The Digital Adventures Blog
For parents, educators and students to discuss tech education for kids, best practices for teaching coding & engineering design to kids & emerging technology trends
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3 Ways Kids Can Make Money on the Internet
For each new generation, it is important that they gain an understanding of how business works as early as possible. This makes these kids more successful as they get older because they are better able to recognize and monetize emerging trends. When I was growing up, my first job was in retail bagging groceries at Jewel (our local supermarket). A bit later, I transitioned into newspaper deliver...
Facebook Data Scandal - That's What I LIKE!
Over the past several weeks, the widespread use of data to influence social media users has come to light. The specific example that has concerned most users is that their behavior on social media was harvested by Cambridge Analytica and combined with external information (voter data records) to build extensive profiles that were then used to place targeted information in their newsfeeds. This ...
The Uber Self-Driving Accident Proves Humans Are Bad at Driving
Every day in the United States and globally, people die or are terribly injured in automobile accidents. Statistically speaking, automobiles are one of the most dangerous ways to travel with ~40,000 people dying annually in the United States and 1, 250,0000 globally. There are many fundamental challenges associated with driving for humans – we are maneuvering very powerful and heavy automobile...
Why Is Apple Showing So Much Love To Chicago?
Over the past 6 months, there has been one major announcement after another from Apple about second city – Chicago. In October 2017, Apple opened a newly designed flagship store along the Chicago River. In December 2017, the Cupertino-based company announced that they would be partnering with the City of Chicago to teach every Chicago Public School student to code. In March 2018, Apple plans to...
Does technology development have a responsibility to be ethical?
For the past several months, news stories about the impact of technology on society have been front and center. From concerns about the addictive nature of smartphones from Apple and social media applications like Facebook and Twitter to the broader impact of technology on politics including the ability for the popular platforms to be manipulated or the possibility that gig economy tools like U...
4 Groundbreaking Black Panther Technologies & Launch Predictions
(Spoiler Alert: This blog post will highlight technologies included with the recently launched movie - Black Panther. If you haven't seen the movie, bookmark this page and come back and see us after you've watched the movie).Black Panther is set in the fictional east African nation of Wakanda. Wakanda is externally perceived to be a poor 3rd world country. In reality, it is the most technologic...
3 Great Lessons the SpaceX Rocket Launch Offers for Kids
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” – Alan Kay This past week, SpaceX launched a test of their Falcon Heavy Rocket – the most powerful rocket in the world. By all accounts, the test was a huge success. In fact, you may have seen a video clip of the Falcon Heavy booster rockets synchronized return to land. You may have also seen that instead of the traditional concrete block t...
Making Sense of Screen Time - A Parent's Guide
It seems as if every other week, a new article or study is coming out providing guidance on the appropriate use of screen time for kids: Screen Time for Kids is Awful – And I Can’t Live Without It (Wall Street Journal), What if Children Should be Spending More Time with Screens? (Wall Street Journal) or Children are Tech Addicts - And Schools Are the Pushers (The Guardian). One of the biggest ...
Inventing the Next Big Thing
Over the last several decades, we have witnessed groundbreaking technological innovations that underpinned market leading companies. These companies were initially envisioned by teams of technologist who have a vision for the future along with the capabilities to make their vision a reality. What were the commonalities of these companies? Is there anything the next generation can learn from the...
The Parent’s Introductory Guide to Understanding Augmented & Virtual Reality
Recently Magic Leap, an augmented reality startup, received a $500 million dollar investment. This investment is in addition to the $1.4 billion dollars already received and includes participation from moonshot supporter Google. Another augmented reality company, Niantic, maker of Pokemon Go recently received a $200 million dollar investment to develop a Harry Potter title. 3 years ago, Faceboo...
The Introductory Parent’s Guide to Understanding Cryptocurrency
Over the last several weeks, there have been increasing amounts of attention paid to cryptocurrencies. It’s hard to turn on the television or go onto social media without seeing some story or cute meme about cryptocurrency. This emerging technology has generated a ton of interest among techies, investors, and the general public. In fact, the two most popular cryptocurrencies – Bitcoin (BTC) an...
Keeping our Tech Talent in Chicago
We’re facing a generational crisis in our city. For the second year in a row, Chicago is the only one of America’s ten largest cities to see it's population decrease. Residents are leaving the entire Chicagoland area en masse, mostly for the Sun Belt states. The Chicago Tribune has found various reasons for this shift, including taxes, state budget issues, crime, the unemployment rate and weath...
I wanna be like Mike!
When I was a kid, Gatorade came out with this popular commercial entitled, “I wanna be like Mike”. In the background of the commercial showing Michael Jordan making some unbelievable moves, the words that played were –‘sometimes I dream that he is me, you’ve got to see that’s how I dream to be, like Mike….if I could be like Mike’. Michael Jordan was an amazing, once in a generation, sports phen...
Self-Driving Cars, Powered by Humans.....Coming Soon!
As a former automotive engineer at Ford Motor Company, this has been an exciting week. First, Tesla announced that they would launch electric and self-driving pick-up and commercial trucks. It is widely believed that these vehicles will be equipped with self-driving technology as current model Tesla’s have this feature. Toward the end of the week, it was discovered that Apple had received appro...
Who will manage the artificial intelligence machines?
One of the largest, most successful hedge funds in the world, Bridgewater Associates, will be using artificial intelligence to remove the element human of emotion from decision making. In the process, humans will move from not only writing the code for these machines but also developing the boundary conditions for these decisions. In essence, humans will now program & manage machines. One c...