WebProNews

Students and Twitter

Ever since teaching 6th graders about blogging, I’ve paid more attention to how social media sites can enhance learning. Blogging certainly can improve writing skills and at the same time introduce children to ideas that will make them more marketable when they hit the job force (assuming they do).

One Laptop Per Child Needs a Spreadsheet Solution

Dan Bricklin has ported the SocialCalc spreadsheet to the OLPC XO as an Open Source project. 

Generation Google: True and False

Kids these days. All crazy with the texting and the AIM and the Facebook and the Google. I just don’t understand them.

PBS Site for Kids 3 to 6

Small children are fighting their parents for the mouse these days. Pretty soon they’ll demand their own laptops and want money to spend on their own music and web sites.

CBS Partners with Digg on Election Coverage

Now here’s a strange partnership. CBS Interactive has announced a partnership with social bookmarking site Digg for online coverage of the 2008 election. Through the deal, Digg buttons will be added to CBS stories and Digg’s election related headlines will be displayed on CBSNews.com.

One Laptop Per Child Loses Intel

Intel announced they are leaving the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child project. OLPC produces low-cost laptops for developing nations. Fighting and differences between the two couldn’t be bridged. It was six months ago Intel and OLPC founder Nick Negroponte announced they would work together to produce the laptops.

Teach Your Little Ones with Google Apps

My seven year old son wants to program online games badly. After playing Pokemon online he got the notion that he wanted to make something like that. He pestered me for days about setting him up so he could make cool games where his friends could checkout his games. I struggled for a few days trying to find a solution for him. He’s seven so there has to be some reward for the initial work he does to keep his interest. You can’t just throw a seven year old in the deep end and let him flounder.

Violent Video Games Easy For Kids To Buy

Nearly all stores (94%) say they have policies in place to prevent children under 17 from purchasing M-rated (mature) video games, but close to 50 percent of the time secret shoppers were able to buy such games according to the National Institute on Media and the Family.

Club Penguin Kids Can Make A Difference

Club Penguin, the virtual gaming world for kids, will allow it members to donate some of their virtual coins to charity.

Google Expands Contests to Pre-College Kids

Building on the success of the Summer of Code Contests, Google has expanded the contests to now include the pre-College community. The contest is open to students age 13 and older who have not yet begun university studies, and contestants will be able to claim tasks until 12:00 a.m. Pacific Time on January 22, 2008. We hope that students who participate will be long-term contributors to these and other open source projects in the future, and we look forward to announcing the grand-prize winners on February 11.