When I was kid, we ate Wonder Bread because it “built strong bodies in 12 ways.” Mom didn’t count; she just took it on faith. Ditto for choosing Crest, because more dentists recommended it, and Keds for making us run faster, jump higher.
So why did Disney decide to offer a full refund to families who [...]

I remember sitting in Dr. Salas’ Spanish class. The sum of the year? I can sing A Las Son Las Mananitas and have a great conversation with anyone who has a cold. (Ojala que se mejore pronto.)
I’ve always felt a little sheepish about comparing a human teacher to a computer, but when it comes to [...]

Whoever designed the three-month summer vacation must have received kickbacks from the electronics industry. Even the most well intentioned moms and dads need a break from lemonade stands, swim parties, and cookouts. Here are a handful of great ideas followed by a handful of fair warnings.

It’s getting harder for kids to discern the difference between cheating and using technology.
I used to write about the “cut and paste your way to an A” phenomena. Kids got so used to cutting and pasting text from the web into their documents that they failed to see the fine line between research and plagiarism.

If organic food is better for the body, then what’s organic media? Chopped liver?
That’s the question that Amy Tucker, CEO of Matter Group and founder of a new kid’s multimedia property called Xeko, posed at a recent meeting of Women in Children’s Media where the subject was “green” media.
Xeko challenges kids to “Be a Force [...]

In cyberspace, whether you’ve been a saint, sinner, or some combination of the two, your reputation sticks. Forever. Long after the real world has moved past its obsession with your high school foibles, tawdry affairs, or crooked deals, the Internet elephant never forgets.
I’ve lived it. A few years back I made a dumb business decision [...]

There’s something really creepy about paying your kids to learn…or is there?
The New York Times recently ran an interesting piece on whether or not kids learn better when they’re given material incentives. Historically, educators have frowned on rewards. They want very much to believe that education, the pursuit of knowledge, is reward enough.

“Our greatest natural resource is the minds of our children.” —Walt Disney
For a child, today’s play is tomorrow’s work. Whether it’s playing with a toy doctor kit, a tea set, a digital camera and editing software, or inside of a virtual world, the skills they’ll need tomorrow are being honed.
But their skills will only be [...]

This year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas just ended. One of newest focuses of this huge electronics show is looking at the next generation of digital consumers—kids. According to toy industry data, the fastest, and almost the only, growing segment of the kids’ toy market is for digital toys.
We’ll be looking at some of [...]

This column appeared in HybridMom Magazine this month. Consider it a cautionary tale of a sleep deprived second-lifer.

My name is Hybrid Snoodle. I’m pretty hip-looking with my army chick/punk-er getup: camouflage t-shirt, black fishnet tights, short skirt, day-glo helmet, and one of those shapely 3D bodies. It’s 2 AM and in a few hours I’ll [...]