Daniel makes stuff, and, in his spare time, writes about things like movies, kid culture, and geek stuff.
Research Methods, Statistics, and Video Games

Or, Why You Shouldn’t Necessarily Trust What “The Research” Says About Things.

Mar 11, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Talk about Pressure

Only The Onion would have a headline like this: “Autistic child ruins marriage he was born to save.”

Mar 11, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Building a Better Teacher

“If we do’t change the personnel, all we’re doing is changing the chairs.”

A challenging, in-depth look from the New York Times Magazine at what it will really take to get better teachers into the classroom.

Mar 11, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Why Most Education Reform Fails

Marion Brady, for Truthout:

Washington Post headline, February 18, 2010: “Lawmakers to launch bipartisan effort to rewrite No Child Left Behind.”

Reading that headline, teachers familiar with the King James Bible are likely to recall one of Jesus’ parables as quoted by Luke: “Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the ditch?”

Mar 11, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Are Kids Destined to Grow Up With Tablets?

Fast Company magazine, on Penguin’s recent demo of how they intend to use the iPad for revolutionizing books:

The iPad and its forthcoming tablet competition absolutely have the potential to become indispensable tools for children, replacing books with interactive, connected apps. And in the process, kids become indoctrinated with technology, adopting to new interfaces and developments easily due to early exposure to, well, the iPad Spot the Dog app. This is the way the world is moving, with younger and younger kids learning their way around technology, and the tablet may be the most important gadget category of this generation.

Mar 10, 2010 :: Tagged under: , :: #

Coburn Said Yes.

After dozens of activists held out for 262 hours outside the Oklahoma City office of Senator Tom Coburn, a compromise was reached today that — barring any holds placed by other Senators — should allow the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act to pass the full Senate later this week.

The Oklahoma Hold Out gained enormous local press coverage, putting pressure on Senator Coburn’s staff to negotiate a solution to the legislative impasse. Starting with just 30 committed young people, it grew to over 70 and continued to gain momentum.

Talk about the power of young people to change the world. Rock on, kids.

Mar 09, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Matt Legend Gemmell on iPad Application Design

Once and for all: It’s not just an “oversized iPod touch.”

The essence of the new opportunities on iPad is that this class of device is a natural home not just for the viewers and small utilities we’ve seen on our phones, but also for creators and editors as we see on desktop platforms. Productivity applications, and sophisticated workflows. There are entire genres of applications which haven’t been truly feasible on an iPhone OS device until now; this is an opportunity to literally pioneer a high-profile touch-screen version of those applications.

Gemmell gets a bit technical – he’s writing for app makers, after all – but it strikes me very much that he’s putting the flesh onto the bones of Steven Frank’s earlier, excellent essay about Old World vs. New World computing. Frank lays out a case for how the iPad represents a fresh new ideology of computing, and Gemmell shows us what that ideology looks like, so to speak.

Mar 05, 2010 :: Tagged under: , :: #

Tony DiTerlizzi's New Middle-Grade Book Series

It’s about a girl raised by robots. How awesome is that?

Mar 04, 2010 :: Tagged under: , :: #

NPR: New Trend Shows Kids Snacking Every Few Hours

Mmm, snacks.

Mar 03, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

"A Souped-up Picture Book"

Thoughts from Christopher Harris on what Apple’s iPad might mean for school libraries and the future of children’s reading.

The critical question for me right now is whether […] children would select a traditional, printed volume or a digitally enriched electronic version. Not what we would select, but what our students would choose. We know children aren’t born with the love and respect we have for print books; consider volumes from your own collection, which young ones have drawn in, gnawed upon, or otherwise destroyed. So why are we often so intent on imposing our preferences on our students?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Apple iPad since, well, long before it was announced – and the possibilities for how it will revolutionise literacy are immense. More relevantly, I don’t think any of us really know how kids are going to interact with the device, and what it will be like to grow up reading digitally. I’ve taken a few stabs at pondering this future (including in the Talkback for Christopher’s post, and a few unfinished essays about it), but I always stop myself short simply due to the awesome, far-reaching potential.

