Logical child

I let DS play some games on my iPod Touch one time when we were waiting at the doctor's office and ever since then he begs me on a regular basis to be allowed to borrow my iPod. After a playdate with a classmate, he told me that he wants Santa to bring him a Nintendo DS this year but then he started asking about their relative costs and changed his mind. Now his plan is to buy a Nintendo DS with his own money - presumably money he hopes to get as presents for birthday or Christmas, seeing as I don't give him regular pocket money. The reason why he'd rather buy one himself? Well, he found out that iPods are a lot more expensive, so he wants Santa to bring him an iPod instead! I'm very torn because the games he likes to play on the iPod are things like Numbl and Shift - games that make you think! However, given that I've already cracked the screen on my iPod, I think he's going to have to wait a while before he gets one of his own - and his thinking skills are clearly already well developed anyway, aren't they?

He's making a list and checking it twice

We are going on vacation later this summer and DH, being the organized one in the family, is already planning. He's been making a list of things we need to make sure not to forget. I find it interesting that the very first list he wanted me to sit down and go over with him was the following:

• cell phone
• car charger for cell phone
• iPod
• car charger for iPod
• USB charger for iPod
• Battery-operated USB charger
  
• Adaptor to charge iPod from wall outlet
• cameras (x3)
  
• wall charger for one camera
• car charger for other cameras

Sense a theme here? So I was very surprised, given DH's obvious love of gadgets to hear him say a Luddite "No thanks!" to the offer of the loan of a satnav/GPS. His comment, "I hear people have driven into canals relying on those things! I can read a map just fine." OK, but you should see the size of the pile of maps we're planning on taking!

Years ago

I'm copying the idea for this blogpost from NFAH. She wrote about changes in her life in the last 10 years. I went a little further back than that.

20 years ago . . .

10 years ago . . .

Now . . .

I couldn't imagine being a parent, even though many of my contemporaries were already
I was a mother of a four-month old and was just beginning to sink into post-natal depression that was partially resolved by returning to work
I am the mother of two highly articulate, demanding, and gorgeous children

I commuted 10 miles a day
I commuted 130+ miles a day
I commute 40 miles a day

I was in the best shape of my life and had my cholesterol under control without the help of medication
I was overweight and had high cholesterol
I am still overweight but my cholesterol is back under control with the help of medication

I wore contact lenses most of the time, and rarely wore my glasses
I wore contact lenses much of the time, and sometimes wore my glasses
I wear glasses most of the time because even when I wear my contact lenses I still need to wear reading glasses

I had no grey hair
I was beginning to go grey but could hide it with the right hairstyle
I am most definitely grey-haired!

I was a UK citizen working in the US on a J-1 (exchange-visitor) visa and had no idea whether I'd still be in the US by the end of the year
I was a UK citizen waiting for my US citizenship interview with the INS, unable to vote either in the US or the UK.
I am a dual-national, citizen of both the US and the UK, able to vote here in the US but not in the UK

I was looking forward to a busy year of travelling - a trip to Canada in February and Florida in March, the UK in early summer, followed a trip to Taiwan
I was looking forward to a trip to the UK once I had my new US passport
I am again waiting for a new US passport and hoping to get to the UK for the first time in several years within the next year

I lived in a work-provided 1 bedroom apartment
I lived in a 2 bedroom house with my husband, with only his name on the mortgage as he bought it just before we got married
I live in a 4 bedroom house with both my name and my husband's on the mortgage

I had colleagues who used Apple IIe computers and Macs
I had a Mac and dial-up access via (I think) a 4800 baud modem to the internet at home (but by August of 2000 we had 52k dial-up with wireless access - ooh!) and broadband access from the Mac on my desk at work. Some sites were too slow to load from home so I only ever visited them at work, or I surfed at home with images off
I have a work-provided Mac laptop, and wireless broadband access to the internet at work and at home, but my access at work is filtered, so there are some sites I can only access from home

I didn't know anyone who had a cell-phone
I couldn't imagine a time when I wouldn't want a telephone land-line as we had such bad cell-phone coverage at home
Would love to cancel the telephone landline but we still have terrible cell-phone service at home

I was teaching the main subject I had trained for years to teach and loving it
I was teaching a subject I had no formal qualifications to teach and loving it
I teach the second subject I'm qualified to teach and finding it harder than the one I had no qualifications for!

I had never been online (although a year later we had an email system at work that only a few of us used - access was via a 300 baud modem!)
I had some online friends who I'd never met in person
I still have some of those same online friends and have still never met them, and have made the acquaintance of many more in the meantime

I didn't know that the man I was destined to marry only lived a few miles away but I wouldn't meet him for another five years, after I had moved to a different part of the state
I thought I was married to the most wonderful man ever
I know I am married to the most wonderful man ever

Nice to see you!

