Udacity Founders

Dr. Thrun recognized the power of technology to deliver his course content to over 160,000 students who signed up for his online artificial intelligence course at Stanford University. Dissatisfied with traditional lecture techniques at most higher education institutions, Dr. Thrun started Udacity. Learn more about Udacity or enroll in an upcoming course. Homeschoolers, the Introduction to Computer Science course might be fun–it lasts just seven weeks and assumes no previous computer programming experience.

Udacity

CodeAcademy is a new, free, online learning platform specifically for learning computer programming. It is so easy to get started with CodeAcademy, you might not realize that you’re learning as you begin using the site. The best asset CodeAcademy possesses is its ease of use. I challenge you to sit your 9 year-old down in front of CodeAcademy and let her rock it. She will. It is that easy to get started.

Check out Cloudhackz.com to learn more.

Cell phones were not available when I was growing up. The single rotary phone we did own hung inconspicuously on the wall near the kitchen. I never gave much thought to the phone other than to find out what the weather forecast was for the following day. Anyone else remember doing that as a child? We lived in the northeastern part of the U.S., and as kids, prayed for snow so that the school would close and we’d be free to ride our sleds, make snow men and have snow ball battles.

Now, I don’t even own a landline phone, and everyone in my family owns a phone, including my 9 year-old. But, does the 9 year-old really need a phone? Actually, we decided to give him a phone for safety reasons. Several times, he’s participated in very large performances and gotten lost in the crushing crowd without any way to contact us or find us. More recently, he wandered down a grocery isle by himself while shopping with me and was approached by a man who seemed to have questionable intentions. Luckily, my son ran away and found me. Yet another time, he found himself in the middle of a fight among several boys. Luckily, I happened upon the situation before it escalated further. But what if he wasn’t so lucky? What if I wasn’t nearby? Now, he can call 911.

Interestingly, even the cell basic phones these days have nice touch screens, fun games, and cool ring tones. So, my son’s cell phone, unlike the family phone that hung in my childhood kitchen, is cool. He even uses it to set reminders and alarms. He doesn’t really have anyone to call except his relatives, so he doesn’t use very many minutes. Also, he does not have internet access on his phone, so there is no expensive data plan.

For us, a few dollars per month is well worth the connectivity it brings to our family. What about you? Does your child have a cell phone?

There has been a bit of negative rants about the new LEGO Friends line of LEGO kits, a LEGO line targeted squarely at girls. Many parents are ranting because these LEGO kits are girly. Pink and lavender dominate the colorscape in these kits. Themes are mostly light and domestic – think café and beauty salons. Mini-figures are more doll-like than LEGO-like.  LEGO has spent millions of dollars and years of research to decide that girls want pink and purple LEGO kits with doll-like figures?

As much as I dislike the idea of making ‘girl’ LEGO kits with stereotypical roles suited to the 1950′s, I informally polled women and children and found that many would actually like to have these kits.  Many young girls really gravitate to pink and beauty products. Do girls innately prefer this kind of stuff or have they been conditioned by media (TV, magazines, consumer products) to want them? I don’t know. I was really on the fence about these kits until I read a rant on Gizmodo by Jesus Diaz.

Jesus turns the argument upside down by taking a popular Friends kit and making a cool space ship. I think he may have hit upon exactly what LEGO was thinking when it decided to market to girly girls. Girly girls will initially be attracted by the pretty colors and doll-like figures but then discover that building stuff is fun. With a girly girl’s interest in building piqued, she goes on to expand beyond the Friends line to build other LEGO kits like LEGO City. Check out Jesus’s article and let me know what you think.

Gizmodo Girl-LEGO article

Happy New Year.

A new year is always an opportunity to look ahead with optimism.  Everyone can make a positive impact on our lives and world.  Whether or not we actually make (and follow-through on) new year’s resolutions, here are five bold learning ideas that challenge the status quo in ‘education’. Embrace all or just one of these ideas in the new year and embrace the natural curiosity within your children.

