From the way a lot of people are talking you'd think this scanner follows every car all around town and records every visited location. That's not what it does, though. It sits on top of the squad car like a radar gun and scans license plates, then compares them with a list of stolen cars and licenses owned by wanted felons. It's not listing everywhere your car went, it's not a police version of your travel plans, it's showing one place that you went, probably just some random road where the policeman is looking for speeders.
I don't understand how anyone's privacy is violated, unless you don't want the cops to know that you were driving down Periwinkle Lane last Thursday at 4, or you think that criminals have the right to not be apprehended following a computer-assisted process. Perhaps the database shouldn't be permanent, or maybe it should only save matches, but the information of where your car was at any given time, seen only be police (and none of the police care enough to look at it, probably. They'd rather let the auto-matching to the work) is harmless unless you stole the car or you're a wanted criminal, in which case there shouldn't be any expectation of license plate privacy.
This kid is in middle school, he, like most kids, hates textbooks, but unlike most kids, he actually came up with an alternative. He's touting it like a replacement for textbooks, and of course it would work better as a supplement, but it's still a great idea. And if the parents are helping out, they're doing the right thing. If my kid came up to me with a brilliant, if not necessarily feasible idea, I wouldn't want to quash his dreams right away. I'd want to encourage him. Any kid that's come this far isn't going to be shaken by temporary failure. Look at the about the creator page on his website and read his quotes in the article. Just because he's thirteen doesn't mean he shouldn't be taken seriously, it just means that he has a different approach than most adults.
As for the game's actual usefulness... I remember how much more exciting world history was for me because I recognized the names of cultures and cities from Civilization II. This could inspire the same kind of fascination in kids for Chemistry. Most kids aren't taught a lot of Chemistry until the middle of high school, and I don't think anyone other than the creators think this can replace textbooks completely, but how cool would it feel to walk into your high school chemistry class and already know about valence and the periodic table from a card game you played in middle school? If this game inspired a lifelong love of chemistry in a few kids and helped a few more understand the basic concepts... that alone, I think, would be worth it.
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From the way a lot of people are talking you'd think this scanner follows every car all around town and records every visited location. That's not what it does, though. It sits on top of the squad car like a radar gun and scans license plates, then compares them with a list of stolen cars and licenses owned by wanted felons. It's not listing everywhere your car went, it's not a police version of your travel plans, it's showing one place that you went, probably just some random road where the policeman is looking for speeders. I don't understand how anyone's privacy is violated, unless you don't want the cops to know that you were driving down Periwinkle Lane last Thursday at 4, or you think that criminals have the right to not be apprehended following a computer-assisted process. Perhaps the database shouldn't be permanent, or maybe it should only save matches, but the information of where your car was at any given time, seen only be police (and none of the police care enough to look at it, probably. They'd rather let the auto-matching to the work) is harmless unless you stole the car or you're a wanted criminal, in which case there shouldn't be any expectation of license plate privacy.
This kid is in middle school, he, like most kids, hates textbooks, but unlike most kids, he actually came up with an alternative. He's touting it like a replacement for textbooks, and of course it would work better as a supplement, but it's still a great idea. And if the parents are helping out, they're doing the right thing. If my kid came up to me with a brilliant, if not necessarily feasible idea, I wouldn't want to quash his dreams right away. I'd want to encourage him. Any kid that's come this far isn't going to be shaken by temporary failure. Look at the about the creator page on his website and read his quotes in the article. Just because he's thirteen doesn't mean he shouldn't be taken seriously, it just means that he has a different approach than most adults.
As for the game's actual usefulness... I remember how much more exciting world history was for me because I recognized the names of cultures and cities from Civilization II. This could inspire the same kind of fascination in kids for Chemistry. Most kids aren't taught a lot of Chemistry until the middle of high school, and I don't think anyone other than the creators think this can replace textbooks completely, but how cool would it feel to walk into your high school chemistry class and already know about valence and the periodic table from a card game you played in middle school? If this game inspired a lifelong love of chemistry in a few kids and helped a few more understand the basic concepts... that alone, I think, would be worth it.