From the New York Times:
“The movie world has been fretting for years about the collapse of stardom. Now there are growing fears that another chunk of film architecture is looking wobbly: the story.
In league with a handful of former Hollywood executives, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory plans to do something about that on Tuesday, with the creation of a new Center for Future Storytelling.
The center is envisioned as a “labette,” a little laboratory, that will examine whether the old way of telling stories — particularly those delivered to the millions on screen, with a beginning, a middle and an end — is in serious trouble.
Its mission is not small. “The idea, as we move forward with 21st-century storytelling, is to try to keep meaning alive,” said David Kirkpatrick, a founder of the new venture.”
The New York Times has an article on how Disney is trying to bring the Muppets back.
What’s amazing is that a brand and experience like the Muppets ever left. The show always had a subversive undertone though and we now live in an age where being subversive can get a whole lot of unwanted eyeballs, and other things, pointing in your direction. Let’s HOPE that Disney doesn’t neuter or water down the satire and that we’ve calmed down enough as a society to let kids laugh at adults and the world they’ve created as we welcome the Muppets back into our lives and culture.
Good Magazine is covering education in their latest issue. They have a series of articles on the decline and current reinvention of playgrounds. There’s a lot of renewed buzz around play and its role in the health and cognitive development of kids. The conversations seem to be shifting away from simply advocating the basic need for play, to discussing the quality and context of play.
Designers are addressing play as an introduction to risk taking, creativity and reuse and moving away from the social and emotional trends that were so dominant in the last centurty.
Play as a path to activism instead of as a salve for consensus.
You can read the articles here, and also check out KaBoom, a non-profit that helps people bring playgrounds to their communities.
The latest contender for ultra mobile, yet rugged, and kid friendly computer dominance is the IDEO designed Spark. The world renowned innovation and design firm has partnered with Project Inkwell to conceptualize a slick rendering of what they imagine the future of educational computing to be for the K - 12 set.
The Spark is not pretending to be a magic bullet for poverty in the 3rd World as was the doomed OLPC. It’s also not claiming feats of bold innovation or insightful afforadances validated by shallow marketing driven “ethnography” like the Classmate PC.
Nope, the Spark is just good old design porn, devoid of any real indication it’s for kids other than the predicable choice of color.
You can’t blame IDEO, this is what they do, they design sexy things. Whether or not the thing will result in a meaningful experience for a kid is secondary. It would be great to have insight into IDEO’s design process and a sense of the core design hypotheses driving their thinking. But in absence of that information, what we do have is the functional requirements document IDEO most likely used to guide their designs.
Here are the primary purpose and the intended use as defined by Inkwell in their requirements document.
Primary Purpose:
Inkwell device(s) are to be designed for the specific purpose of supporting and enhancing instruction and learning for students enrolled in elementary and secondary school settings —grade levels 4 and above.
Inkwell device(s) facilitate, invigorate, and enable learning accommodating the unique needs of students anywhere and anytime they engage in learning activities (home, community, and at school).
Intended Use:
Inkwell device(s) should reflect the occupational and cognitive development levels of K12 students. Optimally, devices should be targeted to the unique need of students levels K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12 maintaining a consistent transition of user experience from one device to the next.
Contradictory requirements aside, its purpose of targeting grade levels 4 and above, versus its intended use for student levels K - 12, what’s most striking is the passage ” facilitate, invigorate, and enable learning accommodating the unique needs of students anywhere and anytime they engage in learning activities (home, community, and at school).”
Anywhere is a pretty broad spectrum of potential environments of use, as is Anytime. It’s easy to see why IDEO presented the work they did, based on a charter this ambiguous. Project Inkwell has most likely not conducted much user segmentation beyond academic grade levels, or invested in any qualitative or quantitative research around their core user groups. Nor do they seem to have considered the contextual factors at work in designing technology for kids.
