Regarding the 1918 pandemic, the factor that troubles infectious disease and public health researchers is who died - not only the elderly, infirm and very young as is typical with influenza, but significant numbers of seemingly normal healthy adults. There are lots of hypotheses and plenty of conjecture as to why, but the best guesses reason that the 1918 strain was genetically novel and thus may people exposed had no (partial) immunity whatsoever derived from previous influenza exposure. This newly emerged virus was also thought to be better able to "take up residence" deeper in the lungs resulting in much more severe infections with complications like pneumonia and accompanying greater mortality.
This is the situation the DoD is expecting in a pandemic.
"The City of Gold and Lead" by John Christopher. I recall I lucked onto it in the 3rd grade. My gateway book to Science Fiction/Alternate Universe/Fantasy.
The Magic Tree House series kept my kids attention-Mary Pope Osborne
A lot of Jules Verne's work has been edited for younger readers.
As other have stated, let your kids guide you to what interests them. Let's hope they have access to a good reading program in school.
I've found any of the Newbery Award winners from the ALSC are usually good reading. Those librarians are on to something.
It drives me nuts that almost all of the consumer price range camcorders from most vendors are missing external microphone connectors and headphone jacks. Unstructured camera movement and far off camera audio are two of the obvious "amateur" mistakes.
It is much harder to create video that has creative value than this article suggests. Flickr (which I really like) does have some really great stuff, but I think much of it is of a particular style-super saturated colors, lots of depth of field, ample post processing-eye candy. Look for simple, well composed and exposed "straight" images without a lot of post processing and you don't see as much. The bar for "doesn't suck" isn't too high, the bar for uniquely outstanding is rarely reached.
In video the narrative is key, and as stated by others, many don't have much to say. To put it another way if you fill up a 4 Gb flash card with still images you are bound to get something. One can't shoot days worth of video with good audio, lighting, camera control, acting, and editing quite as easily hoping you might get something of value.
You are worrying about backing up your DV material? Why? It's already in the digital domain in a nice, compact, reliable format. DV doesn't look like it's going away soon, and IEEE1394 doesn't either.
If you want to do an offsite backup, just clone your tapes and store them off site. A quality 1 hour DV tape is less than 4 bucks and they aren't hard to store.
If you want to save your edited programs you can archive them off to DV as well. There isn't a quality loss since you started in DV, right? If you want to save project files (we used to call them EDL's) you can save them to other media (CD-ROM/RW, DVD, floppy, or paper print-out even), or e-mail them to a Yahoo or G-Mail email box for safe keeping. If you need do a re-edit, you can redigitize from the original source tapes using data from these saved project files to get the material back on your editing system. A batch digitization will only use the material that you originally noted as used, so even for a fairly long project it isn't too time consuming. Shuffling tape is the pain-in-the neck part, but the process is mostly an unattended one. Good media management is key here of course. Name those tapes!
If you must archive, there are some tools that will archive all the media used in a project back to DV tape. Mezzo Technologies http://www.mezzotechnologies.com/index.html is one that you might want to look at.
I guess you could archive stills to network storage like Yahoo mail or G-Mail as well. If this is critically important stuff, then it is probably worth paying for on-line archiving.
I work for a research university's College of Education so I get to see a lot of fundamental research on kids and their interaction with various technologies.
The prevailing consensus among early childhood researchers is that TV does young kids no good, and possibly is harmful. What to do? Read to them. Then read to them again. And then read to them so more. Start right now.
As far as "educational technology" toys go, most of them are laughably weak as instructional tools and rarely follow any pedagogical methodology backed by research.
The cognitive skills needed to comprehend information presented on computers, "learning toys," and video games take quite a while to develop. Surprisingly, even 2 year olds still don't extrapolate that something happening on TV is representative of something that happens in the real world.
Your child's "job" is to learn to participate in the world around him/her. At 4 months gross motor skills are your child's priority. As he gets older, language development will become more important and interacting with others will become paramount. The technology you use will be of (passionate) interest to your child-telephones, cars, microwave ovens, the spray handle in the sink, Tupperware containers, peeling off the safety seals on food containers, spinning the wheels on the stroller, you name it. Kids learn by watching and mimicking the adults in their lives, so they will assign importance based on observing you.
My 2 ½ year old likes that he can control the mouse on our computer. He's not really using the computer, but loves that the cause and effect relationship is under his control. At this point he'll give me about 5 minutes of computer time before he wants to go outside and "play" basketball, water the flowers, or ride his trike. He's seeing me and his mom use technology as an integral part of our day and I hope balance is what he learns. The most important thing is that he does it with me.
