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
Featured Posts
Human Are Underrated
One of the most common misconceptions when it comes to advances in technology is that humans will become redundant because computers will be better performers for a wide variety of tasks. Unfortunately, this could not be further from the truth. While computers are able to perform simple, repeatable tasks at a high level; there are many areas that human capabilities are underrated. The most like...
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...
Opportunity in every difficulty
“A pessimist sees the difficult in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” – Winston Churchill When we read quotes like this, we often want ourselves and our children to be more like the optimist. Oftentimes, this has to do with either how we’ve seen pessimists create such a negative environment in the workplace that often nothing can get done once someone has ...
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...
Debunking the 5 Biggest Coding for Kids Myths
Within the coding for kids space, we keep ourselves educated on the emerging narrative. While there are passionate believers that this is an essential skill that is worthy of investment (time & resources), there are also those who don’t quite believe that coding is something that should be taught to children. Below, we have compiled the biggest coding for kids myths. Background Reading: 1 ...
Jobs of the Future Will Require More Technology Acumen
Early in my career, performance reviews often included discussions on business acumen. As a classically-trained engineer, I often thought it was a bit of a stretch that I should be required to have a depth of knowledge in both engineering and business. However, employers do not have time for philosophical debates on what someone should or should not be expected to know; instead, they often focu...
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...
The Enduring Myth of Self-Teaching & Self-Directed Learning
Recently, I was reading an article entitled, “How this self-taught 14-year-old kid became an AI expert for IBM”. Curious, I clicked in to learn more about how anyone, much less a young kid, could self-teach himself a complicated subject like artificial intelligence. As it turns out, his dad was a computer programmer who began exposing his son to technology at a very young age (5 years old). Fro...
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 ...
The Future of Education - Innovator's Edition
It is often interesting to forecast future states. When will self-driving cars become commonplace? When will extra-terrestrial vacations become trendy? When will wi-fi work in every part of my house? These questions and ultimately future outcomes are closely tied to education. In a sense, education is the fundamental building block of future innovation. In 1967, Seymour Papiert and his team in...
Celebrating 50 Years of Teaching Kids to Code
During computer science education week, Google launched an interactive doodle to celebrate 50 years since the introduction of the 1st coding language for kids – Logo. As part of the interactive doodle, Google worked with a few internal teams along with an external partner, MIT who developed the very popular Scratch language. The Google doodle which uses a rabbit as a character seeks to emulate ...