Learning links about dinosaurs.

They are BIG!

They are SCARY!

How much do you know about them?

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Discover Learning with Your Child

You can start your children on the road to critical thinking and good decision-making by asking open-ended discovery questions when working with your children on the computer.  Asking “What do you think will happen if you click on this box?” or “Why do you think the bird is eating the corn instead of the hamburger?” or “How do you think we can get through this maze?” encourages problem-solving and learning to evaluate choices.  (And all answers are correct until proven otherwise!) Positive reinforcement is key!

 

 For more ideas on how to use video games as a tool for helping children develop their thinking skills and for guidance in determining what is appropriate for a preschoolers read the PBS Kids Children and Media page.

 

 

Buckleitner Message

Making Sense of Kinect

A subscriber called me today and asked "Is this Microsoft's Kinect a gimmick?" My answer was no. How do I know? My answer came after three weeks of watching people aged 3-to 80+-years play with a variety of Kinect titles.

 

The motion sensing system is ideal for activities where you move -- dancing, exercising, downhill skiing, jumping, diving, leaning -- all gross motor.

 

But it doesn't work as well for driving, pointing, typing, shooting or throwing with any degree of accuracy. This is a novel type of interactivity that has never existed, and it requires learning a new set of skills. Think of it as a new pipeline to a child's mind... Now that the engineers at Microsoft opened it up, it's up to us to explore how it can be used for the benefit of children. My recommendation is to jump in and give it a try.

 

Toys That Inspire Greatness

It's good to remember how a simple toy can be life altering, to the point of changing history. Case in point -- the Penaud Helicopter, a rubber band-powered flying toy popular with two Ohio kids back in the 1870s. Those children eventually graduated to bicycles and then to the airplane design. See http://www.flyingmachines.org/pend.html, a link provided by JP Dyson of the Strong Museum of Play, for a closer look at this historic toy that I discovered when doing research for this month's LittleClickers column.

 

So what toys should you give a child of the 21st century? Flying helicopters, bikes and blocks are still a good idea, but so are digital experiences, provided time exploring apps on an iPad, playing a variety for video games, and time programming with programs like Scratch. Give a young mind a powerful toy -- real or virtual -- and you'll never know what they'll invent. Just ask Wilbur and Orville Wright.

 

Warren Buckleitner, PhD, Editor

Children's Technology Review

 

When Joshua was a kid, he visited the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. One of his most favorite attractions was Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress in Tomorrowland.  In this revolving attraction, he saw the story of technology evolution in the 20^th Century.  Traveling decade to decade he came upon a Jetson-like family performing tasks with technology that Joshua, as a kid of the 70’s, hadn’t even begun to imagine.

 

Fast forward to 2010: Joshua is grown with a family of his own. Upon visiting Disney with mobile device in hand, he can now track attraction wait times, text his children if they get separated, consult the 36-hour weather forecast to see if they need to buy sweatshirts for cool evening wear.  Certainly these innovative technology solutions are beyond the scope of the attraction built over forty years ago, one that may actually prompt an update of the famous Carousel of Progress.

 

If “what’s next” in innovative technology solutions interests you, then the FutureMedia Fest held by Georgia Tech was an event not to be missed.  Top industry executives offered their talents and ideas on exploring the impact of the next generation on digital, social, and mobile media.  At the top of the list of presenters was Renu Kulkarni, Co-Founder and Executive Director, FutureMedia℠; she presented six megatrends in (media and technology) innovation tagged to have a significant impact on the future of media:

 

• Data Tsunami –as the volume of data we receive on a daily basis is filtered, the challenge will be to design an effective means to reach your target audience with the “right” information so providing “meaning to data” will be critical
  
  
• True Personalization – as we lead more customized lives, preferences, filters, and behaviors will allow companies to “customize” their products and/or services
  
  
• Content Integrity – as content platforms become more open, information security becomes more important; security will move from being reactive to proactive to ultimately answer the question: How does a company protect customers’ private information?
  