This lack of rigor is understandable for a non-profit that probably doesn’t have a lot of resources to throw around. IDEO’s effort I’m sure was pro-bono for the most part, and this roll out of the Spark seems more of a marketing ploy than Project Inkwell manifesting their educational philosophies.
That said, this is the same type of fly by the seat of your pants design that doomed OLPC and will most likely doom Classroom PC. It is critical to have a real understanding of all of the factors at play when designing for kids and technology.
What seems to be the main goal for most of these outfits is owning the digital experience within the classroom. There’s nothing wrong with that aspiration, but to truly realize it there has to be more work and effort put into the endeavor than a porous requirements doc and a pocketful of good intentions.
Q: At what point does technology stop being “technology” and just become “this thing”?
A: When your kid is holding it.
Adults tend to treat technology with reverence, awe and downright silliness. Witness all the hullabaloo over the new iPhone 3G. Much of it has to do with rabid consumerism, the quest for status and conspicuous consumption, but most of the fervor is due to the sense of wonder and amazement the iPhone engenders in its users. The experience is so engaging most iPhone owners will never go back to using a mechanical phone ever again. Buttons and hinges are now icky, and seem so unnecessary.
But in the hands of a child, aside from whatever ambient parental and/or market driven consumer fanaticism, the iPhone is just this thing they can use to make calls, play games, text their friends and, listen to music on. It’s a container for the functionality they have come to expect from anything with a screen.
People have begun to call this generation of kids: Digital Natives. I don’t know how I feel about the term, but it points at something very real in our culture and raises some very interesting questions about the current and future states of technology, media, product & service design, and consumption.
I’ve been gone for a while; moved from the mountains to the city, started a new job, and had a beautiful baby girl!
But I’m back now and ready to explore, share and laugh at all that’s new, interesting and fun for kids in technology, media and design.
From the New York Times:
“Madeleine L’Engle, who in writing more than 60 books, including childhood fables, religious meditations and science fiction, weaved emotional tapestries transcending genre and generation, died Thursday in Connecticut. She was 88.”
I am sure that all of us who were inspired and amazaed by Ms. L’Engle’s work are sadden by her passing.
Ikea keeps at it with this stylish take on the old seesaw. No other big box company consistently comes through with well designed and executed products for kids like a Ikea does season after season. I believe it comes down to Ikea’s belief that good design is fun and fun is what healthy kids crave, and healthy kids grow into healthy adults… and healthy adults shop at Ikea.
The New York Times has a back to school slideshow profiling the fashion sensibilities of 5 prominent clothes designers’ kids.
It’s interesting to see what kids growing up in that world wear, and to hear what they have to say. They’re not as shallow and vapid as I thought they’d be, which proves that kids, no matter whose they are, are still cool.
BusinessWeek has an article detailing some innovative school programs employing technology to reach kids that might have otherwise missed out on opportunities afforded better funded schools and better connected communities.
“Children in Grapevine, Ark., often board the school bus in the dark, some even packing pillows and blankets. For students in Arkansas’ rural Sheridan School District, the ride can last as long as an hour and a half, and probably seems longer thanks to rules against behavior that could distract the driver. But lately the 15-hour weekly commute is looking up.
Thanks to a pilot program called the Aspirnaut Initiative, the bus has been outfitted with an Internet router and the children have been given either video iPods or laptops. The machines have been loaded with educational videos such as National Geographic Society’s Wild Chronicles to teach concepts such as the relationship between predator and prey.“
As if formalized eating wasn’t already hard enough for a kid, designer Wendy Boudewijns and manufacturer RoyalVKB have come out with this Red Dot Design Award winning Puzzle Tray, to add just a bit more anxiety to the process of clearing your plate.
I’m gonna practice some self control here, and not spit Haterade all over this little prison inspired torture tray. I’m going to try and find something positive to say…
If you want your kids to learn to enjoy mealtime. Shop at Ikea!
There. My mom would be proud…