Be mindful of the example you are setting. Children are the masters of doing what you do...and ignoring what you say.
I recently worked on a project with a group of radiologists at the research university I'm employed by to develop an expert system to more quickly train operators of portable ultrasound imaging equipment. This group is part of a world wide organization of physicians dealing with the long term irradiation effects of hundreds of thousands of people exposed to Chernobyl's fallout. Specifically, detecting thyroid cancer with ultrasound requires much experience and there is great urgency to speed training to detect these cancers early before they become too advanced for successful treatment. This group began monitoring residents in the fallout area shortly after the accident was made public. Children exposed then are now beginning to show higher rates of thyroid cancers.
There is a school of thought that says that satisfaction in work requres using ones natural aptitudes. The Johnson O'Connor research foundation http://members.aol.com/jocrf19/offers aptitude testing and counseling after determining ones aptitide profile
We're smarter than the average (no false modesty here) and curiosity is one of those traits associated with a well exercised brain. We take pleasure in knowing how to do stuff. Drinking beer is good, but much better is knowing how to make your own suited to your taste. I race sailboats, a past time often compared to standing in a cold shower while throwing $100 dollar bills out the window, yet there always is something magical about making a boat go with only the wind and your smarts. Fundamentally, there is much joy to be found in doing something well.
A little shameless self promotion for my employer Vanderbilt University. Here is the URL of our online science journal. http://exploration.vanderbilt.edu/home.h tm
I'm somewhat/occasionally involved with its creation, so I'm partisan, but folks outside the university (especially educators) are appreciative of our work. It's a struggle to present sometimes arcane research in an accurate, informative way without presenting too much "technical" information, and I think the folks who put this together do pretty well here.
Some of the work is done by student interns in our Science Communications program. Vandy doesn't have a journalism school, so a lot of these students are English or other liberal arts majors with an interest in science communications. As part of the program, students spend a semester working in a research lab getting a feel for what day to day science is like. Their response to "real" research lab work vs. the pablum they were fed in high school is charming.
Deja vu all over again re: Atari , Commodore et al
on
Playstation 2 Basic?
·
· Score: 1
Wow, just like my Atari 130xe computer. Everything old is new again. Maybe it will spark interest for a few more kids in the honorable profession of software design...
Slashdot Mirror
Regarding the 1918 pandemic, the factor that troubles infectious disease and public health researchers is who died - not only the elderly, infirm and very young as is typical with influenza, but significant numbers of seemingly normal healthy adults. There are lots of hypotheses and plenty of conjecture as to why, but the best guesses reason that the 1918 strain was genetically novel and thus may people exposed had no (partial) immunity whatsoever derived from previous influenza exposure. This newly emerged virus was also thought to be better able to "take up residence" deeper in the lungs resulting in much more severe infections with complications like pneumonia and accompanying greater mortality.
This is the situation the DoD is expecting in a pandemic.
"The City of Gold and Lead" by John Christopher. I recall I lucked onto it in the 3rd grade. My gateway book to Science Fiction/Alternate Universe/Fantasy.
The Magic Tree House series kept my kids attention-Mary Pope Osborne
A lot of Jules Verne's work has been edited for younger readers.
As other have stated, let your kids guide you to what interests them. Let's hope they have access to a good reading program in school.
I've found any of the Newbery Award winners from the ALSC are usually good reading. Those librarians are on to something.
It drives me nuts that almost all of the consumer price range camcorders from most vendors are missing external microphone connectors and headphone jacks. Unstructured camera movement and far off camera audio are two of the obvious "amateur" mistakes.
It is much harder to create video that has creative value than this article suggests. Flickr (which I really like) does have some really great stuff, but I think much of it is of a particular style-super saturated colors, lots of depth of field, ample post processing-eye candy. Look for simple, well composed and exposed "straight" images without a lot of post processing and you don't see as much. The bar for "doesn't suck" isn't too high, the bar for uniquely outstanding is rarely reached.
In video the narrative is key, and as stated by others, many don't have much to say. To put it another way if you fill up a 4 Gb flash card with still images you are bound to get something. One can't shoot days worth of video with good audio, lighting, camera control, acting, and editing quite as easily hoping you might get something of value.
http://dealnews.com/
You are worrying about backing up your DV material? Why? It's already in the digital domain in a nice, compact, reliable format. DV doesn't look like it's going away soon, and IEEE1394 doesn't either.
If you want to do an offsite backup, just clone your tapes and store them off site. A quality 1 hour DV tape is less than 4 bucks and they aren't hard to store.
