Audrey Tan | Exploration of Inquiry & Learning | PlayMoolah

My favorite time of the year is here again! Amidst all the frenzy for the Christmas preparations, shopping for gifts and tidings, Christmas, a time for giving, friendship, we rejoice in celebration of this joyous occasion!

It’s a time of excitement and anticipation for every child. This is the time of the year when decision-making isn’t so difficult your 9 year old, waiting for this merry occasion to arrive and perhaps even before Christmas, the decision for what Mum would buy, would have already been decided.

The wish list seems to get longer and longer, the items larger and larger in value, when is it that enough is enough? How do you explain the budget that you have for each child during this Christmas? Can they understand why it’s important to choose an item within a budget? How involved are they about the budgets at home? Northwestern Mutual one points that, “Holidays are a good time to teach lessons in finance.”

Budgets are a proportion of our money that is available to us for specific purposes, it is critical in money management to teach our young their money on what they decide and choose to spend on. Why is it important? A budget sets the precedence for a few things,

1. It teaches children to understand what can we afford in our family.  Speaking to a Mom this Christmas we found her 10-year-old son contemplating how much he could spend on his Sister’s gift and how much he would apportion his savings to purchase gifts for the rest of the family. There and then, the notion of a budget was surfaced to him, explaining that he will have to spend within his means and decide how much he could afford to purchase in gifts for the entire list of family. Setting a budget enabled him to decide how much he would allocate to purchase meaningful and affordable gifts for each person at home without overspending and living within his means.
2. Budgeting also sets the stage on how your child will possibly think about buying the next time he goes on a shopping trip. Budgeting is a process that gets the young one thinking, how can I afford what I want? More importantly, am I apportioning my money so that I can have a balanced goal in mind for healthy spending and saving? This will be timely for us to teach our young, to learn the decision making process behind how the young one makes choices.

The budgeting exercise teaches them to understand that we have to work within their budgets! What can your child do? Start a budget for the upcoming New Year! A way to start the new year with some budgeting goals in mind!

November marks various milestones for very many events and occasions.

The Thesis I’ve been working on for the last few months, Triggers within Persuasive Technology and Persuasive Games for Savings and Money Management.

The study delves into the persuasiveness and outcomes in Persuasive Technology and Persuasive Games. With user’s mindsets and perspectives shaped, one questions their spending habits, more importantly, behavioural actions of actively take up a long term saving plan were a result of the study.

Such is consistent with research that has been found with Professor Lewis Mandell, that savings knowledge alone is in fact insufficient if  not practiced with good financial behaviour, in the real world. What  money lessons do we take away with us if we do not put into practice what we have learnt?  It remains pure knowledge, and left unapplied to the real world. Fascinating discussions and outcomes were derived out of the study, key results that surfaced, respondents were able to apply what they had learnt through in-game scenarios and apply them in their decision making processes that were related to purchases. Respondents questioned and cognitively processed their spending behaviour that would affect their savings pattern in the current saving goals that they were aiming for.

Identifying Triggers, as Stanford Professor BJ Fogg defined as, a prompt or cue, call to action, within games do allow us to determine what resonates and spurs the user to take an action or make a decision. This is important not only in determining what actions are surfaced as a result of the triggers, but more so, these Triggers suface as learning or reflection moments for each and everyone of us.

Each trigger encompasses tremendous potential for learning, and applying what one has learnt in-games to the real world.

With all that in mind, behavioural change alone has to be continually reflected with clear intentions by the social agents who design the tools and games that seek to influence or persuade users. This applies every day, in all areas, doesn’t it?

The study was done with college students at the National University of Singapore. An inspiration throughout the Thesis, Professor Tim Marsh, thanks for all the supervision! Thank you to all who took part in this study and helped in one way or another.

Will love to share more if you are keen to find out more about the research. Do feel free to get in touch!

So here I am back in the bay area. 8 months have zipped by and everything here does not seemed to have change very much. It’s possibly that my perspective and outlook to events and things have very well been shaped and sharpened.

All seems to be a matter of how one chooses to perceive the circumstances and trials around them. I was touched and inspired by a meeting with Mia, a Mom of two kids, 5 and 12. Mia spent some time over dinner to share how her experience of seeking the best for her very special child and how she turned her child’s learning around. Often some children do not quite fit into schools due to the traditions, systems, ways of teaching and learning found in schools. Does your child come home crying? Upset over what school has done? Feared going back to school day after day?

What do we do when these things happen? We let it slide by because we have no clue what to do next. Or do we simply settle for the simplest alternative – convenience? Unrelenting standards never to settle for less will some times help to push us through to get the best for our loved ones. Persistently striving to search for the best school around that fits her first born, then 6. From researching in magazines to forums, to speaking with countless people and going the lengths to convince the people around her that turning a blind eye to her child’s happiness in school was simply, not alright?

Mia taught and showed me the love a Mother has for her child, despite circumstances that one resides in, has many alternatives. It’s very much the same picture to begin with, it’s just painted in a different way, played out with workarounds in a different manner.

Today, the little one spends time at The Nueva School, for the gifted.

Cheers to all the Moms who fight every day for the best for their little ones – Thank you.

It’s interesting to peer back into our days of old. The memorable or maybe not so memorable times of our childhood?

Dr Maria Montessori has left an impressionable footprint in my view of child development and learning. Looking at the initial stages of child development, first three years of growth, Montessori calls the absorbent mind, ‘a special mechanisms exists for language.’ Not the possession of language itself, but the possession of this mechanism which enables men to make languages of their own, in what distinguishes human species[1].

As Mario M. Montessori explains in the Education for Human Development: Understanding Montessori, The absorbent stage where learning is mainly influenced by the result of unconscious mechanisms determined by the emotional development of the child and in turn is dependent on the adult who cares for it.

Introjections, imitation, and identification are of particular importance in the formation of behavior patterns and the acquisition of cultural attitudes.

This tells the story, Children See. Children Do.

I find myself almost as a replica of my mother’s way of being. She’d teach, “Others before Self.” And being in the company of children recently surfaced this point, I found myself teaching the little ones almost naturally the concept of sharing and giving before gratifying their needs. And reflecting on what Montessori mentioned, not only were the good results channelled this way, where imitation is concerned. Boy do I scream like my mother when I do

What about your version of replica? How has that changed the way you think about the world?