It’s fascinating to think about, and I don’t think we’re giving near enough prescience to to the quiet revolution that is about to take place.

Mar 02, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Psychology Today Interviews Walker Lamond

Maybe you remember him – he’s the guy that penned the great blog/book, 1001 Rules for My Unborn Son. Melissa Blake interviews Walker for Psychology Today magazine, and I always love hearing his thoughts: it’s this perhaps unknowing social-psychological commentary that he offers, this analysis of the implicit assumptions and expectations we make of children and childhood in society – externalised as rules – that really gives me lots to chew on.

Of course, I also liked his answer to this question:

How do you think sons of today differ from the sons of your generation?

I actually don’t think boys change all that much. The idea that “kids today” don’t measure up to their dads and grandfathers is the lament of every generation. Really, it’s the environment we live in that has changed. It’s not kids’ fault that they didn’t grow up on a farm or can’t play after dark in their neighborhood. So parents just have to work harder to create those opportunities. In the old days, you couldn’t go outside until you did your homework. Maybe now you can’t do your homework until after you’ve gone outside.

Feb 24, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

"The Internet Will Make You Smarter"

A survey of 895 web users and experts found that more than three-fourths of respondents believe the Internet is improving people’s reading, writing and “the rendering of knowledge.”

Fascinating perspectives here:

[The study] was prompted in part by an August 2008 cover story in the Atlantic Monthly by technology writer Nicholas Carr headlined: “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

Carr suggested in the article that heavy use of the Web was chipping away at users’ capacity for concentration and deep thinking. Carr, who participated in the survey, told the authors he still agreed with the piece.

“What the ‘Net does is shift the emphasis of our intelligence away from what might be called a meditative or contemplative intelligence and more toward what might be called a utilitarian intelligence,” Carr said in a release accompanying the study. “The price of zipping among lots of bits of information is a loss of depth in our thinking.”

But Craigslist founder Craig Newmark said, “People are already using Google as an adjunct to their own memory.

“For example, I have a hunch about something, need facts to support and Google comes through for me,” he said in the release.

I’m with Craig on this one; being able to pull out my iPhone and do a quick Google search or pull up Wikipedia has profoundly changed the types of information I bother remembering. I don’t remember who said it (ha, case-in-point), but: “It’s not how much information you can remember, but it’s what you do with that information that matters.”

In that sense, the exact opposite of what Carr suggests is true (at least for me): The Internet has actually freed me from worrying about the superfluous to allow me to engage in those “bigger picture” things that do require concentration and deep thinking.

Feb 21, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

The Marshmallow Test for Future Achievement?

Continuing with the testing craziness, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman debunk an experiment that supposedly predicts a kid’s future success based on whether or not they can hold off eating a marshmallow.

What I’ve always wondered about this study, though: what if the kid just doesn’t like marshmallows?

Feb 21, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

The New Child-Testing Craze

The latest from “Nurtureshock” authors Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman.

Feb 21, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

J.K. Rowling's Being Sued for Plagiarism Again

Some great insights into how children’s book authors, like Rowling, create their literary worlds – and why it’s the execution, not the ideas, that matters.

One of my favourite bits, appreciable by creators of every ilk:

“People who aren’t accustomed to having a lot of ideas of their own have a very poor grasp of the odds that others might independently come up with the same ideas.”

(Via the Children’s Bookshelf.)

Feb 20, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

"Don't Make Me Come Back There While I'm Driving!"

Always fun stuff happening over at the New York Times’ Motherlode Blog. This issue: “Parents Say the Darndest Things.”

Via Well Versed Mom.

Feb 19, 2010 :: Tagged under: , :: #

"Judgy Horseshit" and the Kid- and Parent-Haters

In retrospect, I was apparently far too tame in my response to Details Magazine’s “Is your kid a douchebag?” article.

