What do you want to be when you grow up?

Fisherman in Nice, France

  This man loves his work. He's not a manager, a postman or an IT administrator. He is a fisherman in the classical sense of the word. He works only in the morning and the rest of his day he can spend with his family. It's sometimes rough in the early morning on the sea. He doesn't love his work because it is easy; it's not. He loves it because it fits his personality.

  Do you remember in elementary, or in high school, people asking what you want to be when you grow up?  I am still searching for the correct answer.  I mean, do you really become something in your twenties and that's what you are for the rest of your life? That's crazy.  No one knows what will happen in the future but we can already see that our children will have to learn and evolve all of their lives in order to make a living and to do what they love. The times when you learned a trade and stayed in one company your whole life are over.  In these times it's useless to fill the minds of our children with specific knowledge but rather open them up to learning itself. (Plus, asking children what they want to be is a bit strange because their profession probably doesn't even exist yet.)
  We need to love learning! It doesn't end with school. We need to know how to find information effectively, to look for understanding, to tolerate ambiguity, and to know better than to blindly trust an authorititive source just because others do. I wish that our children will just follow their common sense in their lives and they will not be afraid to stand against the crowd, the majority. Most importantly I wish that our children, when the time comes, will be able to honestly and openly look inside their hearts and find what really makes them happy and what is really important for them and when they find that, they will not be afraid to get it. Even if it is something that hasn't been done before.



Boats dockin in the harbour of Nice, France



Gender preferences for online games

  I was debating for a very long time whether to put the choice of gender in Kongoroo.com. I didn't want to penalize children who have mixed preferences. In the end we allowed the option to choose or not choose a gender so it is really up to the child and parent.
  The truth is, gender definitely influences online behaviour. Studies show that gender plays a big role in what children are drawn to when it comes to technology. Young girls, in general, prefer a calm environment when playing a game (Passig and Levin, 2000). Comparatively, boys want to have control over what is happening on the screen. They prefer games in which they can make sharp moves and there is a lot of movement occurring on the screen (Passig and Levin, 2000). Unsurprisingly, females prefer to choose female characters, and boys prefer male characters (Langerman, 1990). It is apparent that boys and girls have very different likes and dislikes when it comes to imagery and games. Boys are drawn to action, suspense and danger while girls tend to pay more attention to details and prefer a more peaceful environment. Because so many of these preferences are complete opposites, it is evident that games (and other applications) that are most appealing to boys are not going to appeal to their female peers and visa versa. Each game has characteristics that may make it more or less appealing to boys or girls. An alternative solution is to develop games that incorporate both characteristics that are preferred by girls as well as characteristics that are preferred by boys.

  There always will be exceptions such as girls who love combat games and boys who prefer playing doll dress up games. We are working with statistical data but we know that everyone is different. That is why you don't have to choose the option and you can just continue to the content without that particular preference. Either way most of links we use on Kongoroo are gender neutral and therefore appear in both of the categories.

  Reading all these statistics made me wonder if these preferences are imposed purely by society or if they have some genetic and hormonal influence. It's worthy to mention an experiment with monkeys led by Gerianne Alexander, a psychologist at Texas A&M University. The female mokeys were more likely to pick up dolls than were males. And the male monkeys were more likely than females to handle toy cars, combat objects and toys which made noise (Alexander and Hines 2002). Both were equally interested in neutral objects such as a picture book and a stuffed dog.  Still, the important thing is that we allow for nature but yet equally allow for all the varying interests each child may have.

Integrating online resources from the Kongoroo into a fun lesson plan

Recently I've had a few questions about how to use Kongoroo to create a structured lesson plan. Almost every activity on kongoroo can be used as learning material.  It can be used individually or we can group them together to create a structured lesson plan. I will use a simple example for learning numbers. I like to divide a lesson into the three parts:

1) Explanation (video, game)
2) Assisted usage (game, printable: gap fill, maze, calendar)
3) Active usage (real life role play, game)


1) Explanation:


Counting till five

 You can find plenty of videos about numbers on Kongoroo. They are stored under the category: Learning => Math. Your child can passively watch them like a cartoon. Personal encouragement is always encouraged! This is not about sitting a child in front of a screen and forgetting about them. We want them to use the internet for a good cause and we have to show them how. Otherwise you will end up with a teenager spending their time online in some very unproductive way but it will be too late to change the habit.

2) Assisted usage:



Simple counting



dot-to-dot

This activity should refresh the knowledge that was taken in during the explanation phase. I like to print out a dot-to-dot activity or use an uncomplicated game. The benefit of online resources is that the people explaining it are always smiling and an error is neither punished nor ridiculed. I find these particular applications very engaging and it would be difficult to come up with such activities on my own. Here we have them at our fingertips.

3) Active usage:

Count the fruit



The active usage is the most important part in which we see if a child has really learnt something in the previous stages. The best option is to always use situations which can occur in a real life. It gives the opportunity to train with your child later, like in this case counting fruit and using a telephone. The reward for your child could be that you let him or her dial a number on your phone: maybe call the grandparents or a friend.



