First Paper Draft Accepted

This is a pretty day, and I've got plenty of chocolate in my stomach, because of the ENE special reception during National Engineers Week. They've got all different kinds of cookies as usual, chocolate cake, cheese cake, strawberries and two chocolate fountains! What's more, they have wrappers of four different colors (orange,white,green,black-purple-gray), and I wanted to try every type! These are by no means healthy food, but since I got my new haircut, I am in a very good mood recently, and don't mind eating too much at all. I just want to enjoy my life now.

Although because my phone has opted out of texts, I kind of screwed a "date"...er..but it's okay, I shouldn't care too much. I had a very good conversation with my adviser instead, which is obviously more important at this moment than a "date". After the conversation then, I was reading some interesting papers about IQ tests and the Flynn effect (the secular increase of human intelligence during the second half of the twentieth century). Then my group-mates and I got the notice that our first paper draft *Weighted Social Tagging as a Research Methodology for Determining Systemic Trends in Engineering Education Research* got accepted by the ASEE (America Society of Engineering Education) Annual Conference ERM (Educational Research Method) Division. A conference is trivial in terms of my whole academic life, but this is my first one, in the first year of my PhD life and I am the first author! I generally hate people who like showing off, so I am posting here just for memorization, because I know at the moment, there are only a couple of people following this blog, so this does not count as showing off :)

Hope I have the good luck making it to Vancouver, Canada for the ASEE 118th annual conference & exposition this summer, and have a good time there!
   

My Parallel Computing Mind

I am reading some literature about millennial children and technologies. It is said that these children are typically very comfortable with using technologies and are usually super-multitasking. They claim that: listening to music while studying actually help me concentrate, but the parents simply don't understand us! So I began to re-think the whole notion of multitasking helping concentrate. I was paranoid about that my mind cannot concentrate, because it keeps getting distracted and wants to find some other things to do. Now I begin to realize that this probably is not a bad thing.

First, I don't think this is the result from using modern technologies, because I don't regard myself as a technology geek, I didn't grow up in a super-technological environment or play a lot of video games as the millennial children do. Nor do I feel completely comfortable with using technologies as they do. I feel my brain is naturally capable for multitasking, and if I restrain it, it will have extra energy that cannot be released, and will feel uncomfortable.This extra energy cannot be added to the single task I try to concentrate on, it is just extra and must be released through some other channels to keep my brain healthy. Second, if this empirical feeling is generalizable to people other than me, that is, most people's brain are naturally multi-tasking, there should be all kinds of channels to release the extra energy, but it also highly individual, certain people will feel more comfortable using certain ways than other people. I wasn't feeling comfortable working while listening to music, especially music with lyrics when I was in China,and was thinking in Chinese. Now since most of time I use English in my work and daily life, I feel listening to music with Chinese lyrics can help me concentrate on my English work. I feel my brain think in English and listen in Chinese, and well comprehend them both at the same time. Also since they are completely different languages, they won't interrupt each other. The Chinese songs make me feel at home and keep me calm, warm and awake. Consequently, this calm and secure feeling help me concentrate more in my English thinking. Third, based on my arguments above, the modern technologies actually provide the children more choice of channels to release their extra brain energy, as long as the children find the certain channels that they feel comfortable with, modern technologies have the great potential to help children more concentrate rather than distracted, and keep their brain healthy. Finally, my opinion here is purely empirical, and at this moment, I don't know any of the theories of human mind or linguistics that can support the arguments, but I think there should be some interesting things there if I look into, and I will keep an eye on them, and if any of my readers know something about relevant theories, please don't hesitate to give some advice. Anyway, I am so released that I found some excuse for my "distracted" mind and some effective ways (working bilingually) to help me concentrate.

By the way, today is Valenti's day. It's overall not a bad day, though I still do not have a boyfriend with whom I can celebrate this holiday. I got a call from China in the morning, I went out for dinner in a Japanese-Karen restaurant with a female friend and had a pleasant conversation. When I got home in the evening, I found a box of chocolate on my desk from my sweetheart dear roommate! So, happy Valenti's day, no matter whether you married, in a relationship, or still single! Enjoy the time being single, when you are still single!             

By the End of 2011, I will hate PC?