  
• Multimedia Assumed – as the demand to see messages in a variety of media (video, audio, voice) increases, the importance to integrate them into one service will equally increase
  
  
• Mixed Reality – as separating our physical world from the cyber world becomes more difficult, companies are switching to “Second Life” or other social media for market research
  
  
• Collaboration – as companies strive to harness the power of many to gather a “following”, everyone could be involved in their content creation -- from your 80-year-old neighbor to his great grandchild!

 

“While all 6 megatrends will shape the future of education, the ONE most significant trend is COLLABORATION.  Collaboration, fueled by advances in technology and practitioners who know how to demystify/simplify these new tools, will enable experts, educators and students to learn from each other regardless of where they are (classroom, school, university, city, country, etc.),” said Ms. Kulkarni. 

 

The National Association for Media Literacy Education, which works to explore opportunities and possibilities of 21^st Century learning technologies to transform both learning and teaching, states “Media literacy empowers people to be both critical thinkers and creative producers of an increasingly wide range of messages using image, language, and sound.  To become a successful student, responsible citizen, productive worker, or competent and conscientious consumer, individuals need to develop expertise with the increasingly sophisticated information and entertainment media that address us on a multi-sensory level, affecting the way we think, feel, and behave.” (1)

 

As new content is unveiled, Media Literacy education will become a higher priority for schools.  “Provide the right tools and environment for learning, and get out of the way. Innovation WILL happen. Let yourself be surprised and manage ‘loosely’,” said Kulkarni.   As educators, not only are we teaching about the importance of using technology as a tool for learning, we also play a significant role in preparing our students for future media trends.  What does (or should) media literacy look like in our classrooms today? 

“These megatrends should shape the education system to allow for a greater focus on ‘understanding’ and personal ‘discovery’ based on educational fundamentals.  These megatrends can enable more real-time, immersive learning experiences,” said Kulkarni. 

 

In COMPUTER EXPLORERS classes, we build knowledge and competencies in using media and technology through our Wikispace and Blogging curriculum for both students and educators.  "For kids, blogging represents a new way to not only write, but to create as well," says Karl Meinhardt of Educational Social Media (www.EdSoMe.com ). "With all the information and media available on the web today, a blog is the perfect way for young people to research, vet, and create a living project instead of just a static book report." 

Preschool children can use CE's e-TOTS portal to learn on-line without the intrusion of pop-ups.  In our after school programs we integrate technology and the arts with Music Producer, a software and portal for publishing music on-line to be judged by an international figure in music. 

 

Continuing the process into college and the workplace, universities are beginning to respond to the need for courses in social media marketing.  At the turn of the century, we could have not foreseen the need to have chat/blog managers and social media directors, but organizations are creating these positions…and more importantly, are hiring!  Results from a quick Internet search yielded 161 results for a Social Media Director from New York to California.  Course electives have changed over the last few years for a college student seeking a degree in Marketing to include courses such as Internet Marketing, Relationship Marketing and Media Communication.   

 

Megatrends in innovation will shift in the way we learn and communicate.   So get in your Jetson-mobile and enjoy the ride!

 

(1)    http://namle.net/publications/media-literacy-definitions/

 

Our reviews of toys that fly in this issue led us to some interesting questions. Here are some answers to the questions below and more!

What was the first flying toy?

How do you make a paper airplane?

How are most flying airplanes and helicopters powered?

Read More

 

Possibilities for Creativity and Learning

As the holidays approach, we would like to wish you and your family a heart-felt Happy Holiday season from COMPUTER EXPLORERS. This year has been filled with fantastic new and exciting educational opportunities. Our Holiday Suggestions for the coming season includes some of our new favorites. You will find SUPER software, AMAZING apps, WONDERFUL websites, a BLAST from the past, and one TOTALLY tech-free toy!

