I love to learn – don’t you?

Maybe I have a filtered view, but I believe most folks love to learn. And thanks to YouTube, domain expert sites like StackOverflow and community participation over social networks, how we learn has dramatically changed as the Internet moved mainstream. I see a striking difference from how I learned way back when to how my kids learn. My daughter is a surprisingly good make-up artist after watching and imitating way too many YouTube videos on how to do make-up. I’ve recently jumped into the deep end of learning how to develop iPhone and iPad applications. In the process, I devour site after site of “been there done that” or “I’m really good at this and want to share” programming lessons from iOS gurus. YouTube has been a unique experience. Several times I have been instructed through a video made by a kid whose voice hasn’t changed yet. My current favorite sites for iPhone/iPad development include:
Ray Wenderlich’s site

stackoverflow

Moms With Apps

Along with the mobile app reviews of apps for kids by Common Sense Media, Moms With Apps is also a great site for kids iPad/iPhone educational applications.

Both my daughter and I anticipate and enjoy learning  – whether they be make-up artistry in the case of my daughter or mobile interactive programming in my case.

Why does school have to be an Old Ball and Chain>

Unfortunately, my children’s engagement at school is similar to what mine was only with a 50 lbs. heavier backpack.  Like I was, for the most part they are bored.
The challenge I faced when I was growing up was boredom and changing schools about every two years.  Other than not moving – and in my children’s'- case very inappropriate dancing at a young age – not much has changed in school life.  The key aspect of changing the  behavior of learning from an act of boredom to one of anticipation has yet to be achieved.  Of course, challenges bring opportunities.

Don’t worry – be optimistic

Yet – I am optimistic.  One privilege I have had in the past years is getting a closer look at passionate people who come from all sorts of backgrounds figuring out how to best take the hairball of technology advances that are spread before us and turn them into aspects that will serve as a behavioral change in how our children learn.

One man’s vision to reinvent education

I found the recent Ted Talk by Salman Khan to be inspiring.

Stuff that got me excited included:

“You are HERE” map of acquired skills

Mr. Khan walks us through  a view of data gathered from learners who used their content to determine what skill a learner is comfortable with and what skills a learner needs help.  If we think of our kids as being CEOs of their education, these views are as important as balance sheets, Profit and Loss Statements and trend analyses are to a business.

Data driven results are nothing new of course.  It was a cornerstone of NCLB (No Child Left Behind).  What IS totally different is the business-like implementation.  Through this kind of analysis, a community of learners and teachers can instantly assess where a child is excelling – and more importantly – where intervention will strengthen a learner’s skills.

Who better than an ex-hedge-fund manager – which Mr. Khan amusingly notes in the talk – to work out a meaningful implementation of a child’s learning data and its post analytical views into the data?

Approachable and Interesting Videos that Don’t Rat Hole

I went to Mr. Kahn’s site and was impressed with not only the volume of content available given the small amount of people working on it, but how the content was presented.  I was struck with the “just the [approachable] facts” without rat holing into specific examples that have no real interest to the learner.  I’ve had this happen in math.  The teacher used baseball statistics as part of our exercises.  The boys loved it.  Us girls?  well…sure there were a few…but there were far boys motivated by baseball stats than girls.

A behavioral change

What a great idea Mr. Kahn proposes in the TED Talk. Use the videos for homework and use class time for a faces-faces discussion of what was covered. This seems to be similar to how I am currently learning iPhone/iPad programming. I prowl Apple’s website for developers as well as any tutorials and videos. I then thrash around to find a conversation where I can bring up stuff I don’t know. Except in school there should be less thrashing since there is a teacher and classmates instead of strangers.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

The platform Mr. Kahn has implemented includes a reward system that acknowledges the accomplishments of a learner. After all, it is far better to reward accomplishments than to label my kid as a “C student.” With that said, next post I’ll get into how we could improve on the reward system.

That’s NOT all…

Mr. Kahn’s platform of student progression and approachable content should definitely evolve and its efficacy tested. I’d adopt my games to fit in within their carefully placed content modules. I don’t see it as just a school platform, but rather a lifelong learning platform

Next post I’ll discuss aspects of that I feel are either missing or could be improved in all.

It is much easier to be optimistic knowing folks like Mr. Kahn are out there changing the behavior of how our children learn and providing a scalable platform so that great learning is not just available to a privileged few.

        

It’s been a little less than three months since I started creating a reading game for the iPhone. I had enough done to show the game to what I thought would be a harsh critic, Eleanor. Eleanor is my four year old great-niece. She will be starting Kindergarten next Fall.

Earlier that day, I sat next to Eleanor while she worked extremely hard to read a Disney Princess book with her mom.  She struggled to pronounce a few words and then sat back in what appeared to be exhaustion. I was reminded once again how difficult it is to learn to read.

If creativity expressed through technology can get people to walk the stairs as seen in this video:

Piano stairs – TheFunTheory.com – Rolighetsteorin.se

Then how hard can it be to plant a seed that grows into a lifelong love of reading shaped by creativity and technology?.

My hope is the game I am creating will give our earliest readers (mostly pre-K and Kindergarten children) a chance to have a happy and positive experience engaged with words and sentences.  Ultimately, I hope to ship many interactive experiences for our children that weave into a positive learning experience.

The available devices have never been better to realize this dream.  Touch enabled Smart Phones have many attributes that make it a positive and approachable “learn to read” device.

