  In my opinion, the fastest way for him to learn is to run a letter tracing app.

So, we downloaded this Tracing Letters App.  That has 1-2-3 on it to indicates which strokes to write first.

One IMPORTANT tip for learning how to write is… to use a proper stylus.  For me, I let Kay Kay use my drawing stylus, which looks and feels like a normal pencil.  Do not let them use their fingers.  

Everyday we let Kay Kay use this App and learn how to write.  And he begins to write better letters.

This blog entry is not about this App.

It is about how to let your kids learn on iPad/iPhone without letting other games apps to distract them.

So, Apple has an answer for it.  And no one seems to know about it.  I only knew this from an article I read.

It is called GUIDED ACCESS.

Go to Settings --> General --> Accessibility

Scroll down to see under "Learning" and turn the "Guided Access" function on.

What does it do?  It actually keeps the iPhone or iPad in a Single App, and allows you to control which features are available.  

I strongly recommend the parents to turn on this.

So, how do I use it?  When you launch any app, you simply press the HOME button three times.  They called it "Triple Click" the Home button.

Once you do that, the Guided Access interface will pop up.  You can DISABLE the hardware button, you can enable Touch and Motion.

It is a great interface!

Once you happy with the settings, simply press "Start" button to turn on the Guided Access feature.

Once it is turn on, the iPad/iPhone will not response  to any hardware button press.  

So, you can leave the iPad / iPhone safely to the child, so that they do not simply any how touch anything to disable or delete any of your important apps.  Or they keep on playing games.  It is not only for kids, if you are a marketing guy, you can run your marketing app continuously and no one can disable it and jump to another program.

If you press Home three times, a passcode windows pops out.  So, you simply need to enter the passcode to DISABLE the Guided Access.

Once you are in the Guided Access interface, click the top left corner "End" button will end the Guided Access for that app.

Like this, your kid will only focus in playing one game, or one education app at a time.  And they will not hang on to the iPad/iPhone forever to play so many games on it. 

Try it now!

Update: CardMunch by LinkedIn

Date:  June 26, 2012

Some times ago, I recommend to use Cardmunch by LinkedIn as a business card management app.

Previous Post:  http://miniliew.blogspot.sg/2011/12/great-business-card-app-cardmunch.html

 

 

Today, after many months later, let's look at it again, and see if I am happy.

It now has a user login website.  i.e. http://cardmunch.com/user/login

 

 

Again, on the website, it explains how it works.  It is not OCR, it is not machine read.  All these name cards are transcribed by real people.  Real people read the cards and fills in the contact for you, and push it to your LinkedIn account.

 

 

There aren't a lot of things you can do on the website.  It showed how many jobs has been submitted, and how many has been transcribed.  I found that it is getting slower, I think it is becaue of the gaining of popularity of this App.

 

 

A click on the contact, it shows you the contact details, as well as the scanned card.

 

Ok, I think the user web site is still very primitive.  But there is a "Export Contacts Beta" link where you can download this as a CSV file and see it in your Excel.

 

And the other option is to save it to a Mac OS X .VSF Address Book File.

 

 

This is the fastest way to bring your contact around with you as a Excel spreadsheet.

 

 

Once i it is downloaded, you can simply open the CSV file.

 

 

All the contact info, title, company, phone, mobile phone, address info are there.

 

 

As a result, after many months of using it.  I still recommend it.  Some people are very afraid about privacy.  Well, you do have a LinkedIn account, right, so, in any way, the Cloud will still get your info either way.  I think CardMunch has bring the business card application to another step.  I owned about 2-3 different business card readers.  Non of them works well.  Most of the OCR are crappy.  Thanks to many innovative designer who design the card so ugly.  CardMunch isn't perfect, but it is sufficient for me.  I need to make sure that my cards are stored in the cloud.  I need to make sure that when I need the contacts, I am able to access it with or without Internet.  And when I change iPhone, I should be able to retrieve my cards and contacts.  That's it.

 

 

 

 

iPhone App: WAZE - Social GPS Navigation with Turn by Turn

Date:  Apr 1, 2012

Updates:  [Apr 2, 2012] The Application is cool, and is fun.  But it does not mean that it has the full map.  For example, they cannot find some of the roads lead to my son's school.  But if you always drive to work using highway, or major road, it will gives you the traffic condition which you need pretty badly to make decision to change your route.

Today, I used it to plot a route to my office.  As you can see, it says, I can reach my office about 8:36 minutes when I just entered the AYE from Clementi Ave 6.  And It also show that there will be congestions at the initial part, plus a small accident.  So, you know that you can continue to take this route, and as long as you pass the initial congestion, you will be fine.

Now, when there is more traffic condition change, it will prompt you and reupdate the timing.  And all these are all contributed from all the waze ussers.

[End of Update 2/4/12]

One of the interesting things I learned from my Malaysian partners during my visit in Bangkok is this.

This is an iPhone App.  It is a Free GPS.  It has turn by turn instruction speak out.  And it is a SOCIAL APP.  My friends from Malaysia says it is very useful in Malaysia, as they now can use this to tell which route is more congested and try to avoid it.