 How to use a phone

Educators are left with the role of showing and explaining real life usage. Yes, these games saved the time we would spend preparing the activities and drilling the numbers into a child's head. That means we should have the time to really explore real world situations and give children opportunities to act on that knowledge: in grocery stores, on the telephone, while cooking, counting money, cars etc.. They will realize the importance of learning those concepts and the motivation will grow strong.



Our children will learn from the Internet

I believe that our children should and will learn with the help of the Internet. A three-year-old child asks, "What does the heart look like?" and we can just show them a picture or a video. The message is instant and it is straight to the point. They can take interest in anything in the world and they can probably learn a great deal about it on the Internet. It is free and instantly available.

The old curriculum at schools is outdated but we have the Internet and we can educate ourselves. Everyone, at the end of the day, is an auto-didact. We can have things explained forever, but it's only until we accept that information, consume the understanding, that we learn. School are now in fierce competition with a much more in-demand medium for getting children the information they want to learn about at that moment, and the internet is just getting better at this.

On Kongoroo  children of even preschool age can explore many subjects: Math, English, Geography, Art, Music etc.. They are playing but learning at the same time. Children love to explore and learn naturally. They just need a little guidance from us.

Dress up games for girls online





Dresses



Do you have a girl at home? Lots of girls like to play dress up. When I was small I didn't like dress up games but I sure love them now. I even picked some inspiration for big girl outfits inspired by a very happy place that I love - the French Riviera. Fashion is not just about vanity. Girls like it and it gives us permission to develop designing skills, aesthetics, planning. You can talk about different ways people dress around the world. Some children have a real talent and a very unique style of clothing which should be encouraged. Dress up games can be also just a fun way to assemble the silliest outfits and laugh out loud. It is a game in which you can have lots of fun together. There are also printables which you can print out and play with at home. You can do an entire little paper fashion show at home.  At least we have time to play some games on the Internet. It is hard to find a dress up game online which is tasteful. Most of the dress up games are very inappropriate. If you know of a good dress up game, please, send it and I will add it to the Kongoroo selection. Here are some samples that I have picked out online.          



clothes



dolls







Online marketing for a website without a budget

It is not about ideas; it is about execution. Kongoroo made it to the execution phase - now it needs people to know about it. How do you let people to know about your website? It's easy: you just need tons of money to spend on marketing. But what happens when you have no big company behind you to sponsor you? What happens when there is no budget for marketing?

I don't know. I would really like an easy answer to that. At least I can tell you what we do with Kongoroo:

1) Sending your site or blog to other sites which are about the same subject or have a same target audience that you have. They may write about you or link to you.

2) Real world networking. Let people know about your product face to face. I tell everyone. I need to see personally how children use Kongoroo. I need to hear the mothers to tell me their opinions. If they like the site, they will tell each other

3) Social networks. But it is not only about the obvious ones as Twitter and Facebook. It also means adding a social value to your website. It can mean creating a blog. It can mean inviting people to comment and write reviews. My plan is to make it possible for people to recommend to each other links and comment on how their kid used it and enjoyed it. Right now parents and teachers can submit their favorite links to Kongoroo by sending those links to us. I want to make it as easy as possible, and the process to be as smooth as possible, so we can have fresh content available all the time. 

4) Writing articles about a subject of your site. Finding a site which will let you publish your article or write a guest post on their blog.

Other ways we should market - we should and we will:

1) Swap links with other site. You can just exchange them. You can also try asking sites which previously wrote about you to have a link to your website on their webpage.

2) Webinars are simply meetings over the internet where you are transmiting some information to your audience. It is live so there can be some interaction. If you have the right equipment, it is free. There exist many webinars hosting companies. The time zones are a big challenge especially because sites operate worldwide. A webinar is an important public meeting. All the content should be very interesting and high in quality to keep the attention of the audience. It is easy for them just to go on and read their emails when they are already online. But a form of webinars is, in my opinion, the future of education and great way to share and interact with people. Webinars - I have my eyes on you.

3) Web directory submission

4) PR release. All people and businesses have something that is press worthy. It is just a question of finding it and pitching it successfully to a magazine or newspaper editor. It can be one of the most effective tools: what is more effective than your website name appearing on TV or in a newspaper or magazine?

....and there is also SEO - search engine optimization, which is another chapter on its own. The list is never ending.

Me thinking about marketing for Kongoroo

Party masks, garlands and a float for a homemade carnival

Carnival in Nice

The carnival season has just ended but you can organize a little dress up party for your children the whole year around. It is a very fun activity. There are many printables available for that purpose. You don't have to spend any money, just print out these printables: a mask, garlands and a float to inspire you. Then let your child create their own float from a shoe box. Are you ready to party?!


Party Mask



Flower Garlands



Carnival float