myFIRST NOTE:

I have been putting my studies story in myWeb before and after one year, I started to transform and convert it to 'a blog'. I hope that my reflections of experiences and plans on this site would be a pleasant experience as you surf and browse.

I am a PhD student in the Department of Simulation and Graphics (FIN), Otto-Von-Guericke University of Magdeburg for the Computer Games Research Group. My research interests include educational games, children and programming, game authoring tools and multimedia / instructional design.

After receiving my BIT and MIT(Science) from Northern University of Malaysia, I was hired as a lecturer in Multimedia Education Department, Faculty of Information and Communication Technology (FTMK), Sultan Idris University of Education. There, I have been teaching subjects such as Human-Computer Interaction, IT Project Management, Management Information Technology, Multimedia in Education, Data Structures and Management Information System. I have supervised undergraduate and postgraduate students on their research and projects (especially those involved with children and designing multimedia application). After finishing my study here, I will go back to Malaysia and continue my career.

I got interested in children and programming skills after reading Seymour Papert's book entitled "The Children's Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer". Soon afterwards, my supervisor, Prof. Dr. -Ing. Maic Masuch introduced me to Squeak (works of Alan Kay and his development team). And now, my research focuses on building game authoring tool that utilize children's learning and thinking as a scaffold to help them to learn and acquire programming skills that we want to teach at schools (and appropriate with their age).

Now, I'm working with some students in designing and developing some prototype tools (games and game authoring tool) using Squeak.