Merianna and I are excited to let you know that Baby H (name to be disclosed later) will be joining our family on August 1, 2023!
We’re looking forward to meeting this new little human very soon!
Religion, Ecotheology, and Consciousness
Merianna and I are excited to let you know that Baby H (name to be disclosed later) will be joining our family on August 1, 2023!
We’re looking forward to meeting this new little human very soon!
He says “the idea of limiting screen time to the two hours a day of ‘quality educational screens’ is really a vestige of the television era that doesn’t apply today,” when kids do homework online and use tablets in school.
— Read on www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2018/08/24/fortnite-habit-kid-problem
Last night, my six year old daughter started playing Minecraft on my Windows desktop. She was clumsy with the keyboard / mouse combination that a desktop Minecraft experience requires. Telling her that “W” moves your character forward, and “S” backwards while you use your mouse to pan and active click (oh, and spacebar to hop) was interesting to process.
But she did it. And within a few minutes, she was flipping into her inventory (by pressing “E”) and back out with the right door or fence or block that she needed to build her underground home.
I tried to stand back and let her do her thing without acting like I wanted to build for her. But I knew I had to. I want her to learn how to use a keyboard.
Pro-Tip: I learned how to use a keyboard and type in the early 90’s working on my IBM clones and playing classic games like 1993’s Star Wars X-Wing and 94’s Tie Fighter.
These games did more for my keyboarding (and eventual programming) skills than any typing class in school that I had to take.
I want the same for my children, and I hope they realize the inherit power of a keyboard over an onboard software keyboard experience via iPhone, iPad etc.
Of course, I may be wrong. But I don’t think so.
In my mind, Seth Godin nails it…
Many people are quietly giving away one of the most powerful tools ever created—the ability to craft and spread revolutionary ideas. Coding, writing, persuading, calculating—they still matter. Yes, of course the media that’s being created on the spot, the live, the intuitive, this matters. But that doesn’t mean we don’t desperately need people like you to dig in and type.
The trendy thing to do is say that whatever technology and the masses want must be a good thing. But sometimes, what technology wants isn’t what’s going to change our lives for the better.
She is reading along with the book portion, watching the embedded videos and recording her voice as the narrator. It’s really something to observe. Then she dips into the coloring book part of the app where she colors on the iPad while describing the scene from the book she just read.
I’m hopeful that books she reads and interacts with in school will capture her imagination in the same way.
If not, our “one size fits all” edu system is doomed.
Mary Hudson painted a few of the pages on the The Princess and the Frog Read-Along for iPad app and figured out that she could mail them to me…
Not bad for a 3 year old.
From one of my students, Jesseca about another one of my students who fell ill this week…
Tree Frog Science: “These stories show us that hope can go a long way and can be exhibited in many forms. Meredith deserves our hope and our support every waking moment, so I challenge you. All of you 8th graders, and any other griffins or friends alike, to take a stand and join me in folding a thousand cranes to send to Meredith to remind her that even though we are not physically with her, we are with her in spirit.”
Let’s fold cranes indeed.