Lil' Techies

Tori Spelling (actress, reality TV star) has opened a Twitter account for her 3-year old. She is actually getting a lot of grief for this, possibly because she has made it available to the public (and the fact that he is not actually writing the tweets, but they are written in his name).

I think it’s a great idea–kids are so funny at that age and documenting their cuteness never hurt anyone! Beyond that, I started to think of how Twitter could be useful for older children in a controlled and parent-monitored environment.

• An account for kids would have to be kept “private”.
• The email address given to Twitter would have to be a parent’s address so that “follow” requests could be monitored.
• If grandma, grandpa, mom or dad are also using Twitter, the followers could be limited to these people.
• To keep the child’s interest, followers would need to be supportive, such as responding to their tweets and writing directly to the child.

Possible Concerns

• The trending topics might not always be age-appropriate
• Spammers could still @ your child’s account
• Hackers

My kids will spend an entire car trip hooked up to DVD players, iPods or gaming devices if I let them. This seems to be typical of Generation Z, who are digital natives born in the age of on-demand entertainment. I actually took time during our latest trip to teach them how to look out the window.

To encourage them to window-watch, I used technology in advance of the trip. We sat down and searched Google Images for things they might see on their upcoming travels, like silos, lakes, windmills, and cityscapes. I printed out these pages for them to color when we saw one and make a little booklet for them.

For other ideas on using the Internet to encourage non-tech travel, try MomsMinivan.com:101 Car Game and Road Trip Activities.

I know this to be true as my boys have developed a very large vocabulary from the exciting adventures of Batman and Astro Boy. They are also inspired in their play by the magical world of superheroes, fantasy and adventure! NPR talks about it today as well:

Enrich Your Nerd Power: What Kids Learn From Comics
http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2010/04/it_pays_to_enrich_your_nerd_po_1.html?sc=fb&cc=fp

The Kaiser Family Foundation released a report, Generation M2: Media in the lives of 8-18 year olds, showing that 24 hour media access (cable kids stations, home video games, cell phones, social networking, etc.) has dramatically increased the time 8-18 year olds spend with technology (about 10 hours a day!!).

I use a laptop and am often sitting on the couch “browsing” while the boys are nearby coloring, playing games or watching me “browse”. At the times when the boys are watching me surf the net, I alter my searching a bit to include things that might interest them, for example, doing an image search in Google for “Rhino” or other superheros.

In these browsing sessions, I like to think the kids are little sponges soaking in all the capabilities of the Internet as they watch me move around the web. Using the philosophy of teaching by modeling, the kids are learning:

• To use the keyboard
• That the Internet has a wealth of resources on every topic
• How to form a search string
• Basic internet literacy (links, images, searching, URLs, videos)
• About different media sources (images, video, audio)
• Pearl growing (moving from resource to resource based on new material gleamed from the different resources)
Reference

Haston, W. (2007). Teacher Modeling as an Effective Teaching Strategy: Modeling Is a Technique that Can Help Your Students Learn Effectively in Many Situations. Music Educators Journal, 93(4): 26.

One of our favorite Christmas presents this year was Super Mario Brothers for the Wii. This is the first game of its kind that lets gamers play in the same world, at the same time (if you have 2 remotes). In multiplayer mode, both of my kids can run through Mario land as a team.

Even though many fights have erupted between the brothers for not collaborating properly, multiplayer mode has the potential to teach team-building and collaboration:

1. Cooperation
   To get the most coins, the players must work together. This means that they must cooperate and make plans outside of Marioland. For example, one player can say to the other, “you get the coins on the top, I’ll get the coins on the bottom”. Time is saved and both players get the benefits.
2. Courtesy
   If one player runs ahead too far, the other player will die. As a courtesy, the faster player usually waits for the other player to catch up before high tailing it to the next adventure.
3. Teaching
   In our case, one of our players is more advanced (the 6 year old) than the other (the 4 year old). In order for their partnership to work, the more experienced player must instruct the other player on what to do, how to do it and why.
4. Helping
   One thing my two lil’ players have discovered is that they can help each other. When time is running out, the better player lets the less experienced player hop on his back and carries him along to finish the board.
5. Team Work
   The brothers are a team. Like it or not, what one does affects the other. The players learn that they are dependent on each other and that they will win or lose together.
6. Decision-making
   In Marioland, everything happens quickly so there isn’t much time for making decisions, but in multiplayer mode, this gives kids a chance to make decisions together.

Here is a list of more cooperative games for the Wii.