Interacting on the iPhone is a 1:1 experience on a fairly small screen.  This means adults can’t look over Eleanor’s shoulder.  This is in stark contrast to the reading practice I witnessed earlier that day.  I can only imagine the stress Eleanor was under as she struggled to impress her mom and great-aunt.  I’m betting if Eleanor were to practice reading on an iPhone, there would be no performance anxiety and she would be in control.

Another major advantage is the iPhone reading software can provide audio help.  No longer does the child have to ask his parent…”…what does THIS say?”  No one has to know she asked for help.

The software is always available to interact with. It doesn’t get tired or grumpy or busy.  In fact, the developer HOPES the child spends as much time as possible with the interactive experience they provide.

The parent isn’t buying a specialized device that the child has to carry around, which also means the parent must remember to bring it and make sure it is charged.  If a parent has a Smart Phone, the chances are highly likely that wherever they go the Smart Phone is available.

The experience relies on touch, gestures, an accelerometer and/or a camera.  These are far more intuitive input and output devices for our earliest readers  than a keyboard and mouse.  I don’t have the experience yet to say for sure, but given what I have learned about children and keyboards, I am betting we can engage children earlier than we can with a Qwerty keyboard and mouse. There is nothing wrong with a keyboard and mouse.  I am using a keyboard to type this post.  In fact, I can’t imagine typing this post on an iPhone.  Keyboards and mice are excellent input peripherals when we need to be productive.   However, in Eleanor’s case the motivation is to engage here with text.  To get her to consume the content, not create it.  I want to show her that words and reading  are powerful tools that will help her throughout her life.  It’s hard to beat the positive interactive experience touch provides when we need to break down the mountain of intimidation that learning to read can grow into.

The game has two modes.   Based on what I learned from ItzaBitza and ItzaZoo, I feel it is important to strengthen children’s ability to pick out sight words while also providing a mode in which children interact with sentences.  My goal is the player/reader is getting familiar with the meaning of a sentence through interaction with concepts of the sentence.  Too often I see children’s educational games where the interactivity is somewhat gratuitous.  Kids tap on something and it moves or it boings.  But it has nothing to do with becoming less intimidated with what is written on the page.  In fact, many times these experiences require parent intervention.  Don’t get me wrong, parents interacting with their children as they learn to read, parents who read alot and discuss what they are reading is the best way for children to excel in reading.  However, there are times such as ordering food at a restaurant or going someplace in a car where the child would actually benefit from a 1:1 experience if there was true learning involved rather than only engagement which is what more traditional entertainment is about.

Eleanor chooses Ed’s Word Challenge.  She surprises her mom and me with how well she did.  She has a basic understanding of sounding out words.  The words are shown to her in a way that compliments her basic word sounding ability.  The game is designed to emphasize positive feedback over competition – which I see as better for older kids or kids that have more domain expertise.  There should be no sense of failure or panic – but rather a feeling of forward progress with enough challenge to make the interactivity enticing  Every time she gets the word right the game pauses and acknowledges this major achievement adding the “win” to the ability to get to the next reputation level.  Like me, Eleanor would much rather be ranked an Extreme Frogger than a Tadpole.

I was relieved when Eleanor asked her mom if they had this game at home.  I also got some great feedback from her mom on how I could improve the design.  While I hope many kids enjoy these simple reading games, I know some won’t.  But what is important is the opportunity to plant a seed of a lifelong love of reading in a kid.

        

I’m very excited to see the growth in great educational games on the iPhone and the iPad.  Both show signs of starting an interactive digital learning evolution.

Two sites I highly recommend for their knowledgable reviews and community are:

Common Sense Media http://www.commonsensemedia.org/mobile-app-lists/great-ipad-apps-kids

moms with Apps: http://momswithapps.com/

The iPhone – carried around everywhere by the parent – lends itself to tactile learning experiences using touch and the accelerometer that aren’t possible on PCs that use the point and click mouse interface.  The iPad – with its larger screen – provides a truly interactive experience.  Like a story book, parents can share the device with their child – reading together and delighting in the cause and effect surprises afforded by interactive digital media.  For children, their gesture / touch interface are far more intuitive and less intimidating than a mouse and keyboard.

The other great thing about these devices is the tools provided for developers to create their games.  Twenty years ago I was a PC programmer.  And not a very good one at that.  It was extremely difficult to find communities to ask questions to.  Heck, we didn’t even have a debugger.  The programming language I used was mostly Pascal and C with a little of Assembler thrown in.

Now I sit happily ensconced in the XCode environment with very powerful and not to difficult to use art tools such as Photoshop (art) and Audition (audio) to name two.  We get to program in Objective C – which for C coders is probably less attractive than it is for a craftsperson like myself.  We can quickly swoop in and fix bugs using the sophisticated debugging and instrumentation tools Apple provides.  And what really makes it special is the community of fellow iOS developers who share their knowledge.  I was on stack overflow.com the other day about to ask a question.  I held my breadth, and hit the button to post.  However, before posting stack overflow.com came up with a list of question/answers – one of which was exactly what i was looking for.   This domain specific search capability that “just happens” dramatically accelerates how quickly we can pick up a new subject – like iPhone programming.  Finally,  it possible for craftsmen (i.e.: non-CS geeks) to dream, design, implement and publish interactive educational masterpieces.

Like with what happened to music recording when the individual could become the publisher – there is a lot of crap.  But you know what?  There is a lot of great educational apps coming out for the iPhone and particularly the iPad.