We've been using Skype for a while now to call family in the UK. I think the first time I logged in to Skype there were fewer than a million people online. Nowadays it's more like 15 million. I was surprised this morning when it was only 10 million - but I suppose a lot of people use it for business. Anyway, we have only recently started making video calls using Skype, and I have to say it's wonderful! We made a couple of calls to the UK today and saw my parents, my niece and nephews and their parents. It's a long time since my kids have seen their cousins, and DS probably doesn't have a really clear memory of them, so being able to see and talk to them was really nice. DS enjoyed putting his face close to the camera to show off the fact that he's lost two of his baby teeth and there is a new one coming through.

The best part of the calls was the fact that I was using a Macbook with a built-in camera, so I was able to walk around the house with it. At one point my sister said, "Take me to the kitchen!" and I did. My mother wanted a closer look at a piece of artwork on the wall so I obliged. We were about to hang up when my kids yelled that my father-in-law was just pulling up on the driveway. My mum said she'd stay online until he came in the house so she could say hello to him - after all it wasn't going to cost any extra! Rather than walk away from the computer to let him in, I took the laptop to the front door with me, so as he walked in the house she greeted him with a cheery "Merry Christmas!" The look on his face was priceless! The kids' great-great-aunt (in her 90's) was with him, and her reaction was complete discombobulation - at first she thought she was looking at herself, then she thought it was a video and finally asked "Is she answering me back?" Great-great-aunt is, as my mother-in-law used to say, a hot ticket and she commented later in the day that she'd love to live for another 90 years just to see what new technologies will come along.

It's really not that long since the idea of video phone calls was still pure science fiction, and now not only can we make video calls but with Skype they are free! I wonder what we'll be doing with technology when I'm in my 90s?

The little bloggers!

Back in February, DD decided that she wanted a blog of her own. It seemed as though it would be a good way to get her to improve her writing, so I set one up for her. She is very enthusiastic about it, though she does not always follow through and write blog posts about all the things she decides are 'bloggable'.

My brother in the UK has set up a blog for my niece too, and it is interesting to see what she blogs about. There are some nice intercultural exchanges going on as we share stories from our lives. We hear from my brother and sister more often now that we have yet another way to communicate.

Last Saturday DS and I saw a bear in the backyard. Later, as we were going somewhere in the car he was still babbling with excitement about the bear. I was only half listening at first, but then suddenly I heard him say, "I'll have to write about the bear on my blog."

"Blog? You don't have a blog!"

"But I need one so I can write about the bear!"

So I set the blog up, and in the first two days he dictated three posts. He had a little difficulty understanding how it worked at first. We posted one story about the bear, and then he wanted to add to it later. I explained we could do that, but seeing as Aunty England had already read his first post, we should probably just write a second one. He wasn't too sure about that. He also didn't understand at first that he could actually write about things other than the bear. Nor did he grasp the concept of the interface being the same for his blog and for mine when creating posts, so he threw a hissy fit when he saw me writing a post for my blog as he thought I was changing his blog.

So both kids now have blogs and we're a four blog household. Their blogs are open by invitation only, but I am still teaching them to be very careful about what they post on them. No real names, and we think carefully about what photos we use.

And to think it wasn't that many years ago that my brother and I could not even send each other email because the systems we were on didn't 'talk' to each other! Now I have a variety of email addresses for different purposes. When I say we're going to call grandma, the kids automatically head for the computer rather than the phone, assuming I mean we're going to use Skype. They want the instant gratification of a reply to an email the same or the next day, not a letter a couple of weeks later. They ask if we can scan their artwork to send it to grandma, and they expect responses to their blog postings within the hour! Although their computer use is limited (no Club Penguin or Webkins) compared to some of their peers who already have unlimited internet access from computers in their bedrooms (disasters waiting to happen), they are still very firmly a part of the digital generation.

Quel produit révolutionnaire!

It's even Mac compatible they say. . .

The British version would dispense beer. The American one, Coca-Cola.

The wonders of technology?

American education blogger Will Richardson wrote about his most recent trip to the UK this week. He feels that in some respects schools in the UK are ahead of the US in their use of technology. He mentions the proposal that by 2008 every student in the UK should have a digital portfolio as one example - it's a concept that has not been bandied about much here in the US yet.

I am sure the reality is that there are some schools in the US that are well ahead of the curve just as there are schools in the UK that are leading the way in technology use. Will surely met some of those in the UK who are most interested in it - they invited him to come and speak to them after all! Mr Chalk, a teacher in an inner city comprehensive somewhere in the UK, wrote back on September 14th:

The kids still share textbooks, discipline has gone out of the window, lessons have become crowd control. [...] There is no shortage of computers however.

OK, so Mr Chalk is often very cynical and writes with an eye towards entertaining, but clearly simply throwing technology into schools and requiring it of kids and teachers is not a panacea. Will has a very positive attitude to educational technology - it's his livelihood after all. Mr Chalk sees what other things the money might have been spent on rather than computers.

The question is, will the investment in technology pay off? Will it inspire kids to learn, and more importantly to learn how to learn? (And if I visit a couple of schools in the UK on my next trip there, can I write the trip off as a business expense?)