If you want to save your edited programs you can archive them off to DV as well. There isn't a quality loss since you started in DV, right? If you want to save project files (we used to call them EDL's) you can save them to other media (CD-ROM/RW, DVD, floppy, or paper print-out even), or e-mail them to a Yahoo or G-Mail email box for safe keeping. If you need do a re-edit, you can redigitize from the original source tapes using data from these saved project files to get the material back on your editing system. A batch digitization will only use the material that you originally noted as used, so even for a fairly long project it isn't too time consuming. Shuffling tape is the pain-in-the neck part, but the process is mostly an unattended one. Good media management is key here of course. Name those tapes!
If you must archive, there are some tools that will archive all the media used in a project back to DV tape. Mezzo Technologies http://www.mezzotechnologies.com/index.html is one that you might want to look at.
I guess you could archive stills to network storage like Yahoo mail or G-Mail as well. If this is critically important stuff, then it is probably worth paying for on-line archiving.
I work for a research university's College of Education so I get to see a lot of fundamental research on kids and their interaction with various technologies.
The prevailing consensus among early childhood researchers is that TV does young kids no good, and possibly is harmful. What to do? Read to them. Then read to them again. And then read to them so more. Start right now.
As far as "educational technology" toys go, most of them are laughably weak as instructional tools and rarely follow any pedagogical methodology backed by research.
The cognitive skills needed to comprehend information presented on computers, "learning toys," and video games take quite a while to develop. Surprisingly, even 2 year olds still don't extrapolate that something happening on TV is representative of something that happens in the real world.
Your child's "job" is to learn to participate in the world around him/her. At 4 months gross motor skills are your child's priority. As he gets older, language development will become more important and interacting with others will become paramount. The technology you use will be of (passionate) interest to your child-telephones, cars, microwave ovens, the spray handle in the sink, Tupperware containers, peeling off the safety seals on food containers, spinning the wheels on the stroller, you name it. Kids learn by watching and mimicking the adults in their lives, so they will assign importance based on observing you.
My 2 ½ year old likes that he can control the mouse on our computer. He's not really using the computer, but loves that the cause and effect relationship is under his control. At this point he'll give me about 5 minutes of computer time before he wants to go outside and "play" basketball, water the flowers, or ride his trike. He's seeing me and his mom use technology as an integral part of our day and I hope balance is what he learns. The most important thing is that he does it with me.
Be mindful of the example you are setting. Children are the masters of doing what you do...and ignoring what you say.
kissmyfreckledassbye.com
I recently worked on a project with a group of radiologists at the research university I'm employed by to develop an expert system to more quickly train operators of portable ultrasound imaging equipment. This group is part of a world wide organization of physicians dealing with the long term irradiation effects of hundreds of thousands of people exposed to Chernobyl's fallout. Specifically, detecting thyroid cancer with ultrasound requires much experience and there is great urgency to speed training to detect these cancers early before they become too advanced for successful treatment. This group began monitoring residents in the fallout area shortly after the accident was made public. Children exposed then are now beginning to show higher rates of thyroid cancers.
There is a school of thought that says that satisfaction in work requres using ones natural aptitudes. The Johnson O'Connor research foundation http://members.aol.com/jocrf19/offers aptitude testing and counseling after determining ones aptitide profile
We're smarter than the average (no false modesty here) and curiosity is one of those traits associated with a well exercised brain. We take pleasure in knowing how to do stuff. Drinking beer is good, but much better is knowing how to make your own suited to your taste. I race sailboats, a past time often compared to standing in a cold shower while throwing $100 dollar bills out the window, yet there always is something magical about making a boat go with only the wind and your smarts. Fundamentally, there is much joy to be found in doing something well.
A little shameless self promotion for my employer Vanderbilt University. Here is the URL of our online science journal.h tm
http://exploration.vanderbilt.edu/home.
I'm somewhat/occasionally involved with its creation, so I'm partisan, but folks outside the university (especially educators) are appreciative of our work. It's a struggle to present sometimes arcane research in an accurate, informative way without presenting too much "technical" information, and I think the folks who put this together do pretty well here.
Some of the work is done by student interns in our Science Communications program. Vandy doesn't have a journalism school, so a lot of these students are English or other liberal arts majors with an interest in science communications. As part of the program, students spend a semester working in a research lab getting a feel for what day to day science is like. Their response to "real" research lab work vs. the pablum they were fed in high school is charming.
Wow, just like my Atari 130xe computer. Everything old is new again. Maybe it will spark interest for a few more kids in the honorable profession of software design...