To compensate, Kelly Hogaboom has the “modern, earnestly-tries parent who’s sick of the Hate” perspective down. She delightfully unravels some of the more absurd generalisations of the Details Magazine piece – and the countless others that have gone before it – and she (fairly) calls foul on its general lack of truthiness.

I know what you’re thinking: Why fuss? It’s a blip on the screen. Yet, I see so much of this sort of thing: an author inexpert on the topic, gathering up a bunch of “authorities” to make a bunch of sweeping claims about Parents and Kids Today, as if today’s parenting culture was a monolith of Borg-like assholes going through the motions, rather than a complex, heavily nuanced series of mores, values, and traditions being fought in the trenches by, you know, real people.

I think that’s just it. Kelly’s response calls out the damaging nature of our society’s apparent infatuation with so-called “Experts” and authority figures who tell us how we’re getting our kids’ lives “wrong” – and it highlights the need for us to acknowledge the overwhelming complexities of parenting (cf. Ayelet Waldman’s “Bad Mother”).

Very rarely is anything in this life simple… and I would say that the Parent-Child relationship is about the furthest thing yet from that.

Feb 19, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

"Are You Raising a Douchebag?"

That’s what Details Magazine is asking you … but admittedly, the entire question seems oddly familar.

Over-indulgent parenting, kids-need-parents-not-buddies, don’t spawn hipster douchebags… bla bla bla. I’m going to go out on a limb and say we have heard it all before. Many times.

To be fair, there’s actually a decent level of fair-minded reporting within this latest backlash-against-helicopter-parenting article, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s one on top of a whole heap of similar articles – and you have to wonder when it’ll stop. Perhaps more prudent than this endless stream of criticism, it’s important we keep a bit of perspective when raging against these “awful, uncaring” parents.

Why? Because, quite simply, there aren’t as many overindulgent, douchebag-raising helicopter parents out there as you may think.

I recently revisited an old 2006 article entitled “Baby Einstein Vs. Barbie,” by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman (authors of the excellent new book “Nurtureshock”); in it – and in their followup piece – Bronson and Merryman found that the media elite wildly overportrayed this type of helicopter parenting when reporting about the problems of the typical American family. They point to one crucial factor often overlooked by the media in the discussion: that is, quite simply, social class. To a large degree, Bronson and Merryman argue, the helicopter parenting problems are only problems of the highly affluent – those who can afford the outrageously expensive birthday parties and have the luxury of buying $400 Marc Jacobs hoodies for their kids. That might certainly include those who fall into Details magazine’s readership – but it sure as heck doesn’t necessarily include everyone else. As Bronson and Merryman write: “Most families in America aren’t doing too much for their children. They’re doing everything they can, and it’s just barely enough.”

While it’s great to be aware and mindful of the sociological issues surrounding parenting, it’s crucial we also be smart about them and view things with a bit of perspective.

If you wonder how these facts can so often get misrepresented, remember what Claude Fisher said. He’s a Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley. “A social trend is whatever is happening to a newspaper editor and the editor’s friends.” […]

The media needs a reality check. Mountains are being made of molehills. This new paranoia that we’re all smothering our kids is a myth.

– Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman

Feb 19, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , , , :: #




President Obama's Role as Father-in-Chief

There will always be fires to put out – and no matter our work or its importance, there will always be a point where we need to check back in with our real values and priorities.

I think it speaks volumes about his character and wisdom that President Obama maximises the flexibility of his office to structure his work around what’s ultimately far more longstanding – family.

Feb 18, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

The Fantastic Truth of Calvin and Hobbes

Nevin Martell (author of the recent book, “Looking for Calvin and Hobbes”):

We still love Calvin and Hobbes because it manages to make imagination real – and that is a rare thing indeed.

Feb 17, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Momlogic Interviews Lee Unkrich

Lee Unkrich – director of the upcoming Pixar film “Toy Story 3” – was kind enough to partake in this interview with the site Momlogic.com, while at Toy Fair 2010 in New York City.