1.  Make Learning Fun. Is there something you enjoy doing so much that when you are doing it, you lose track of time? What if we could get kids to feel this way about learning? Every child I have ever polled has said they dislike school. Most would choose learning at home. Figure out what it is that our children really love to do (and don’t pass judgement). If your little boy enjoys comic books more than anything else on the planet, go with it. Beside the many learning opportunities that stem from comic books, children in charge of their own learning dig deeper naturally. They’ll learn about history, writing, telling a story, good vs. evil, artwork, reading, research, and so much more. Relax. Trust your child’s passion. Make Learning Fun.

2. Play with Toys. Kids almost never associate ‘school’ with toys or play. Toys are fun and school is a chore. Imagine changing that association children have with learning by allowing them to play with their toys as part of their learning landscape. Be careful not to overly structure the learning opportunities that come from incorporating toys into learning. Physics, story writing, stop-motion animation videos, math, and even history are presented in a fun, non-threatening, toy-based way. Make bar graphs out of toy cars, sorted by color. Build a Rube Goldberg device out of toys and household items. Launch tiny action figures in a home-made seltzer rocket. Recreate the scene of a favorite book using dolls, stuffed animals, and accessories. Use your imagination and bring those toys into the learning arena!

3. Ditch the Curriculum. Fact-based, memorization-focused, drill and kill, fill in the blank, multiple choice, and other worksheet-based curriculum materials are B-O-R-I-N-G. Even adults dislike this kind of learning. Trust your child to lead the way and the curriculum (if you can call it that) will develop naturally. For example, a field trip to a historic village left an impact on little Jennie. She learned that her last name is a word from the time of the Vikings. Is she descended from Vikings? Who are the Vikings? Where did they live? How might she learn more? Now, a curious child with a personal connection to history is on a mission. She is researching, reading, discussing, mapping, drawing, and writing about Vikings. Perhaps she learns about the Viking navigational methods and tools, learns to make some of the same navigational calculations, seeks information about weather factors that affected Viking navigation and the ocean currents and prevailing winds they harnessed. Did the Vikings navigate using the sun and stars? The possibilities for learning from a simple connection are endless. Expose children to many things. Find something they connect with personally. Give them support as they launch their own learning journey built around a quest for knowledge. Ditch the dusty old worksheet and bring learning to life!

4. Tolerance. Why is tolerance in this list? Of all the things we can learn, learning to understand and accept others who are different from us is the most innately human. Without tolerance, we continue to live in a world filled with hate and violence. Without tolerance, we spend too much time drawing lines, defending our ideas, and fighting over stuff. If we embrace tolerance, we have more time for building bridges, relationships, and friendship. Immigration, terrorism, religious extremism, and economic disparity are very real issues. Share tolerant perspectives with children so that they can build bridges, relationships, and friendships that will extinguish the hate that fuels these issues. Otherwise, we risk perpetuating hate, poverty, distrust, and war.

5. Share. There are so many ways kids can learn from sharing. Sharing toys, food, clothes, ideas, time and anything else of value not only enriches a child’s sense of self but also instills empathy. Lack of empathy has been linked to bullying in schools. Sharing a toy with another child at the playground might lead to a new friendship. Sharing an idea with other youth around the world through a TEDx youth event might inspire other kids to share their ideas. Help children learn that by sharing, they are influencing their world in a positive way.

Happy Holidays to all of our loyal readers. We’re looking forward to another great year of sharing learning resources with you.

Enjoy these past posts for ideas on extending the fun from holiday gifts, especially if those gifts include LEGO or Apple devices.

1. LEGO Creator – Creative Building Ideas Using Existing Bricks
2. Musical Instruments on the iPod touch
3. Riddle Game with QR Code Reader
4. Favorite iPod touch Apps for Smart Kids
5. iPad in the Homeschool

Photo courtesy of Henri Sivonen Creative Commons licensed

MIT is following Stanford University’s lead by offering certificates for collections of free, online courses like those already available through MIT Open Courseware. Learn more about how MIT is changing the face of higher education

Photo by Travis Vance, Creative Commons Licensed

There has been growing criticism that K-12 STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education in the United States is insufficiently preparing students for college and the workforce. Teachers interested in revamping their curriculum with live demonstrations of scientific phenomena may wish to consider demonstrating basic principles of physics and chemistry by making a lemon battery for their class. Having dynamic demonstrations which exemplify foundational knowledge will help students down the road in their masters degree pursuits. One of the simplest ways to do so is allowing students to build their personal lemon batteries to learn about how circuits work.

