Butterflies, Photography and Kindergarteners

I had the opportunity to chaperone my son’s field trip to the Butterfly Rainforest today. I brought the new Kidizoom camera my other son recently received for his birthday. Most of the children were interested in it but certain children were enthralled. I would have never allowed Kindergarteners to walk off with our $350 digital camera but risking a $60 investment is more than worth what transpired today.

It was fascinating to watch the children try to figure out how to best capture the butterflies, plants, birds, fish and turtles they were viewing. There were a lot of subtle lessons in those moments; lessons that are difficult to capture in whole group instruction and that will most likely never show up on a standardized test. How should I angle the camera to capture the part of my environment I want others to see? What happens when I point the camera skyward toward the sun or other light source? How can I position my body to take a picture of a fish through the bridge? How close is too close when attempting to capture images of wildlife? I could go and on but you probably get the point. Lessons abound in every day living; we just have to take the time to notice them in our adult lives (which seem to get more chaotic as the kids get older).

As I watched these kids engage with nature, with their school curriculum and with a digital camera I thought about how accurate Ricki Goldman-Segall really is when she suggests that we do a great disservice to kids by always taking pictures of them rather than allowing them to document their own thinking through photographs and other forms of multimedia.

There are a lot of things that could happen with these pictures but, given the time constraints of typical elementary classrooms, I simply brought the pictures home and tested out a beta Web 2.0 application called Animoto which creates professional looking slideshows on the fly. It is an interesting operation run by some young, hip video professionals. Videos of 30 seconds or less (approximately 12-15 images) are free while longer videos costs $3/video or $30/year. It is really quite simple: (1) upload your images, (2) pick some music and (3) click finalize.

So, check out the great fun we had on our trip today and keep in mind that the majority of these photos were taken by Kindergarteners. You will notice that the kids figured out how to set backgrounds on the Kidizoom (something that I didn’t even know was possible until today ☺).





I hope you will think of ways to peek into your child’s thoughts through multimedia. After all, we are raising 21st century children and who will prepare them for their digital future if we don’t?

What kids think about nature

My last post about nature deficit disorder really got me thinking about how my boys conceptualize nature. They clearly love to be outside but I realized that we never explicitly talk about the outdoors; it is just part of who we are as a family.

In the following video I asked them a simple question about nature. Then, I asked them to take pictures of things they see in nature. It was a fun process that gave me great insight into what my children think. I learned that they associated everything outside with nature. For example, they took pictures of a skateboard, baseball bat, and gate. As we were creating this movie we classified the pictures into natural objects and objects made by man. (You will see bugs in the pictures of the concrete driveway if you look closely.)

This is a short little activity that could be beefed up in many ways but I am sticking by my new motto: "Sometimes a C+ works." Even so, it provides me with a great keepsake to remember how precious my little ones were. I may need to watch this video repeatedly during their teenage years. :)

I hope this inspires some of you to try something similar at your house! If so, let me know!

Take children and technology outside!

Washington Post writer Donna St. George recently published an article entitled "To chagrin of parents and experts, kids shun nature." The article talks about how youngsters prefer the comforts of the indoors to roughing it on a hike or bike ride. The problem has become so severe that a national movement entitled leave no child inside is gaining steam across the country. This national attention is compliments of a new book entitled "Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder" by Richard Louv. The article also references studies by University of Maryland professor Sandra Hofferth that suggests time outside is down and time in front of the computer is up for children across the country.

I think before too long everyone in America will suffer from one deficit disorder or another but despite our ridiculous infatuation with considering every problem as some sort of disease or disorder, the issue is intriguing.

My boys spend at least 50% of their free time playing outside. They play sports, catch lizards, ride bikes, dig in the dirt, build forts, climb trees, play in puddles, dissect lovebugs and do whatever they can to be as messy as possible. Thus, it hard for me to fully comprehend the dilemma that many Moms may face in this regard.