I am using a PC now, but my adviser will switch me to Mac soon. So I had a bet today with my friend Julia who has a Mac now. She said :"Mac is so beautiful, since you are so art, you will love Mac. I bet by the end of 2011, you will hate PC, if you begin to use Mac soon. I bet you for 5 dollars!" "Okay, I will treat you for dinner!" I said, and we shacked hands. I am just writing it down here as a reminder~ Since I like iPhone so much now, I hope Mac won't let me down :)     

A Tender Loving Point in My Heart for Young Children

This post was supposed to be a book recommendation. I am reading this book named Theories of Development: Concepts and Applications (Fifth Edition) by William Crain, and I really love it! This book is assigned for the ENE695 Developmental Theories and Engineering Thinking class. I recommend it not because of it's theories or scientific methods or anything like this (though it does hold a very neutral, analytical and comparative perspective most of the time), because I am by no means an expert who could recommend a psychological book based on its content now. I recommend it simply because the way it is written. From my non-native English speaker's perspective, it is really well-written and easy to read and comprehend. The class assigns several other similar texts, but this is the one I am really into and think through. From a cognitive theories' perspective, it unloads my cognitive burden of struggling to understand and make sense of the texts, thus shifts my brain to engage in some deeper thinking. By the way, the cover picture of this book is really a nice art piece (They changed the picture in the 6th edition, but I like this one better). 

In my opinion, all intellectual productions should be presented in this kind of easy comprehensible ways, which could make communication and innovative activities so much easier. However, this is so far away from reality. At least, we need to try to reduce all those boring,empty, hard to read,...,intellectual garbage in every academia disciplines a little bit more and more.

Another thing I am feeling (this is a little bit off-topic here, it's an extended paragraphs about papers that I don't like) is that I begin to become dislike those papers about so-called "complete" "unified" or "integrated" models. They are different from the "intellectual garbage" I mentioned above, indeed, many of them are regarded of great value, I just personally don't like them. In my opinion, there are different theories, and different people have different opinions and different ways to make their arguments, and backup their claims. I used to always wonder there must be a way to unify them, to achieve a universal or at least eclectic theory. However, now I kind of like the existing of diversity. Just like the failure of achieving a universal theory in Physics, such kind of efforts are highly possible to be also failures in other fields. We just need to appreciate the difference, and different applications, like Newton's law and Relativity are both valid in their respective domains. 

Let's go back to the title of this post. This book is about the developmental and learning theories of mainly young children. After almost five years' "screaming" that I am interested in psychology, this is the first psychology book I really read through. This book evokes my love for working with young children. They are always my love. I am thinking creating a digital interactive touch book for children for a course project and also write something about the underlying psychological and cognitive principles of technologies and children, but this is only for a semester, I probably won't be able to fully engage in research about children in my later PhD years. It's okay, I have other also important topics that I need to investigate, but working with young children will always be my love. If I have any opportunities in the future, I will definitely go for it. :)   

 

Towards a Calm and Great Mind

I often feel the tension of competition,the evil jealousy and the anxiety from doing or not doing anything. Now I realize that my mind it too busy to calm down and let its full power out. I am recently reading some masterpieces from some great psychologists about child development and learning. I also watched some YouTube videos and read their biography. While sometimes I couldn't fully understand or quite agree with their theories, I am touched by the personality and spirit of these great minds.

Maybe someday if possible, I will still pursue the psychological area of children development and learning which is my initial interests. Of course, I am also always interested in linguistics, social media, technologies and learning, serious gaming, etc. Maybe I will stay in academia and do some great work and choose not to always run away from the so-called evil and darkness. Because evil and darkness are basically everywhere, I cann't always run away. What can save me is to be possessed by a great and warm mind, calm down and be quiet, always be warm and smile to people, and let evil and darkness run away from me, instead of running away from them.

Game Layer on Top of Social Network Layer

I am increasingly astonished by how significant things we could achieve by harnessing the power of people around the world collaborating online.I am increasingly believe the power of social media. Now there's a totally new layer is going to be built on top of the social networking layer, that is, the game layer.   

I grew up being told that playing games is a waste of time,that all I need is just study, study, and study. Now, I begin to recognize the power of games in learning, and in many other things, so I begin to play some games sometimes. I am thinking that probably I need my kids to teach me how to play games to survive in the future world after watching these two videos below.

(1)Jesse Schell: When games invade real life
 
(2) Seth Priebatsch: The game layer on top of the world

Is Étude a Whole Game?

I am reading the David Perkins's book Making Learning Whole today. Chapter 3 of this book focuses on how to work on the hard parts of learning. According to Perkins, the learners definitely need to pick out the hard parts in the whole learning game (Perkins' opinion is that learning shouldn't just learn the elements without knowing their usage, nor should it be only "about" something without really practice it in person, learning should be like playing a whole game, at least a junior version of a whole game.) to practice and practice and practice, but this oftentimes is not fun at all. How to making learning the hard parts fun? Perkins suggests to make exercise into Études. While I agree with this, I also think how to use études also matters a lot.

Recall my experience of learning playing piano, I did play a lot of études from Bayer, Carl Czerny, Hanon,etc, but I didn't feel it was fun or useful at all, nor did I have any concept of the whole game. The way suggested by Perkins is that when the learners playing the whole game, there are some hard parts, and an ideal way to practice the hard parts is to use études, in order to play the whole game better. But when I was learning to play the piano, almost all we did is playing the études, and had no ideas how these études could fit into the whole game. This is a misuse of the études as elements without knowing the whole game. So, the situation turns to that we always play the hard parts: Bayer, then Czerny-1, Czerny-2,Czerny-3...harder and harder... If the learning game is all about the hard parts, then it's too hard for the learners to enjoy.   

