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
7 Simple Steps our EdTech Startup Took to Hack Our Way to 200+ 5 Star Reviews
We’re not a high frequency restaurant or even a business that customers are used to reviewing on social media. Digital Adventures competes within the education technology space by providing computer coding, engineering and design classes & digital technology camps in state-of-the-art learning studios for kids in pre-K through 12th grade. In short, we teach kids how to think and build like t...
Who Will Be The First Ninja of Online Live-Stream Education?
The first consistent, repeated exposure to online education for a large group of the general population was during a global pandemic. Unfortunately, the first impression was not great. While it is often said that you never get a second chance to make a first impression, I think the reality is that online live-stream education will continue to iterate/improve.In fact, within the next several mon...
Online Learning Needs to Step THE Game Up
Around the world, many parents are being asked to make a very difficult question - “should I send my child back to school full time or resume online learning?”. Unfortunately, this question is unnecessarily challenging. For many parents, their first exposure to online learning for an extended period of time was in the midst of a global pandemic. Many school districts were faced with the monumen...
Deep Tech is The Future
Every few years, a new company comes along that promises to deliver all the results of understanding how to program without actually having to write a single line of code. From what you see is what you get on websites 10 years ago to the emerging trend of no code mobile apps. While the pitch is seductive, the reality is that tech’s future is going to require a much deeper knowledge base in orde...
The Future of Tech is Multi-Disciplinary
Often times when we think about technology, we think that specialization is essential. While focus is key and valued generically, leading technology companies prove that multi-disciplinary is how to gain and maintain a competitive advantage.Currently, there are 4 massive technology companies that are valued at more than $1 Trillion dollars. These companies serve as a blue print for what the nex...
3 Reasons Why the Mixer & Ninja Partnership Failed
This week, we learned that Microsoft is shutting down Mixer. As a result of this move, top tier streamer talent is now free to sign with Twitch, Facebook Gaming or any other platform of their choosing. While this may have been surprising to many, the reality is this partnership was doomed from the start. In business school, we studied a case on top tier financial analysts who were given the opp...
Puzzles, Progress & Programming
My youngest child recently turned 7 years old. For many years, he's been into puzzles. When he first started putting together puzzles at 5 years old, they were just a few pieces. Typically, the pieces were large and it would take him quite a bit of time to figure out how to put everything together. Every time he completed a puzzle, we would celebrate.His 1st grade teacher also enjoys puzzles. ...
All Virtual Learning Didn’t Fail
While there are some salient points in this Wall Street Journal article, the reality is that online learning is being painted with a very broad brush. And, unfortunately, most of the commentary is decidedly negative.Just like there are different types of screen time, we also have different types of virtual learning.The reality is that there is much more nuance and considerations that we need to...
Want to teach your kid to code? FREE isn’t always best!
Coding seems to be unique within education in that there are a large number of people who think that kids can learn to code simply by turning them loose on the internet with Google searches and Stack Overflow as their reference material. This phenomenon has always struck me as particularly peculiar especially given that it can take years of practice to develop and improve your technical skills....
3 Great Lessons the SpaceX Dragon Human Flight Teaches Kids
This week, SpaceX is targeting the launch of their first human space flight, Dragon, with NASA astronauts - Bob Behnken and Dave Hurley. Many skeptics did not believe that a private technology company would ever reach this important milestone. They believed that only the federal government could design, develop and launch a complicated project like human space flight.However, Elon Musk believed...
The Power of Digital Play
As parents, we sometimes forget that kids know best when it comes to play. These past two months have been tough. I’ve found myself sleep deprived and on edge, trying to find creative ways to balance my life while making sure my daughter is okay. What I have loved are those rare moments when I can slow down and observe my daughter. They remind me that kids know best when it comes to play. Espe...
How to Create a Facebook Avatar That Actually Looks Like You
Before you get started, let’s talk a little bit about why creating your own avatar on Facebook has taken off. Everyone is sitting at home looking for something fun to do. What could be more engaging than creating a digital version of yourself? For those of us who are old enough to have seen the movie avatar, this exercise is especially nostalgic.Certainly if Facebook wanted to, they could have ...
Kids - Learn to Spawn 30+ Virtual Reality Animals at Home
One of the great things about technology is that it is all around us. At times, this omnipresence can make us feel like technology rules our lives and that of our kids. Other times, you realize that technology has made a dramatic leap in terms of capability & that wow factor!Augmented reality is a technology that we have been excited about the potential for some time. In fact, we even wrote...
The Digital Future is Here, Right Now!
The current public health crisis has exposed many things about the global economy. We are a lot more dependent on each others mutual success than we would’ve ever imagined - Hello, Butterfly Effect. The dependency means that the global economy is not as resilient to challenges. It also means that nations require much more high level cooperation than many of us believed was necessary or even pos...
How to Create an Easy Flower Animation in Scratch
Animations are a great way to level up projects. Great animations can also be used to extend a project to create more realistic looking characters or action sequences. However, there are times when you want to have an animation be the entire focal point of a project.In this tutorial, we will go through how to create a flower animation in Scratch. Estimated tutorial time: 45-60 minutes. Below is...