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
3 ways to spark collaboration in kids
"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." -African ProverbLately, our society seems to have overemphasized individual vs group performance especially during the developmental years for kids. This makes sense if you want students to perform well on standardized tests but not so logical if you want them to be the creative problem solvers that develop the inventions a...
Learn & Play in our Digital Sandbox
Technology literacy is no longer just an advantage, but a prerequisite to thrive in a complex, technology-driven world. Unfortunately, students do not have access to high quality technology education. Existing options are either too complex, boring or narrowly focused on low-level skills like programming syntax. These options might help students become coders who can translate someone else’s in...
5 Ways We Make Learning Technology Fun for Kids
Whether it’s playing sports or learning how to read, kids just want to have fun. This explains the popularity of educational themed shows like Sesame Street. They made learning fun by creating a mix of interactive and engaging characters while also being laser focused on delivering high quality educational content.At Digital Adventures, we have made a similar investment in prioritizing fun whil...
Why should I care about my kid learning tech?
As we discuss teaching technology to kids, we can often operate under the potentially faulty assumption that what we believe to be true is a widely held point of view. In reality, for any hypothesis that are often well-reasoned arguments both for and against a position. At that point, it becomes necessary to conduct an experiment to show whether the argument is demonstrably true or false. One ...
For best results, build your kid’s technology skills over time
Humans have an amazing ability to project forward but then not do much in the near term to prepare for the future. For example, nearly everyone knows that humans are living longer and longer, yet not enough people are investing in their physical health. Closely related to the benefits of health investment is the need to have financial security that lasts for an even longer period after retireme...
Creating is WAY more than just coding
Learn to code is definitely on trend. In fact, based on a recent survey, 9/10 parents want their kids to learn this important skill. Hour of code is a large and growing educational event that millions of students around the world participate in. However, exclusively focusing on coding limits the full potential of what future inventors and innovators need to learn in order to positively impact t...
Don’t underestimate the learning potential of Scratch
At Digital Adventures, Scratch is one of the many hardware and software platforms we leverage to teach kids how to build with technology. Yet, when some students come in they already have preconceived notions about the utility of this powerful language. They either say, I’ve already done Scratch or can we do a more challenging language? As an education technology platform, our goal is to make ...
Labels, Stereotypes & Truth in Tech
In general, there tend to be labels and stereotypes that are ascribed to activities and interest. As humans, these labels and stereotypes can help our brain group and make sense of large amounts of information so that we can take action. For example, in sports we tend to label participants as above average athletic. In addition, one stereotype is that athletes are just dumb jocks or below avera...
Let's Re-Think Education
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you are no doubt aware of the college admissions scandal that resulted in indictments of 50 parents around the country who have been charged with paying an admissions counselor millions of dollars to get the children into the schools of their choice.While there is no doubt plenty of blame to go around, it’s also instructive in these situations to look at ...
3 Keys to Overcome the Challenge of Learning Technology
With the number of students we work with on a weekly basis, we are able to get a good sense of the challenges students face when learning technology. At the highest level, learning to build with technology is often a new experience for students. While they may have been around technology their entire lives, building a project can be very different. In fact, as we’ve previously discussed, lots ...
The Lack of Technology Struggle is Hurting our Kids
When I was a kid, there was a high level of struggle inherent in learning to build and engage with technology. If I wanted to play a video game on the computer, I had to type in a bunch of commands. And, even after I corrected all the typos, that was no guarantee that the game would load up.Or, if my friends and I were playing Nintendo and wanted to switch games; there was a chance that the new...
The Best Teachers Mathematically
No this isn’t a post about how the best teachers are math teachers although I do love math as it forms the foundation for much of my educational and professional experience. Instead, I want to share the idea of how good teaching can be thought of using a mathematical framework.In my estimation, the best teachers are always focused on how to maximize the individual potential of each student. Sin...
Becoming a global shaper
The New York Times recently published an article outlining the two codes, computer science and the U.S. Constitution, kids need to learn in order to make in impact in their career and with their life. This conclusion was based on research conducted by The College Board (administrators of the SAT) that found these two areas were highly correlated with success. Since that time, The College Board ...
Overnight success starts today
By the time someone like Bill Gates (Microsoft) or Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) or Jack Dorsey (Twitter, Square) or Sheryl Sandberg (Google & Facebook) or Marissa Mayer (Google & Yahoo), it may seem like their success was immediate and predictable.However, if you dig a bit deeper, you will learn that each of these experts spent years developing and honing their abilities. With repeated pr...
Just build it! - You don't need permission to create
With the polar vortex creating the coldest temperatures in decades in Chicago, the local school districts decided that the conditions were unsafe and so kids were out of school for a few days. Since they had 2 days without the burdens of school, my kids were free to organize their days around what they were interested.My daughter decided that she would create a drawing of a flower using Scratch...