However, I think there are some ways that Moms can help technology-crazed kids WANT to be outside:

• Encourage children to document their adventures in nature with a digital camera (I recently wrote about a digital camera designed with children in mind.)
• Relate outdoor adventures to your child's curriculum. For example, turn a leaf collection assignment into a digital adventure.
• Create (or have your children create) a digital, outdoor scavenger hunt with an enticing prize package (like pizza and ice cream for dinner)
  
• Encourage children to collect specimens to examine under a digital microscope (I have used the Digital Blue QX3 and plan to research other products in preparation for Christmas shopping)
• Encourage physical activity and health education through the use of a heart rate monitor. Simple ones are available for under $20 and children may have fun keeping track of how their heart rate changes as they do different activities in the great outdoors.
• Use a digital camera, digital camcorder or other recording device to capture the sounds of the great outdoors. Then, create your own music using GarageBand or Audacity.

You know your children better than I but hopefully these ideas help you think about how to bring your children's love of technology into nature. In my next post I will share some interesting things I learned about my boys' concept of nature. Stay tuned!

Mom's overture

My aunt just sent me this video and it is too funny for me NOT to share! I know all Moms will relate!

Lost in cyberspace? Just click Hector!

We keep a laptop computer in our living room so that we can easily supervise computer use. We have the Firefox icon (our Internet browser of choice) set up so that Firefox is easily accessible from the desktop and http://www.starfall.com/ is the browser's home page. But, the boys must still ask permission to use the computer and we monitor how long they work on it at any given time.

Starfall.com may be the most popular website used in schools today and I am always impressed with what my boys learn (and find!) when they are using it. A couple days ago my almost 4-year said, “Mom, do you know today, is Sunday, September 16, 2007?” I was a bit surprised and then realized that he was working within the calendar section of the site. He then proceeded to create a calendar for October and labeled his birthday correctly on October 10. It was fun for me to watch; he was engaged and quite proud of himself.

Then it happened, Danny (a new Kindergartner with a new attitude and a new sense of entitlement) realized that Drew was getting way too much attention so he grabbed the mouse and crazily began trying to do something to ruin Drew’s calendar while simultaneously saying that the site was for babies.

Any Mom with siblings close in age is not at all surprised by these actions but in seconds Danny ended up navigating his way to a site with downloadable video about surfing in Hawaii. The site was not bad (even though the video was entirely too large and froze my computer) but the whole incident really brought home a major concern many Moms have about letting their children use the Internet – where may they go and what might they see?

We have already talked to both Danny and Drew about what to do if they navigate to a place with a lot of words or pictures they don’t understand. We have also told them that just like some bad people live in our world, some bad people use the Internet. So, just like when they see a stranger in our cul-de-sac they are to come tell Mom or Dad if they get on a strange page on the computer. (The UPS man on our street is probably very amused that every time he comes down the street the boys immediately run inside to tell me ☺).

However, an even better solution appears on the horizon. I was recently eavesdropping on my colleague Jeff Boyer’s class when I heard him talk about Hector’s World, an Internet Safety project by the Internet Safety Group. It sounded pretty similar to other initiatives with which I am familiar (i.e. .Cybersmart, i-Safe, SafeKids.com, GetNetWise, etc.) until Jeff mentioned a downloadable Hector the Protector icon that parents can put on their computer screens to encourage safe Internet use. Here is an excerpt about the button from its website:

The button installs swimming Hector in the upper right-hand corner of the computer screen. If something worrying or upsetting comes on the screen, a child can just click on Hector who then covers the screen with a beautiful underwater scene and gives the child a positive message for clicking Hector, while encouraging them to get adult help.

I like this concept because it encourages communication between child and parent and rewards the child for making a good choice rather than punishing him for accessing an inappropriate site (especially if was truly by accident which is usually the case with very young children.)

Unfortunately, the Hector button will not be available for Macintosh computers until later this year but it is available for download on PCs now. Try it out and let me know what you think!!

A Digital Camera for Digital Kids!!

I cannot believe it has been nearly two months since I have posted to this blog. Summer vacation, swim lessons, baseball games, soccer games, a new kindergartner, a little brother devastated that big brother is not at his preschool and the start of another semester have kept me pretty busy! I know –poor excuses - many of you are as busy if not busier than me. I plan to stay on track with at least a post a week until Christmas.

