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There was a little boy that kept poking at the boxes of a particular toy (see fig A). Later, he went on to the section that was displaying miniature vehicles (see fig B). Similarly, he kept poking the boxes too.

Another scene I saw was how two Caucasian kids went to the machines (seen in Fig C)  that required the players to keep tapping the figurines for them to be lighted up. They tapped on it for about 2-3 minutes before their parents called out to them that its time for them to leave the store.

As seen from the scenes, it seems that children likes to touch things to get the feel of it and similarly as the first post, they like toys that provide some kind of response, like how the figurine will light up if you tap on it.

Fig A

Fig B

Fig C

Due to the presence of numerous products around us that are vying for our attention, people often get distracted easily.

There was a young girl holding a dress walking around. However, once her mother bent down at the clothes rack to look at other clothes, the girl ran over a bent over to see what her mother was looking at. However, in the process, she dropped the dress she was holding. The father then called out to her to tell her about the dress that she dropped. She looks surprised and bent down to picked the dress up afterwards.

There was a little girl standing next to the shelf displaying animal toys. She then went on to pick a sheep and looked at it. She then went to look for her parents which happened to stand beside a large dinosaur toy (refer to the picture below) talking. When the little girl went over, she tried to fit that sheep into the dinosaur mouth repeatedly.

From this observation, it seems like children like to put different things together and see if they fit. This could mirror how they are thinking and learn. Children's global awareness is rather low and thus, they learn by seeing what fits and what does not fits..  

We often call out to our friends/family members when we see something interesting or something of interest. 

In this case, there was a little girl who was at a section that had many toys, shaped like animals (See the picture below). She scanned the animals within her eye level and picked up a toy cow. She went to her parents and shouted "COW". She then emphasized it by calling to her mum and said "Mummy look! Cow!" Later on, she went back to the rack and dropped the cow before picking up a pig figurine and did the same thing, which was to find her parents to say the name of the animal. 

From my observation, it seems like kids only take notice of the familiarity and likes to inform others of what they know/learnt. The reason for this could be due to the fact that when parents hear their children speak the words that have been taught to them, they will be very happy and is evident from their facial expression. Hence, when children point out certain words, their aim could be to have their parents complimenting them and feeling proud of them. 

Electronic devices are so prevalent and integrated into our lives, as seen by how many people tend to carry at least one of those (e.g. mobile phones, laptop, tablets) around. Certain stores have also installed them on their shelves, in order to promote a particular product by showing videos of it. Throughout my time spent in the store, the first thing that many children did was to choose to look at the screen before looking at the physical toys. In addition, toys that have a video have a higher chance of attracting the children as compared to other toys that does not have a video shown to advertise for it.

There was this particular boy that was building lego blocks but due to the presence of a video, about 30cm away from him, he kept looking sideways to watch the video while building the lego blocks.  Till the end, he barely put on 5 blocks on the lego base set that he walked over to stand in front of the video to watch it till the end, before moving away to other parts of the store.   

Also, there was this boy that wondered around the store looking and playing with toys. However, he only spent about less than 3 minutes playing and looking at each toy. In the end, he settled at this area that allowed people to try out the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Kids. He spent about 30 minutes on that gadget and even when I decided to leave, he was still playing with it.

I was shocked at how children were no longer contented with “traditional” toys (toys that are defined in shape), toys that I played when i was young. Instead, they were more interested in toys/things that are in motion (like the commercials played) and toys that provide some kind of response when an effort is placed by the user. I tried playing the Samsung Galaxy Tab and some of the functions it provided was a colouring book and a game that resembles Sally Salon, where users can decide the hairstyles, color etc for him and use the various styling tools to create the ideal look they want their users to have.  Perhaps toys like those mirror reality a little better than the other toys as other toys, such as a toy truck. Playing with a toy truck requires children to exercise their imagination and create a scene in their minds. On the other hand, playing with an electronic device or watching a video, helps them to see a scene provided for them, using their own eyes. 

(Fig A: The boy who was constantly distracted by the video nearby)

(Fig B: Photos taken of the boy who was glued to the Samsung Tablet at different intervals)

(Fig C: Boy staring at the screen)

People who are queuing for food tend to inch more towards the left and look at what the person in front is ordering. This is especially evident when its about to be their turn.

