Post Category → Parenting

Schoolhouse for Students

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My sixth grader has, for the first time, multiple teachers. I was a mess in school as a kid and it took me years to reverse engineer myself into any sort of organization. I’m hoping to help out my daughter and went sniffing for something that would make it fun. I found this great application, Schoolhouse, that really does the trick. It has everything she needs and is fun to use.
The developer explains the application at his website:
“With the ability to sort and organize your assignments, exams, and projects quickly and easily Schoolhouse is a must have for any student on-the-go. The power of smart notebooks allow you to interact with your work as simply as your iTunes library.
Classcasts give the ability to publish your assignments to the web automatically for anyone to subscribe to. A newly redesigned grading system allows you to chart your scores over the course of the term to keep an outlook as you go. All of this works to ensure you will never be in the dark at the end of the semester.”
This was put together by a single developer and looks great. As useful as it will be to my sixth grader, it would be even better for those in high school and college.

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From Jobs’ Lips to Her Ears

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So I promised my 10 year old that if she helped out my wife with her internet business over the summer, I’d buy her a video iPod. It worked out. She worked all summer and was a big help. A few weeks ago I said, “Okay, lets go get your new iPod”. She says “No.” She has been “reading” on the intenet and thinks new ones will come out. Like she has got some inside angle on it all so I’m all … “Okay … lets wait” From Jobs’ lips to her ears a few weeks later Apple announces the iPod touch. It gets better.
I’m sitting at my desk last week trying to deal with a case when she calls me again. “Hey Dad. They are refunding you $100 on your iPhone. You can use that on my iPodTouch.” Welcome to fatherhood. But there is more.
I’m sitting at my desk at 7:30. (Yes .. I work early) She calls again. “Dad, I just got an email. iPod Touch is coming out early.”
What a kid.

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Law Parents and Humpty Dumpty

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Attention All of you Law Dads and Moms…During my fifth grader’s parent teacher conference I offered to come in and help the kids learn a bit about the judicial system and how it fits into our three branches of government. I had heard about a case that one of the bar associations had put together letting the kids roleplay a trial. Well it took me some six months to track it down but I finally did get the transcript for a kids trial. Humpty Dumpty … did he actually fall? or was he pushed? It is a great little trial where the kids play the roles of the judge, attorneys, parties, witnesses, bailiff, and jury.
I also put together a keynote presentation to give the kids before doing the trial (which has been exported to Powerpoint for those of you that are Mac challenged). The kids were very attentive during the presentation and asked some very good question. “How do you defend someone if you know he is guilty?” Since I’ve done all this work I thought I might as well share it.Below you can download “the case” along with my Keynote Presentation. For those folks still on Windows, download the Quicktime and it will work just like Keynote on your Dell. You can live life large. Grin. If you do use it, please drop me a note and let me know how it goes.
The kids seemed to have a good time and I’ve already agreed to go back to the fifth grade next year and do it for the next group (even though I won’t actually have any kids in the class)
By the way… My daughter’s class had two juries because of size. One said he fell, the other said he was pushed. Can anyone say double jeopardy?

Download “The Case” in PDF

Keynote File

Quicktime File

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