mip's scan

Kerpoof

Well it is summer time, and I thought I'd lead off my return to blogging with a post for technology and kids.  My kids have been busy doing all sorts of good outdoor fun this summer: swimming, golfing, water parks.  After a day out and about they like to come home and crash with some indoor fun. 

I found this site for my children that they absolutely love and I wanted to share it with you all.  The site is Kerpoof and it brings together two of my favourite things:  technology and creativity.  Kerpoof allows children to create a number of things:

• pictures where they start with a background and drag & drop characters and props to create a scene.  The tool is intuitive enough to adjust items you drag into the scene in terms of size to give a sense of perspective & depth
• drawings where kids can freehand draw
• movies where they can use an interesting timeline tool to have objects, characters, and speech appear & move as time passes.  It is a great introduction for kids on how animation is done.  It uses a similar paradigm to other movie creation tools and serves as a good introduction for kids
• cards and stories that again allow them to leverage a variety of creative tools

What I found most interesting about Kerpoof, aside from the tools, is the social network aspect.  Children, once setup with an account (that is free), earn virtual coins that they can then use to buy other things, like different style pens for example.  The art work is made available for other users to see and other kids can rank your work, which also earns you points. 

I've watched my oldest and youngest, 10 and 6, both spend time on this site and thoroughly enjoy it.  They email me pieces of their work through the day and it is amazing to see the level of sophistication that can be achieved after "playing" with Kerpoof for a while.

If you are looking for a good destiniation to send your kids to on the web, be sure to check out Kerpoof. 

Is the Pen Mightier Than The Computer?

This post comes from watching my daughter use a new piece of tech.  It is called the Fly Fusion and basically, it is a pen with smarts.  To understand how it works (because this is not a review of than pen - that will come later once I shoot some video) check out their Fly World site.  Watching my daughter use this pen as she wrote on paper, but was capturing it into her computer, it got me thinking.

After all these years that computers have promised the paperless environment (homes, offices, schools, etc), we still have paper, and lots of it.  The computer promised it, but never got there.  The Tablet PC promised it, but that never really took off.  Could it be that perhaps we've been chasing the wrong the dream and shouldn't be striving for a paperless world?  Could it be that we need to embrace the 5000 year old technology we call paper?  Perhaps the future is not in desktop, laptop or palmtop computing, but rather, perhaps it is pentop computing?

Social Networking & Exploring Facebook

What is it about social networking that is so intriguing?  Why does it work?  Why are we drawn to it?  Why do young people seem to "get it" more so than older people? 

Those are question I've asked myself again and again at various times like when exploring other social networking phenomenons like mySpace or YouTube, Wallop from Microsoft or even blogging.  Why is it that it has such mass appeal?  Is it because we live in such a fast paced, spread-out society that we yearn to connect and do so online? Social networking has become such an important social trend that even consumer products like the Zune mp3 player from Microsoft have started to build it into the product and give it the tag line: Welcome to the Social. 

Again this question of the "why" came to me as I began to explore a new tool / site / social network that was suggested to me called Facebook.  That little badge you see at the top of this post is from Facebook - it updates my status for example dynamically as I change it.  The question is, why change it?  Why put anything into something like Facebook?  Let me tell you what I've experienced in the past few days.

A Cellphone Ring That Adults Can't Hear

In yesterday's podcast I spoke about a story where kids have been using a cell phone ring tone that is at a frequency that they can hear and many adults cannot hear.  I've gotten a dozen emails and a comment asking for the ring tone. 

Here is a link to the story.
And below is a link to the ring tone. 

Download 20060610_RINGTONE.mp3

Let me know if you could hear it or not.

Berkeley iTunes U Available to Everyone

I spoke about this early today in my weekly podcast but thought it was important enough to post about it today as well, especially for those who are only readers of mip's scan.  Somewhile back Apple created this concept of iTunes U that would allow universities to create sites within iTunes where students could subscribe to podcasts of lectures.  A number of univerisities have been doing it but Berkeley has now made this available to everyone. 