 

Software –Teacher’s Pet Pre-K Edition 2010 from SmartKids. This DVD-ROM or USB version includes our old favorites: Bailey’s Book House, Millie’s Math House, Sammy’s Science House & more. DVD-ROM WIN98/ME/XP/VISTA/Win7 loads to the Hard Drive; USB Drive version is designed for computers with or without CD-ROM drives. (Not Mac Compatible)

 

iPad Apps – Monster Mix & Match by Critical Matter, Cookie Doodle by Shoe the Goose, & Dr. Seuss’s ABC by Oceanhouse Media, Inc.

 

Websites – www.Starfall.com  where children have fun learning to read; www.jumpstart.com – a Jumpstart 3D Virtual World

 

Game – Rory’s Story Cubes – After we played with these no-tech story dice we knew our COMPUTER EXPLORERS friends would love them as much as we do!  Roll these nine dice and let the stories begin.  Great for home play or use as a SUPER travel toy! Use 4 dice for younger children (4/5’s).

 

 

Buckeitner Message

Dear Fellow Computer Explorers --

Last week, we had our annual Dust or Magic Institute, attended by both Computer Explorers' Cyndee Perkins and David Rhodes! It was an amazing three-day celebration of the latest children and technology, and we were able to fully explore two new motion-based gaming systems: Microsoft Kinect and Sony's Move. Kinect¹s ability to track a child¹s location and hand motions worked so well that it had a spooky feel to it, providing further evidence that computers and computing, as we once knew them, are blending into the woodwork. The technology behind Kinect, which costs $150 (if you already own an Xbox 360) is a good reminder that we're no longer "exploring computers." Instead, we're "exploring 21st century behaviors" that will empower the next generation of digitally empowered citizens.

 

For this month's LittleClickers, we discovered some wonderful resources to help children develop their sketching abilities. Besides Art Academy for the Nintendo DS, we¹ve discovered a wealth of free drawing tutorials on YouTube.

So pick up your analog pencil, and make your mark!

 

Warren Buckleitner, Ph.D.
Editor, Children's Technology Review

 

 

 

Taking time to encourage a child’s creativity can help manage holiday stress and excitement. Kerpoof.com offers art activities with a cool twist. You can also turn any picture you make on Kerpoof into a coloring page for off-line entertainment. (Our favorite non-art activity is “Spell a Picture.”)

When using the site with preschoolers, Kerpoof recommends:

At this age, Kerpoof is typically visited with an adult or older sibling. With their help, 3-5 year olds can usually navigate most of Kerpoof's activities. Kerpoof is a great way to build fine motor control and mouse skills and to foster creative thinking.

 

Go Online and SKETCH

Grab your pencils and visit these sites, which can help you learn the steps to drawing cartoons, faces and animals. Read More.

 

The parents of ninth-grade students at Montclair High School used to spend their evenings doing something they thought they had left behind long ago: homework!

 

Damion Frye, a former English teacher at Montclair, asked parents to read and comment on a variety of the students’ writing assignments. Some examples included a Franz Kafka story, Section 1 of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”, a speech given by Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, and a poem by Saul Williams, a poet, musician and rapper who lives in Los Angeles. The ninth graders completed their assignments during class; the parents wrote their responses on the teacher’s blog. Frye warned that if the parents did not participate, their child’s grade could suffer — a threat he fulfilled only once in the three years he had been making such assignments.

 

The point, he said, was to keep parents involved in their children’s education well into high school. Studies have shown that parental involvement improves the quality of the education a student receives. (As reported in the New York Times by Tina Kelley; Published: October 4, 2007). The National Coalition of Parental Involvement in Education reported when schools and families work together to support learning, everyone benefits

 

Students do better in school and in life.

• Parents become empowered.
• Teacher morale improves.
• Schools get better.
• Communities grow stronger.

Cyndee Perkins, COMPUTER EXPLORERS Corporate Blogger and Director of Curriculum Development, in a recent blog post, made a case for more parent involvement to encourage positive education reform.  When parents demonstrate through their actions that they value learning, their children will begin to value it as well.   It is monkey-see, monkey-do in a completely new light!!