It is just like a GPS App.  You can key in your destination, and they will calculate the route for you.  If there is accident in front, it will tell you.

So, how they get the accident info?  It is usually entered by another users who just passed by there.  It needs the collaborations of all the users.  If you happened to drive pass the accident area, and found that the accident has cleared off, simply press a button "Not There".  The App will look at the speed around that road, and number of people responded to the incident, and decide to take out the accident icon or not.  It is pretty cool.

During night time when you use, the screen will be black lid.

And of course, it has the whole world.  At least, I used it in Bangkok, my friend use it in Kuala Lumpur, and I used it again in Singapore, and it works for me.

The server end will look at groups of users who uses the road in a period of time, and then, auto calculate the average driving speed.  In this diagram, it shows that there is a moderate congestion at the Ekkamai road.  The speed is only 14kmh.

When you stop your car at the traffic light, while the Waze GPS is on.  It will pop out the incident report windows.  Yes, only when you stopped the car for a while, they will show you this.  If you are the driver, they will disallow you to type.  You have to declare that you are a Passenger, then, you can message and type.

I think it is a very cool program.

Li Ka-shing's Horizons Venturs Hng Kong and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers have invested $30 million in this social traffic and navigation company.  This is the report they done half a year ago.

By the way, it is available not only on iPhone App.  It is on iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Nokia platform.

Also, for countries such as Malaysia, keep on building new roads, and if users of WAZE pass thru a road that is not on the map, and it see another few people pass thru it, it will build that road and update the map.  This feature is cool, as you will always get the latest map.

Also, you can go to their Live Map on their web site.  http://www.waze.com, do thinks like, now I know the exit to AYE from Clementi Ave now is moving at 29 mph.

Here is the tutorial...

http://www.youtube.com/user/WazeGPS1?feature=mhsn#p/c/52052798FC5106B5/0/5vOS5eFEJeA

 

 

Great Business Card App - CardMunch

Date: Dec 5, 2011

People like me collect a lot of name cards.  You simply don't know what to do, and you also don't want to bring a stack of name cards with you, or to store all the contacts into your contact list.  You don't call these people every day.  So, what do you do?

1.  Those physical business card scanner does not work!  Why?  Because there is no standard of designing name cards.  So, the OCR cannot recognize most of the name cards items or entries.

2.  Those earlier iPhone App is even worst.  Some keep a copy of the image (business card) that you took in the photo album.  Imagin you have few thousands name cards.  Also, the OCR is equally sucks!

3.  I ever thought of storing it on Evernote.  Since evernote can store image file.  But the OCR again is going to fail you.

I have been searching and downloading a lot of business card reader Apps and so far none of them has met my requirement.  Until now...

Today I strongly recommend this business card app - CardMunch.  It is not perfect yet, but the logic of how the app works really make sense.  So, basically, just like "the man inside the ATM machine", there is a real human being doing the job for you, i.e. read the scanned photo of the business card, and key in the name card contact details.

CardMunch is provided by Linkedin.  It is very clever for them to come up with such App.

This is a very simple App.  And I am sure the people from Linkedin will keep improving it.  This first version already won my heart.

Simply align the name card within the box, and press the Camera icon to take photo of the business card.  You can tap the screen to focus.

Once you snapped the photo, you can see the photo image right away to decide whether to retake or upload the photo.

If you choose upload, then, a Thank You message will come out.  Basically, you have submitted the business card online to CardMunch site.

The card you have snapped and submitted will be shown on the top part of your contact list.  You can swipe left and right if you have submmited more cards.

You can select that card, and a NOTE box will come up.  Basically allowing you to put extra notes to explain how you get the cards or note down important details of this contact.

So, basically, once you submitted your card, CardMunch site will have real human beings to do the reading for you and to do the data entry for you.  Yes, real human, not machine OCR algorithm.  Once they key in the card, it will showed as NEW card in your contact list.

One thing which they done right is, they CORRECTLY enter whatever they see on the name card.  If the name card listed the phone number as 67381315, then, it will show up the same way as the card.  Now, since we have the option to store this in our iPhone contact list, the lack of intelligent may not be good for us.  For example, you may want it to store as +65 67381315.  So, just imagine some phone number on the card is listed as (65)67381315.  Then, it will show up this way too.

You scroll up from that contact, your image of the business card is correctly shown.

They even tell you when you scanned the card.

Since it is a Linkedin product, so, they will cross reference it with Linkedin, and pull the Linkedin photo onto the CardMunch database.

Wait now, how do you know it is a human being reading the card.  Well, I took a photo of the card and took it sideway, and it magically also input the data correctly.  So, must be a human efforts to rotate the card and read the info and data entry it.  Well done.

You Can forward the card, you can save it in your iPhone contacts, resubmit or delete it.

Of course you can email it too.

If the phone entry is entered correctly with +65 or without +65, you can call the cotact.  Also, you can Connect to the Linkedin too.

OK.  The searching facility is also quite nice.  Simple, if they can make it more complex search, it will be nice.

I think it is very genius and generous for Linkedin to think of using cheap labour to do the data entry for busy people like us.  Although sometimes there may be some error.  But the error rate is not as much as the OCR.