The procedure for constructing a lemon battery is both simple and inexpensive:

1. Acquire two small steel rods, two small copper rods, some thin copper wire, a small flashlight light bulb, and two lemons.
2. Gently squeeze the lemon to loosen up juices inside. Be sure to leave the peel intact.
3. Insert one steel rod and one copper rod into each lemon.
4. Connect one copper rod to a steel rod on the other lemon by wrapping the copper wire around each rod.
5. Connect the remaining copper road to the light bulb and then to the steel rod on the other lemon.

A benefit of this simple experiment is that it demonstrates multiple scientific principles in one easy-to-understand format. The operation itself, for instance, demonstrates how batteries and circuits work. The acid inside the lemon juice reacts with the two different types of metal inserted into the lemon. This reaction leads to electrons building up on the rods and a charge being produced. This charge is what is stored in batteries from a similar reaction between acids and metals.

When you connect these charged rods to something such as a light bulb and  complete the circuit, electrons are allowed to flow across the wires. This electron flow is manifested into electricity and enables the bulb to give off light.

Teachers can also use this to teach about certain kinds of chemical reactions and how they produce electric charges. Chemistry or physics teachers could even make the procedure a lab for the entire class to complete in addition to a demonstration. For instance, one can demonstrate the difference between an open and closed circuit by removing one of the wires and observing that the light no longer functions because the electricity has stopped flowing. Being able to watch this occur firsthand may foster better comprehension in students.

This lemon battery experiment can be a great tool in teaching any or all of the above principles. Assembling this lemon battery costs less than ten dollars and can foster curiosity and greater understanding in students of all ages. This is a simple yet effective demonstration for science teachers looking to bypass outdated textbooks.

By Elaine Hirsch

Elaine Hirsch is kind of a jack-of-all-interests, from education and history to medicine and video games. This makes it difficult to choose just one life path, so she is currently working as a writer for various education-related sites and writing about all these things instead.

Hosting hackerspaces in libraries might seem odd, but libraries are and have always been central to all sorts of learning. Hackerspaces are becoming increasing popular, so it makes sense that a respected institution such as public libraries bring maker tools to everyone.  Everything from mold injection machines to 3D printers are taking up residence in some libraries.

In the Fayetteville Free library in upstate New York, Librarian Lauren Smedley won a grant and received funding on Indi Go Go for creating a hackerspace. The Fabulous Laboratory, as this hackerspace is called, will occupy over 8,000 square feet of space that was once owned by a furniture manufacturer. Although some might wonder how hackerspaces fit into a library, I can’t think of a better place to house one.  The Fayetteville library already has video gaming stations, iPads available for check-out, and Skype sessions with authors so a hackerspace fits nicely.

Learn more about hackerspaces in libraries

Related library articles

• My Wish for Public Libraries
• Public Libraries and Education
• The Public Library as a School

Child’s Own Studio hand crafts stuffed toys based on your child’s drawings. The examples on the Child’s Own Studio website show that no matter how crazy-looking the drawing seems, a cute, creative, and beautiful toy emerges.  This is such a great idea that I wonder how Child’s Own Studio will keep up with demand as the word gets out on this unique toy.

Prices range between 60 and 130 Canadian Dollars, but you can email Child’s Own Studio for a quote based on your picture. Unfortunately, it is too late to order one for the holiday season as Child’s Own Studio isn’t taking any more orders until January 2012.  I can imagine all sorts of reasons to have a child’s drawing made into a cuddly stuffed toy.  Here are a few I like

1. Create a nightmare-deflecting character. The stuffed toy made from a protective creature drawing might just help keep the nightmares at bay.

2. Have one of these made for a child who is ill or  hospitalized.

3. Have siblings create drawings for each other.

4. Have your child create a drawing from a memorable vacation or trip and create a stuffed toy as a “souvenir”.

5. Create math, science, history, or literature based characters for a fun way to extend enthusiasm for a child’s favorite learning topic.