Storybird: Collaborative Storytelling

We’ve all heard a lot about Twitter, but there’s another website with a bird related name that you might not have heard so much about. It’s called Storybird, and it’s site where kids, families, and friends can create their own online stories or read stories that other people have created, complete with colorful illustrations. You can work on your own, or invite a partner to collaborate and take turns making pages. You can share your work with others in the Songbird community or keep them private. Or you can be like me and just read all the cool stories other people have put together and shared.

One of the best parts about Storybird is the artwork. You can browse through illustrations by a number of artists and choose which ones you want to include in your story- and the choices are incredible! It’s also really cool to see different people use the same pictures in completely different stories and see how the context affects the meaning of the image.

For now, Storybird is free, but as it grows the company does plan to add premium features (like printing) that you have to pay for. But it’s definitely worth checking out the free options- and if you make a Storybird, be sure to share it with me!

Illustration: by Aaron Blecha

Totlol: Kid-Friendly Web Video

If you have kids and computer, then it’s a fair bet that your kids will be using that computer to watch videos online. And while there are plenty of kid-friendly videos on YouTube, there are also plenty of, shall we say, more “adult” videos that you probably would rather your child doesn’t watch.

Totlol is a great solution to that dilemma. A video website powered by YouTube, Totlol posts only those YouTube videos voted to be good for kids and ranks them by age appropriateness. And it’s all done by parents. Parents find kid-friendly videos on YouTube, submit them, and other parents in the Totlo community watch and vote on whether those videos should be posted on Totlol and if so for what age groups.

The only catch is that you to have to be a member to use Totlo, and membership isn’t free. But at $3 a month , $18 a year, or $54 for unlimited use until your child is all grown up and taking control of their own web viewing, it’s also not going to break the bank.

Plugins for the brain

Technology is moving at a break-neck pace. Just a two months ago, after a futile attempt to organize my massive (by old time standards, at least) collection of digital family photos, I quit and vowed that I would never spend a minute doing so again. My declared reason - some day, software will come along that will recognize every face in my photos and will organize it for me. If I do it now, it will just be a waste of time.

And just last week - voilà! Picasa, Google's free image management software, comes out with exactly that feature. Of course I had to try it. The results were remarkably accurate: Picasa recognized my 6-year old daughter's infant pictures! Would you recognize these two pictures as the same kid? I probably wouldn't.

Maybe I am overstating it, but this seems like an absolutely incredible leap in technology that might be called a game-changer. Putting aside blood-curdling big-brother thoughts for the moment - well, no, I can't put those thoughts aside. Somewhere out there, on someone's facebook page is the most embarrassing picture of my life from first year of college. There is a reason I never showed it to anyone, and now, there is a clear possibility that my name will be linked to it. Not good. Obviously, it could get much worse. But, for the moment at least, I don't have to worry about organizing my pictures, and that's a big plus for me.

Eureka! Eureka! I found it! I found it!

You probably remember School House Rocks, the series of animated shorts started in the ‘70’s with catchy songs that helped you remember how the legislative process works and how to use conjunctions. But do you remember Eureka!, the series of animated shorts started in the ‘80’s that helped you understand the concept of inertia and learn the difference between heat and temperature? (Not to be confused with Eureka the new sci-fi TV series.)

I didn’t remember it either, but in the age of the Internet, it was easy to rediscover these short cartoons on video sites like Totlol- an online video site specifically for kids and parents- and YouTube.

Similar to School House Rocks, Eureka! uses humor and quirky animation to convey complicated concepts. But while School House Rocks topics ranged from principles of democracy to multiplication tables, Eureka! narrowed its focus to concentrate on principles of physics and mechanical engineering. Each episode starts with a quick review and background so that each cartoon builds on previous concepts. And while there aren’t any catchy songs to sing-a-long with, it’s still a light and fun way for children and adults to make sense of some heavy ideas.

Camper Fashion Design Project

Jacob came to his first week of icamp at the end of summer with school right around the corner, and back-to-school shopping was fresh in his mind. He conceived his own line of custom clothes and did an awesome Fashion Designer project of his designs.