Day at Mall for Mom's & Dad's while Kids go to Apple Camp!

Who wouldn't love a nice stroll around the mall, without kids? Well Apple announced today that they are holding FREE workshops at their stores for kids! Yeah! Looks like it will be a nice quiet summer around here! :) But, you know what happens when you let the kids look around an Apple store.. Can I get an iPhone, touch iPod, new laptop, upgrade the computer we have, new digital camera to use with iPhoto, new digital video camera to use with iMovie.. etc.. and so on and so on! So all you parents out there.. hold strong on the new products and take advantage of the great learning experiences for your children.

Walter Bender leaves OLPC - Reasons

Interesting! Once the word Microsoft was spoken, a lot of controversy started with this project.

According to a NY Times article, Walter Bender left the One Laptop per Child initiative because:

After the article was published May 16, Mr. Bender sent a letter to The Times, taking issue with Mr. Negroponte’s comment and elaborating on his own views: “Mr. Negroponte is wrong when he asserts that I am a free and open-source (FOSS) fundamentalist. I am a learning fundamentalist.”

I talked to Mr. Bender last Friday to discuss his views at more length and give them a broader airing.

“Microsoft stepping in is the symptom, not the disease,” he said in the interview. The issue, in his view, is whether the tools that bring computing to children are “agnostic on learning” or “take a position on learning.”

Mr. Bender is a founder of Sugar Labs. Sugar Labs is an open source software company, that designs free software to encourage collaborative learning.

Emotion Graphing - Cool Lesson

Very cool lesson! I read Tom's twitter message that he had posted a new blog, so I checked it out! I am so glad I did. What a great idea! I am so excited to share this with my math and language arts teachers at my school. I think it will really keep the kids engaged and learn with some technology to boot! So creative.