 

Teachers and administrators inspire students to continue their education at home by providing them with the skills and confidence they need, in order to apply what they have learned in real-life situations.  Similarly, schools want parents to be an active participant in the at-home aspect of learning.  Mr. Frye certainly put an interesting twist on extending the learning at home.  So how can technology educators mirror parent involvement and student inspiration at home? 

 

Alice Brown, a COMPUTER EXPLORERS (CE) technology teacher in Sacramento, CA, has a Website to inform parents exactly what is happening in their student's classroom.  Knowing the content of the class allows parents to have meaningful conversations; instead of asking their child what they did at school that day and getting the usual response of "nothing” or a shoulder shrug,   parents can start a conversation with "I saw on the Website that you did (fill in the blank) in computer class today; what was that like?" or "I would like to know how to do that. Can you show me?"   “The use of technology is a real motivator for most students”, said Brown.  Parents can foster the child’s motivation by taking an active role in the child’s technology learning at home.  

 

COMPUTER EXPLORERS also helps the parents of its youngest learners to further the learning at home with the use of the CE Technology Club eTOTS in preschools and childcare centers.  Using a variety of criteria, such as age appropriateness, discovery learning, simple navigation and consistent operation, CE publishes a selection of recommended Websites for parents to use to explore reading, math, science, social studies, art or music with their children.  With the Technology Club, CE extends the technology and learning in its classes to a shared experience for parents and children at home. 

 

Deb Moorer, CE education consultant in Delaware, is using the Technology Club and eTOTS in the childcare centers where she offers programs.  “I feel parents will understand the value of technology classes at school if they can reinforce the programs at home,” said Moorer. “Parents can feel safe knowing the Websites have been approved for use by the whole family.”

 

COMPUTER EXPLORERS recently launched a new web site; with its blogs, videos and white papers, it is a great source of information for parents and educators alike.

Try to Remember the Kind of November

Nov. 1 National Authors Day and National Family Literacy Day

If your local school is not running a Family Reading Night, run one at home. Have each member of the family take turns reading aloud something that interests them and then discuss it.

Nov. 3 National Sandwich Day

Invent a new sandwich! Very brave parents may let their preschoolers tastebuds be the guide to new culinary delights. Spaghetti tacos, anyone?

Nov. 11 Veteran's Day

Visit http://www.patriotichelpinghands.com/veterancards.htmlto download cards that the whole family can decorate and send to Disabled Veterans in care facilities.

Nov. 14 World Kindness Day

Crayola has dedicated a page of its website to World Kindness Day. Coloring Pages, Craft Ideas and Activities are available at http://www.crayola.com/calendar/detail.cfm?event_id=96&year=2006

Nov. 17 Homemade Bread Day

Time to break out the flour, wash your hands and teach your child to knead!

Nov. 20 Universal Children's Day

This date marks the day on which the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, in 1959, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in 1989. Visit http://www.un.org/depts/dhl/children_day/ for more information about global initiatives that benefit children.

Buckleitner Message

A GEEK TEST: Everyone has a little geek inside them, but Computer Explorers and parents are a special lot. If you check more than four of the items below, take pride in the fact that you're a geek.

Treat yourself to a fresh new power strip.

HAVE YOU:

__ put two (or more) GPS devices in one car to compare their accuracy?

__ snuggled up under the covers with a nice warm power brick?

__ so many LEDs in your bedroom that you don¹t need a night light?

__ gone to a friend¹s house for dinner, and ended up running disk utilities to check for bad permissions?

__ chosen a hotel based on the availability of free Wi-Fi (by the pool)?

__ woken up with an ear bud in your nose?

__ noticed that the clerk at Radio Shack goes on break when you come in the door?

__ realized that you know the location of every power outlet in Newark's C Concourse?

__ been asked by your spouse to "put that thing away" during a dinner? (the thing being a gadget?)

__ ever asked a super market clerk what they think about the interface of their cash register?

__ ever asked the UPS guy to stay for a demo of the gadget he just delivered?

Did you check more than four? Yup, you're a geek.

