Book Reviews and Money Saving Tips

There is a school in NY City that is basing it’s entire curriculum on video games. The premise is that today’s wired kids can be better engaged through a medium that is home to them. NYC has a 39% drop out rate. Quest to Learn is hoping that this approach may be able to up their student retention level. Oddly enough I saw socialization results that mirror what they are seeing when my sons had the first cyber café in the area. Quest to Learn has discovered that kids with attention disorders can be reached through video games. At one point my sons had a Mom come in and buy her son 100 hours of computer time. She stated that she had seen more socialization progress in her ADD child the 6 weeks that Cyber-Stop had been open than she had in three years of therapy. As a former teacher and counselor, I saw kids engaged in problem solving and pushing their social skill to new positive levels. Therefore I am inclined to think that the Quest to Learn may have a winner. Edu...

My grandson and I took a trip recently. His DS and DSi accompanied us. If you are under 20 you can stop reading now because you know all of this. The DSi is the latest system from Nintendo and is a computer in so many ways. Of course you can game on it. The thing I find just astounding is the ease that it connects to wireless networks or other DS systems. At one point he and 5 of his cousins were all playing Mario Kart. An ad hoc network set up by 11 year olds. Listening to all the screaming, yelling and laughter, I had to wonder why so many out of touch parents are opposed to the idea of kids playing video games with each other. How is that less acceptable than sitting around and playing a board game? Certainly you need exercise and like anything else, excess is not a good thing. Too many people ignore the fact that it allows kids to communicate and play while simultaneously introducing them to the intricacies of networking. In addition to the ability to easily network locally, the DS...