Munirah Ghazali

M-Umrah: An Android-Based Application to Help Pilgrims in Performing Umrah

Performing hajj and umrah is one of the five pillars of Islam. The ritual involves many rules and procedures, and to remember all these rules and procedures usually poses a problem for pilgrims. The advancement of IT can provide a solution to the problem mentioned above. Hence, we apply the Internet and smart phone technologies to develop the M - Umrah application for users. The target users of this application are the Malaysian hajj and umrah pilgrims. This application provides a step-by-step guide to performing umrah, starting from preparation at home up until the pilgrimage is completed. The application was developed on the Android platform, and the first version of the application has been released to the market. Up until this point, more than ten thousand users all around the world have downloaded the application.

Preschool Children’s Representation of Numbers on a Linear Number Line: Implications to Teaching and Learning of Number Concepts

A basic challenge in understanding human cognitive development is to understand how children acquire number concepts. The Hindu-Arabic number system represents amounts of objects by number symbols, without referring to other properties of these objects (e.g., color, size). That is to say that the number symbols, like many other symbols, are linked to the objects that they represent in an arbitrary but agreed upon manner with fixed representation rules. Therefore, when the number system is used in a teaching-learning process, the child is required to perform a relatively complicated cognitive process. This paper reports on a research project that was carried out to investigate preschool children’s mapping of numbers onto the linear number lines. A total of thirty 5 and 6 year old preschool children were interviewed individually in a number-space task with three sets of number lines that is 1 – 10, 1 20 and 1 – 100. Preliminary findings suggest that children understood the task and adopted a consistent strategy of mapping consecutive numbers onto consecutive location. Implications of the findings to the teaching of mathematics at preschool level will be discussed.

Calling for the development of children's number sense in primary schools in Malaysia

ABSTRACT Although the early development of childrens number sense is a strong predictor of their later mathematics achievements, it has been overlooked in primary schools in Malaysia. Mainly attributable to underdeveloped number sense of Malaysian primary and secondary school children, their inability to handle simple mathematics tasks, which require the understanding of basic mathematical concepts, numerical estimation, and mental computation, is a cause for worry. To enhance the perception of curriculum designers and mathematics teachers about why and how number sense ought to be developed, this article serves as a review of essential components, theoretical framework, and test of number sense.

A comparative study on the counting strategies of students in year 1 and 2 in Malaysia

Children’s understanding of counting is important because of the crucial role it plays in the construction of mathematical knowledge. Early mastery of counting suggests that children have a firm foundation for later developments in arithmetical understanding. This paper reports on a study to examine counting strategies by Year 1 and Year 2 students in Penang. We study 12 different schools selected in Penang based on different types of schools in Malaysia. Six students were selected from each school giving a final sample of 72 students. The concepts investigated are sense of quantity, counting leading to multiplicative thinking and place value as these are the fundamentals for the development of counting ability. The strategies employed by students for were then compared. Furthermore, students utilized differing counting strategies which range from commutative strategies to multiplicative strategies. Our findings show that students employed a range of strategies even though mental strategies are not though...