Google Apps in the Classroom 
Once upon a time, there lived three high school girls. Amanda and her friends were working on a school project but they lived far away from each other. They decided to use Google Apps to work together: Gmail to contact each other, Google Docs to create their project, Google Books to find relevant books, and the Google Search Engine to find almost anything. Amanda and her friends worked diligently on their project, but then became sidetracked; they were having too much fun chatting with Google Talk and lost track of time. Suddenly the project was due in one hour and they had been talking all night. So the girls immediately stopped socializing, got back to work and submitted their project on time. They all lived happily ever after! The End. (Fictional story courtesy of YouTube).

Perhaps overnight cram sessions are not the image of time management we want to portray to tweens on completing projects, but Amanda and her friends are on to something in deciding to use Google Apps to get the job done. 


A quick summary of Google Apps: Google Apps is a collection of web-based programs and file storage that run in a web browser, without requiring users to buy or install software. Users can simply log in to the service to access their files and the tools to manipulate them. The offerings include communication tools (Gmail, Google Talk, and Google Calendar), productivity tools (Google Docs: text files, spreadsheets, and presentations), a personalized home page (iGoogle), and Google Sites (to develop web pages). The tools are free, or users can pay for a Premium Edition that adds more storage space and other features. Alternatively, an Education Edition includes most of the
extras in the Premium Edition and is offered at no cost to K-12 and higher education.

A compelling case is being made for Google Apps in the classroom for three reasons: saving money, boosting student performance and interest in technology-based activities, and preparing students for digital communication in the real world (1).


Jennifer Johnson, curriculum writer for COMPUTER EXPLORERS, is using Google Apps for a new Internet curriculum. "The Internet is a very fluid, always changing environment," said Johnson, "I chose to use Google Apps because, not only is it free for educational use (a huge plus in the current economic climate!), but Google is constantly updating and improving its products. "Google Sites is wiki-like in that students can work collaboratively on a web site project, offering feedback and instant gratification with template-based publishing that anyone with the most basic of skills can master. "One of our goals in using Google Apps for blogging and web site design is to encourage students to communicate digitally, learning to be concise, relevant and accurate in any postings they might make," said Johnson. 

Embracing Google Apps in the classroom can be easy. Teachers can utilize the Calendars app to help students plan their projects, reinforcing time-management in and out of the classroom as students work collaboratively to create their blogs or Websites. Students can use Google sites to manage a to-do list for their assignments, create a personal portfolio for their work, or collaborate and share ideas for group work and peer tutoring. (2) Teachers can also use Google Apps to have easy access to their colleagues on Google Talk, sign up for the computer lab using Google Calendar or collect assignments on line using Gmail or Google Docs.

COMPUTER EXPLORERS TechStars curriculum offers a CAD (computer-aided design) course using Google SketchUp. Google SketchUp links seamlessly with the detailed satellite images in Google Earth and students can place their ideas and designs in a 'real world' situation. "Starting with some simple tasks to understand SketchUp basics, children progress through a variety of activities covering sculpture, ancient monuments, and urban or rural renewal", states UK Franchisee Nicola Petty. Petty taught this class to a group of Gifted and Talented children aged 8-11 at Gretton Primary School in Gloucestershire. "They thoroughly enjoyed it and, as I'd hoped, found it challenging. It's a great curriculum AND uses a piece of free software!" said Petty.

The common theme of collaboration confirms the argument for classroom use of Google Apps. With Google Apps students are working in a 21^st Century environment, and are therefore being prepared for the current and future workforce.

(1)  Why Schools are Turning to Google Apps (http://mashable.com/2010/04/28/schools-google-apps/)
(2) Google Apps in the Classroom Google Teacher Academy New York November 18, 2008 Rita Zeinstejer Rosario, Argentina

Go online and learn these COOL TRICKS!

Want to impress your friends? Here are
some fun, easy-to-learn tricks, along with
sites and videos to help you learn them.
Some could even save your life!
Blow some giant bubbles. You’ll need a
bottle of glycerin (about $5), some Dawn dishwashing
detergent, and some water. along with some string, a stick or a hoop.

 

Read more...