There was this guy queuing up for food at a particular stall. He was busily chatting on his phone. When it was his turn to order, he placed his phone between his shoulders and head while tilting his head to the left in order to keep the phone in place. Still in his position, the guy looked towards the auntie standing behind the stall and mentioned his order to her. 

There was a guy that walked round in circles in front of the snacks stall at the Deck before going to the snack stall to look at the food. He then went to the Japanese stall to look at the menu before returning back to the snack stall and stood behind his friend who was queuing at that stall. 

There was a queue at the snacks store when a group of 3 girls were walking and discussing what to eat. Suddenly, they spotted one of their friend in the queue and went up to chat with her. After a while later, they asked the friend if they could join in the queue with her (in another term - cut queue). The friend said yes and they ended up queuing behind her. The person originally behind the girl looked a little annoyed.

I was seated at a table close to the snack stall at the arts canteen and looking around, I realised that people tend to put their bags down before going to the stalls to get their food. 

However, there was this particular guy carrying his bag, standing near the claypot rice stall while holding his food from the mixed rice stall. He was taking small bites from his plate when his friend who had just received his food from the claypot rice joined him and together they went to find seats. 

I was a little confused as there were still available seats around and yet they both carried their bags with them to purchase their food. Also, the friend who got his food faster could have found seats first before waiting for his friend to be done.

Implementing mobile learning in schools may result in children becoming addicted to their mobile phones. They may reach to a point where they feel compelled to use their phones everyday even when they have nothing to do with it. Addiction to mobile phones is a serious issue as it can be detrimental to the children's health (eyes) and incur greater stress on the user (e.g. cyber bullying). Without mobiles, children may actually learn to appreciate the physical world more instead of being fixated in a virtual world. 

By implementing mobile learning, it trains students to search for information on their own while teachers act as a facilitator where they will assist the students when they have difficulties. In this way, it helps to train the students to be responsible for their own learning and teaches them to be problem solvers. In the real world, there will be no teachers around them to tell them the how to go about getting answers. Hence, mobile learning helps to train students to gather their own information, link it to their existing knowledge and applying it to resolve any problems/conflicts on hand. This teaches the students to learn to apply their knowledge rather than just solely memorizing. 

When implementing or designing for mobile learning, there is a need for educators/designers to consider the ability of the mobile phone to connect to other devices (e.g. computer, other brands of mobile devices). As a teacher, there is a need for him/her to track their student's work and facilitate presentations of students' works so that they all can learn from each other. Hence, the ease of transferring files from one another and across different devices should be made easy. If the process of transferring files is not made easy, school teachers will have a tedious time checking his/her students' work one by one.  

Mobile designs that are not of high quality and fit for a child can negatively influence usability and distract the user from his/her learning goals. As mentioned in the reading, there are three most prominent design considerations that we should take into account. They are:

1) Screen size. Screens should not be too small such that they constantly force people to squint at the text shown. This will only disrupt children’s learning process and affect their eyesight too. In addition, screen size should not be too large such they require constant scrolling and pose as a difficulty for people to carry it with them.

2) Text entry. Due to the size of the smaller controls, designers have to mediate between allowing the ease to write text yet at the same time, allowing users to conduct daily tasks on the mobile.

3) Battery life. Mobile applications should run on as little power as possible. When mobile devices require large amount of power to run, it pose as a problem to people as they have to constantly look for a powerpoint to charge their mobile.

Due to mobiles being less expensive as compared to laptops, the possibility of it thriving and actually being used in the less developed countries are high. This helps to shorten the digital divide between children in developed countries and the children in the developing countries.

For example, in India, as wages given to teachers are relatively low, many schools are lacking in teachers, including English teachers. In addition, many of the children have to help out in the farms and hold other family obligations, it is hard for children to receive quality education.  This is a problem as in order for the students to compete globally, they have to be able to understand and speak English fluently. Hence, in order to solve this problem, mobile learning was introduced. Through the stimulation of India’s children past time activity as a mobile game, students are able to learn English words and their pronunciation. This helps to alleviate the lack of sufficient English teachers in the village. In addition, as the mobile can be brought around, children’s learning need not be fixed within the classroom. They can now learn English as they carry out their family chores etc. Watch this video to know more about how mobile learning is being deployed in India.