Another of my thought triggered by this book chapter is that I begin to ask whether I am playing the whole game when I am learning the PHP programming now? It seems I got some small tasks to practice on, so I am definitely playing the junior version of the whole game. However, I feel I do not know the elements, so oftentimes, I feel I don't know how to play the game, I basically have nothing to use when I am playing. I lack of the fundamental knowledge of how computer system works, I don't know the Bash commands, I don't know the DOS commands, I don't even know HTML, how could I learn PHP well? Although I did wrote some codes that have the required functions, but I deeply doubt whether it's efficient or bug free, and I have no ways or no time to deeply examine that, all I want is to finish the game. So my opinion is that before we play the whole game, we at least need some elements and some "about". This is just a half-cooked opinion, I am still not sure about it. Maybe it's just the residual effect of the "element" and "about" education I received. Also maybe it's just because of the age: I am just paranoid by the fact that lots of excellent programmers are much younger than me, and I starts to learn this too late to enjoy it without worrying about anything.

Fighting with Frustration of Imperfection

I haven't been writing blogs since this semester. It's a stressful beginning, so I haven't got the time and good quite mood to think and write logically. I've been taking in too much information, and felt the "unbearable heaviness of being", but they are all good and thought-provoking information, and I believe this is the process of growing up and getting to know who I am and what I can do better and better.

I want to talk about my feeling about imperfection. It starts from this controversial book published January this year, Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. This is a book about strict Chinese parenting techniques: raising perfect children. I personally grew up in the similar culture of pursuing perfection. However, the same as most other parents, my parents didn't take things to such an extreme as Amy Chua did. They didn't want to take things to extreme, nor they were able to. My parents are just two of the millions of ordinary Chinese parents, and they are not professors of Yale like Chua is. They were still fighting for the money to get their children good food and good schooling at least by the time of 1990s, and not all of them have enough money to get their children good teachers to teach them playing piano and violin. Amy Chua stands for the middle-class Chinese American elite parents in America, not parents in China.

The case for me, is one that pursuing for perfection but frequently frustrated by imperfection, which is different from the perfection of Amy Chua's children. Although I did learn playing piano, but my skills are not even closer to Chua's children at all. As a result, I grew up looking for perfection, but never get it, or never feel it's enough (if it's enough, it's not perfection). Because I did not get enough pressure from my parents to be good at playing piano, I am not good at it. Also because of the boring teaching methods of my piano teachers, I lost my love for playing piano. Now the results are a piano covered with dust, maybe a little bit of appreciation for music, and what's worse, the frustration that I will never be good at music and the jealousy to children like Chua's who can play piano very well. This frustration of looking for perfection but never get it is not only restricted to playing piano. It also influences other part of my life, such as I feel I am not thin enough, I am not pretty enough, I am not creative and smart enough, because my boring education has "educated me out of creativity", I don't know how to play video games, and I don't know how to dance and sing elegantly, etc. These kind of negative feelings would flood to me every now and then especially when I feel lonely, or I am not satisfied by my unproductive work. This is a result of early parenting and the education I received. Another clue I got from recently read the William Crain's book about human development theories (I love this book, it's very well-written, and easy to read and enjoy, it's also a good parenting book, I think.) is that I was an ambivalent insecure-attached baby according to Anisworth's Infant's Secure-based Behavior Theory.

Learning how to deal with the frustration with imperfection while still have never-ending energy to pursue perfection is a life-long project for me, and I am getting better and better at it while I learn more and more different opinions upon this from different people with different culture backgrounds and get more and more nice, warm-hearted, and supportive people around me. The secret to survive is to (1) work hard, and also (2) assemble myself a group of warm people around, no matter they are family, friends, colleagues, advisers, or roomies, no matter they are far or near, no matter they are virtual or real. Communication is a way to survive, also to gain socially constructed knowledge.

I watched this awesome talk about vulnerability by Brene Brown(Brene Brown: The power of vulnerability | Video on TED.com). According to her research, the people who accept their own imperfection, and vulnerability, the people who are dependent, and believe that they need other people's support will open their heart and embrace the world around them. These people will get the most support from people around and will be the happiest. This is an excellent supporting material to the (2) above. I believe and feel the power of getting more contact with nice people around me. I am increasingly believe using the way of social media to do that. Using the technologies of building a virtual world to get chance to contact people in real.

Now the problem for me is how to balance (1) and (2), sometimes I need to talk with people, but also I need time to concentrate on my work by myself, also I am afraid that if I do (1) too often, people will leave me automatically leave me alone, and I couldn't get chance to do (2), and I would feel lonely and frustrated again. This is the thing I need time to learn how to manage.