ACCESS & DOWNLOAD COURSES on your computer or MP3 player
LISTEN TO EVENTS about the Arts, Education, Politics, Science and Technology
BE CONNECTED with what's happening at UC Berkeley

This is really great.  In my book, anything that let's content "travel" (and by that I mean sets it free, you know, makes it widely available) is a good thing.  I liked the wide range of faculties you could tune into, everything from Computer Science, Engineering through to the the Arts.  Within each of the faculties the number of courses is a bit sparse but that will grow over time no doubt.  In the courses that are listed and that I sampled, there were lots of lectures to listen to. 

I really think this type of thing will transform education and I'll be interested to see what universities in Canada do with this type of thing.  As well, I'd love to hear from any students who may have actually augmented their year with this type of content.

To check it out, just click here and follow the link from Berkeley's page which will launch iTunes for you.

Today's Kids and the Importance of Highspeed

Here is an excerpt from a conversation I had with my 8 year old two nights ago.

"I'm going crazy dad!"
"Why is that love?"
"We have to get high speed internet here. Somhow."
"They don't offer it here love."
"I can't Google anything without having to dial the phone.  And my BrainPop site sucks using the phone."

-------------------

Sigh.  What's a dad to do?  Especially a tech-dad like me.  I share my daughter's despair.  You see, when we moved we got lots of space, having moved into a farmhouse.  Acres for the kids to run around, quiet in the evenings, perfect dark nights to see the millions of stars.....and no highspeed internet access.  Bell....sorry not yet.  Rogers...sorry not available in your area.  Look Communication...sorry no line of sight.  So it was back to dial-up.  For me it was like losing a limb.  What surprised me though was the impact it would have on my kids. I mean I use the internet constantly, it's a part of my job, but what I realized was that our children (and I'll speak more generally as well, meaning, this generation of kids) view the internet as part of the fabric of their everyday lives.  Internet to them is like telephone to my generation. 

I can see how for kids like my 8 year old, the web is part of their link into entertainment (e.g., buying music from iTunes), information (e.g., using Google to do school research), socialization (e.g, using instant messaging to keep in touch with distant family & her friends) and general way of doing things.  There is no seperation I noticed between kids and the Internet - it is like an extension of their minds.  I saw this when I was running the Youth Technology Camp that I started for kids.  They'd be working on some assignment I'd given them and be multi-tasking several other things, like searching for stuff, and carrying on a conversation or two online.  Quite often if I'm having a conversation with someone and my daughter hears me say "I'm not sure..." or "I don't know..." she'll say very naturally "Just Google it dad." 

Upon seeing this even more clearly, it now makes me realize how important it is to get good highspeed internet connectivity for kids.  I think the project One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is awesome. It recognizes the importance of not having large numbers of the next generation of kids disadvantaged because they never had access to a PC.  You can get more info on that project here.  As great as this project is, though, I think we need to go further.  There needs to be something like Broadband For All Children (BFAC - there I created my own acronym).  Otherwise it'd be like giving people a bunch of phones with no way to call beyond their street. 

As for me - my search for good (fair cost with acceptable levels of both upload and download speeds) highspeed access continues. 

iPod - Go To The Head of the Class

You gotta love this.  Seems that the iTune's application has added a new partner to the Music Store.  Say hello to iTune U and the U is for University.

Tunes U is a free, hosted service for colleges and universities that provides easy access to your educational content, including lectures and interviews 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Boy I wish I'd had something like that back in university....oh wait, there was no web yet when I was in university.  Seriously thought, Click, Sync,  Learn.  I like it.  Kind of reminds me of the youth technology camp I'd started where the motto was Play - Learn - Dream.

It is this type of thing, the proliferation of more & more content, that will continue to make the iPod the device of choice. 

Get all the details by clicking here.  As well, check out how the University of Michigan is leveraging iTunes U.

Teaching Kids to Program

My eight year old loves computers.  She spends time with me exploring tech, she's built her own robots and programmed them, she use multimedia tools to create video and finds all kinds of interesting online sites geared towards kids.

Have you wanted to expose your kids to the art of programming but weren't sure how?  Try Bitman's Place.  It's geared I would say for kids between 8 and 13 and it introduces computing concepts through an entertaining game environment.  My daughter loves sites like BrainPop and this site is created on par.  It uses Flash so it does  a good job of integrating the content within an entertaining media setting. 

If you have your children check this site out, I'd love some feedback on what you thought and more importantly, how your kids found the experience.