Speaking of, that holiday is not too far away and, possibly, your child would like to open a new digital camera!!! In a previous post entitled “If you give a kid a digital camera..”, I mentioned the possible stresses associated a child dropping, flushing, punting or otherwise destroying a camera worth hundreds of dollars.

One relatively new, reasonably price and durable solution is V-Tech’s Kidizoom digital camera. The camera is designed for young children and includes the ability to connect to a TV or PC, simple photo editing options, digital video capability, a few games and interchangeable faceplates that allow children to change the look of the camera.

Parental reviews on the Internet are positive and many blogs suggest this will be a hot item during the holiday season. As of this posting, none of the toy stores listed in Gainesville’s Yellow Pages are carrying it but I recently ordered one online from Toyrus.com for $69.43 ($59.99 + $5.69 shipping + 3.75 tax).

I am quite excited to watch my boys open this gift on Christmas day and am even more excited to see what they do with it! After all, "if you give a kid a digital camera" he'll probably surprise you with his ingenuity.

Sometimes a C+ works

I recently read a book entitled Five-Star Families: Moving yours from good to great by Carol Kuykendall. This book provides suggestions for Moms trying to balance the dreams they had before their kids were born with the realities of motherhood. The best piece of advice in the book (from my perspective) was the idea that sometime “C+ Works.”

I tend to believe that everything I do needs to rate an A+ and, more often than not,I end up beating myself up because I just cannot meet such a standard. I want my fitness level to be at its A+ pre-kids level (it is not working), I want my house to always be clean (definitely not working), I want dinners to be ready, the kids’ rooms to be organized, the dogs to be washed, the garage to be clutter-free and the yard to mowed and trimmed. Needless to say, most of this is not working either.

Then, there is work - I want to be on top of things at the office as well. Yet, anyone familiar with academia knows that the more you do the more you have to do. My advisor used to say that in academia “No good deed goes unpunished.” So the A+ standard is impossible in that realm of my life as well.

As I reflected on the concept of accepting a C+ in some areas of my life I realized that my A+ standards were also stifling my use of technology. For example, I recently sent out our 2006 Christmas. They arrived in friends’ mailboxes over the July 4 weekend. There are a lot of reasons they were so late including my husband’s entire family visiting for the holidays, my husband turning 40 on January 1 and enduring a particularly heavy course load in the Spring semester. Yet, if I am honest with myself I didn’t send out Christmas cards because I wanted to have A+ cards. I was going to make a postcard with a collage of pictures from throughout the year and embed particularly funny sayings from the kids. Why? Everyone except my mother-in-law and my grandmother will either immediately throw away the card or display it on the refrigerator for a short time and then throw it away. An A+ standard doesn’t make sense.

Finally, I used a great service provided by the USPS via Netpost. I uploaded a picture, typed some text, imported my address database and had my cards mailed for me within 15 minutes. I didn’t even have to leave the computer screen. In two days the cards started arriving all over the country. The cards don’t look professional but in this case C+ definitely works. I used technology to my advantage rather than my detriment.

Sometimes technology affords us so much potential that we get caught up in what it can do and feel stifled if our creations don’t measure up to the possibilities. I took the following video of my son and two of his friends last Thursday. I had plans to add music, fancy transitions and to edit out some of the poorly shot video. Something tells me my friends, Laura and Cathy, will be more happy to see their boys on film today than they would be if I held onto the video for the next 10 years until I had time to make it of A+ quality.

Sometimes a C+ does work!!



P.S. For those of you trying to figure out which service to use to host your video I also uploaded the video on Our Media. The video on Our Media was compressed for Web Streaming (2.7 MB). The video on YouTube was compressed for CD quality (8.8 MB) As with any digital content you have to weigh quality versus file size. I personally don't see much of a difference but maybe that is my new C+ attitude talking. I plan to try out other sites such as OneTrueMedia soon.