My favorite bit is when Lee was asked about the eleven-year gap in time since “Toy Story 2”:

The thing that surprised us that we weren’t quite expecting is that now that the hype is building for the movie. There’s a huge segment of the audience who were kids when “Toy Story,” and “Toy Story 2” came out — and for them there’s this enormous nostalgia. They’re excited to sort of touch base with their childhoods again. A lot of them are at that cusp of going into college or just leaving college and some of them are even having their first kids. So there again we’re tapping into that theme of change, that life’s journey. I think we’ve got everyone on this one. The characters have never gone away for the kids.

Feb 17, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , , :: #

Colin Ward – "Pioneer of Mutualism" – Has Passed Away

The author and activist passed away died on February 11, at the age of 86.

For those who don’t know of the man, Stuart White has written a wonderful remembrance of him at the Next Left political blog; he was particularly well known in Britain for his work in the Anarchist movement, but readers here may be most interested in his profoundly influential book on children’s street culture, “The Child in the City”. It’s one of the most important books of its kind, ever.

Feb 16, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , , :: #

On Being an Atelierista

A fantastic recollection from Anna Golden on what it’s like to be an Atelierista – or resident artist/studio teacher – in a Reggio Emilia-inspired American preschool.

I love Anna’s blog dearly; it’s one of the relative few that talks about kids where I feel at home.

Feb 16, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

A Quick Fix for America's Worst Schools

By Gilbert Cruz for TIME Magazine.

Alright, a few quick thoughts here:

  1. There is no “Quick Fix” for education. If there was, we would’ve found it long ago.
  2. While I’ve been generally supportive of charter schools as a mechanism that would allow for a broader spectrum of educational philosophies and more focused school leadership – I don’t see how turning the charter school idea into, in essence, a corporate takeover of schools is at all a good idea. If the Duncan education department is serious about making charter schools work, they’ll have to lay out some pretty clear guidelines for parties who are interested in setting up charters (including the requirement that they be a nonprofit and articulate a clear educational vision and philosophy).
  3. We’re relying on the same criteria for measuring school performance as before when establishing charter schools, but not stopping to consider whether the measurement tool itself is faulty? Depending on your own purposes for education, there’s a valid argument to be made that you just can’t simply quantify the true benefits of education into testing and congregate school scores. Something more’s gotta go.

Mostly, though, I think if we’re to be serious about education reform, the number one question that has to dominate our efforts has to be: What is education really about?

The actual mechanism or mechanisms for how we enact education reform matter far less than the philosophy that drives our efforts. Education in Sweden and the Netherlands, for instance, operates on a voucher-based but seems to consistently fulfill their cultural expectations for education (as well as rank consistently high in global education ratings). Sure, I think there’s zero chance that a voucher system would be (immediately) a good thing in the states – but the point is, in Sweden and the Netherlands it seems to work fine as a mechanism, given their cultures and philosophic expectations of education.

I’m not providing much of a fleshed-out answer here, but I will say this: My instinct is that the real key to “fixing” education doesn’t at all lie in the mechanical elements of structure – but rather, in the cultural arena, with how we approach education altogether.

Feb 15, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

"Let’s Banish Critical Thinking"

In the first of his multi-part series, K.D. Washburn considers the role of “Critical Thinking” in education – and makes the case that it’s been long since time we banish the phrase in favor of a different, less complex model. He also calls for a balanced acceptance of the role of memorization in learning – yes, I as well first went, “Ugh, memorization” – and he makes a strong argument for it’s use in education, when emphasized appropriately.

Meanwhile in his second part, Washburn expands on the four “core processes” of learning: experience, comprehension, elaboration and application. The practical takeaway in understanding these concepts – which Washburn lays out well – is immense for educators and anyone else who works with kids.

Washburn promises more posts on the subject in the future.

(Via Bethe Almeras.)

Feb 15, 2010 :: Tagged under: , :: #

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