What a week! The Eagles finally got their games published on Wednesday and they ended the week with a celebration at Kiddomo and an evening gathering to celebrate the birthday of our youngest Eagle! Thank you Kiddomo for hosting us, Thank you coach Wen Ying & coach Mona for all the swimming lessons (and patience with our young Eagles), Auntie Ii Ling for that special celebration cake, Auntie Hu Imm for a Hero Sharing on Machine Learning and all the Acton Academy families for making this Sprint an enjoyable and game-filled one!
Highlights:
- The Road to Exhibition
- Personalized Entertainment at Kiddomo
- Celebrating Abhiram’s Birthday
The Road to Exhibition
All our ActonKL’s Exhibition (12 of them so far) were physical, i.e. you got to come to see the Eagles yourself. So, why not try something different—a virtual exhibition? The Eagles had been coding, and really, all their work is in the cloud.
It’s hard work. Some Eagles did their Core Skills at home so they could collaborate project work with their partners in school. Some Eagles worked every night to get their code working. Some Eagles stayed till 1.30am (at their own choice or having really ambitious projects).
Yet, Eagles still found time to explore amidst the one project deadline. Few things they did:
- Auntie Hu Imm’s Sharing on Machine Learning. She recently developed and trained a neural network to detect a bug. She shared her lessons and the challenges of coding and particularly, debugging! It was especially fun to see how the machine learning algorithm could detect a bug.Here’s the website for you to play with: https://pastabug.herokuapp.com/.
Eagles were too excited! - Mini Business. One Middle School (MS) Eagle started a mini cushion cover business to raise money for a charity. She enforced a non-refundable policy to ensure she escape the biggest issues for retailers: inventory write-offs. But there were some tough lessons on sales ethics with the younger Elementary School (ES) Eagles, who were still learning about money. Well, this is a learner-driven school, and it’s through these moments where each party grow. The MS Eagle learned about the weight of such policies, and the difficulty executing it. The ES Eagles learned about financial responsibility.
But more importantly, it’s the intention of these Eagles. Here are some of the conversations reported by the Guides:“Wow, this is so cool. I want to buy this for my parents. We just moved and I want to decorate with this!”
“I’m going to get this as a gift for …”Great intentions. What do you want to do about it? Ask money from parents or negotiate an income based on house chores? Each intention to give is an opportunity to grow. Courage to grow!
Here are the goods. But did I give the right pitch so that the younger ones understand where I am coming from? - Last Swimming Session. There’s the last swimming session of the year too.“Can we still vote for swimming next sprint?” The Eagles definitely enjoyed the water and drills with coach Wen Ying & coach Mona.
Let’s go back to the Exhibition. On Wednesday 1.00pm, the website was released.
http://coding2017.actonkl.org/
The ES Parents enthusiastically camped online to play the Eagles’ games. We also had visitors from all over the world, many of them from other Acton Academy network schools. There was excitement buzz in few workplaces in lunchtime too.
The remainder of Wednesday evening until Friday morning was spent compiling their portfolios, journals and just enjoying time with their friends after 5+ weeks of hard work.
The Eagles had to reach 1,000 unique hits to unlock the final Fun Friday of the Sprint. This had been a hard decision, but one new venture came 2 kilometers away from us. Enter Kiddomo Universe in Starling Mall.
Personalized Entertainment at Kiddomo
The description of Kiddomo is Imagine. Play. Learn. You might wonder… huh? What is this?
I’m going to tell you what the Eagles did in Kiddomo is in one breath:
First, each Eagle got a smart wristband, which allowed them to make a profile & avatar, so they could download themselves into the Kiddomo universes. The first universe is the Active Zone. There… they hacked some art, transformed 2D coloring into 3D animation & 3D model as a souvenir. Then, they dived into a giant ball pit and hunted dinosaur eggs, played hide and seek or free play through the playground. The second universe is Dream Zone. There… they motion interacted with technology through body actions, like popping balloons, conducting an orchestra, rolling giant illuminating balls (which change colors), becoming a wizard, going down an interactive slide to collect hearts & stars, and singing the heart out in a green-screen karaoke. Finally, Eagles relaxed in a virtual aquarium with their own creations, again transformed from 2D coloring into 3D animation, or in the cafe with food.
Yes, that took four breathes, because it’s really that much to do. Here’s how much we loved it. Within 15-minutes of entering the space and saw what our Eagles were immersing themselves into, our team decided to extend the visit from 1+ hours to 2+ hours. Note that we take timeliness seriously. So, extending our school hours just for Eagles to play more in Kiddomo says a lot.
Still confused about what is Kiddomo? One of our parents blogged about them in a friendly read, with cute pictures, hilarious GIFs and a writing tone that will make you smile. So, I will link you to her post!
Thank You Laila for doing the front-running work :)).
There’s more than it meets the eye. I will share two points.
One, home-made. From the signage, you might think this is a Japanese franchise. But it’s far from it.
The owners were inspired by the Japanese, so the name kiddomo and the Japanese characters are a tribute to them. The team started as a digital agency (called Crave) 10 years ago. They have created wonderful digital experiences for various clients and decided to bring all these experiences into one awesome place.
Their first venture was Time Travel in a 2,000 square feet space in Panorama, Langkawi. It was successful, and the team saw how this could benefit children who interact more naturally with these immersive multimedia experiences. So, they spent the last two years planning and scheming Kiddomo universe.
Yes, the entire production is lovingly Malaysian home-made. Not Japanese. Not American. Not Korean. But home-grown Malaysia Boleh.
Two, Growth through feedback. Here’s one reason why this team will continue to wow customers. Every experience requires the participant to put the wristband for personalization. The team has the data for the exact engagement from each activity areas. They could continuously adapt and bring even better experiences to their universes and remove less engaging ones. This means that over time, each future visit would get better.
We look forward to visiting Kiddomo again. Maybe a Socratic Launch immersed in another world? Or an apprenticeship to create a gamified experience? Or simply just another fun day?
The digital revolution provides unlimited opportunities. It is only limited by our imagination. So you see why Kiddomo describe themselves as Imagine. Play. Learn?
Celebrating Abhiram’s Birthday
We ended the year with a Holiday potluck celebration. Also, we celebrated our youngest Eagle’s 7th-year-old birthday. Happy Birthday, Abhiram!
Auntie Ii Ling baked a unique cake.
It was a moment where all our community members relaxed, caught up with each other and eat! Looks like this will become one of the traditions of ActonKL. Oops, where’s the learning? A learning community happens when it’s a place where you want to belong. And Malaysians find a belonging through food, glorious food. So, these potlucks are with learning in mind 😛
A big thank you to all the ActonKL community members for making this Programming Sprint, a fun and fruitful one. We look forward to the next Sprint, where we will say goodbye to code and say hello to nature: Survival Quest!
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Like the Eagles, I trust that you can work through the code… you can do it!
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