When wireless Internet first became available, the only way to connect to it was with an external Internet card—a credit card-sized device that plugged in or attached to a laptop or desktop. While most laptops produced during the past five to ten years should have built-in wireless capability and users only need to use portable hotspots from smartphones or broadband via cable modem, it will be easier to connect to the internet.

3G and 4G Laptops

Despite being able to connect to wireless Internet, most laptops don’t have mobile broadband capability right out of the box. Rather, you need an external device that brings 3G or 4G mobile Internet to your laptop. You can, however, purchase a mobile Internet-enabled laptop through a wireless broadband provider. These computers come with mobile broadband technology preinstalled, which means you can use the Internet anywhere your provider has coverage.

There are a number of broadband wireless Internet providers for laptops, though not all of them offer the same brands or types. Some might offer Dell laptops, while others may have HP or Macintosh products. Some providers might even offer the more portable, less powerful netbooks instead of laptops.

If you’re looking at wireless Internet providers for kids laptops, you may also be looking at contracts. These laptops come at a reduced price, subsidized by a contract with a data plan. These contracts might also limit the type of network you can connect to. Is it 3G or 4G? WiMAX or LTE? Make sure to read the fine print carefully.

What to think about before buying a new laptop for kids

When thinking about a new laptop to enhance your wireless Internet capabilities especially for your kids, there are some questions you should ask yourself. First, where will your kids be using it? If it only for browsing the Internet, watch kids movies on Youtube, etc, we don’t think it’s necessary. If this will simply be for home, mobile broadband capability may be unnecessary.

Secondly, think about what other mobile devices your kids have, and if they may be able to accomplish the necessary tasks. For instance, if your kids have a smartphone or tablet that can receive and send emails on the go, your kids may not need your laptop to do the same thing.

Some perks of laptops from wireless Internet providers

• Instant connection to the Internet wherever there is coverage
• No external cards or accessories to carry around or install
• A possible contract (up to two years) with the provider you purchased from

Your child’s future in programming might be rolling through the door any minute now. Sphero, a small spherical robot, lets them program movement, colour changes, and location awareness, all using a smartphone or tablet interface.

Sphero is one of two robots sold by Orbotix. The other is a cylindrical unit called Ollie, marketed as a more macho action toy. That toy is all about speed and durability, but Sphero is a more cerebral unit, with a heavy focus on learning. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t nimble, though. The waterproof orb can roll anywhere at 4.5 miles an hour

Controlled from an iOS or Android device, Sphero has a variety of sensors and other technologies that can interact with smartphones via its Bluetooth link. These include a locator, which lets a smartphone track the device’s position on the ground. It also has accelerometers that can be used for collision detection.

The Android version of the Sphero app can also connect with up to seven Spheros at the same time, and can tell where the devices are in relation to each other.

Telling Sphero what to do in code

The robot has a variety of apps, including games for kids (and grown-ups), but the thing that interests us are the apps that can teach kids procedural programming. One app, called MacroLab, can be used to send over 30 different kinds of instructions to the device, which will then execute them.

“Macrolab is very visual. You tap, add a command, set parameters, and once the commands are all listed in a certain order then you press play and send that command to the ball,” says Ross Ingram, community manager at the firm.

For more advanced programmers, there’s another programming app, called orbBasic.

“orbBasic steps it up so that they’re typing in commands. They can start to understand syntax and how things are structured,” Ingram says.

Kids using this program get to learn about creating variables and conditional statements, along with how to read sensor data.

“We see kids building some cool programs. This one kid at the start of the year built a program where the Sphero has a virtual box,” he recalls. If the Sphero went outside the region outlined in the program, it would change colour.

The orb is also designed to grow beyond that, Ingram explains. there is support for 12 different languages, including Objective C, Java, Ruby, and Python.

Curriculum

We’ve seen other educational robots here on Pedisedate, but one thing that’s different about Sphero is its curriculum focus. Orbotix went out of its way to create an educational learning plan that fits into school curricula, says Ingram.

“We wanted to make it so that you didn’t have to be a computer science teacher to teach the concepts that Sphero offered,” Ingram says. “That’s why we aligned all of our lessons with Common Core math and science standards.”

The organisation created SPRK (Schools/Parents/Robots/Kids), an educational program to support its push into that space.

The materials consist of eight core lessons, covering fourth and fifth grade common core standards. There are also four stem challenges, which are multi-day activities where kids are encouraged to develop tech projects, progressing through the prototype stage to the final build.

In one of these challenges, kids get to develop a program that guides Sphero through a maze with tight twists and turns.

Now, the firm is looking at extending its education program to integrate with curricula in other regions.

“We’re taking what we have and aligning it to whatever the grade standard is for the UK and Canada and a couple of other English-speaking countries,” Ingram says.

Smartphones

One thing always gives us an uneasy feeling when discussing educational tech toys for schools: price. Sphero needs a smartphone or tablet to work, and they don’t come cheap. Ingram has an answer for that, too.

Apple has an initiative called ConnectED, and they partnered with 115 schools in the US. They’re outfitting them soup to nuts with computers, iPads, and Internet, and we’re donating a large number of Spheros to these schools,” he says.

“A lot of the schools that we’re donating to have kids that are from lo- income families and qualify for free reduced lunches. We align with Apple to make technology more accessible.”

Ingram hopes that the little spherical robot has pulled off the hardest trick of all: tricking kids into learning, through play. It gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘well-rounded education’.

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“Kids these days” – we’ve all heard the phrase, and no doubt most of us have spoken it ourselves. Why? Simple: technology. Kids these days watch television, browse information from around the world on the Internet, listen to literally days’ worth of music on portable music players, and, of course, play video games.

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But what sort of video game systems are out there, and which of them offer educational video games and student learning rather than just mindless entertainment?  In other words, which video game systems do you need to buy to give your children the top educational video games for kids?  Take a look at the following list of video game systems that are great for educational video games and student learning, and decide for yourself which ones you think are the most appropriate for your children.

The Old Standby:  The Personal Computer

The most basic and versatile video game system you can buy for educational video games and student learning is the good old-fashioned PC.  PCs offer a number of the top educational video games from kindergarten ages – games with loveable characters like Winnie the Pooh or Dora the Explorer – to the sorts of games young teens would enjoy, where the player has adventures designed to teach as well as entertain.  PCs are also valuable for many other things, of course, which makes them doubly important: computers these days are becoming absolutely vital in nearly every high paying job market.  Knowing how to use a computer is one of the most important things the next generation of workers can have, and owning your own PC for educational video games and student learning is a great way to give your child a corner on the market.

PCs also allow your child access to the Internet, which, properly used, can be a great educational tool – in fact, many educational video games can be found for free on the Internet.  You also have to be careful, though, when browsing online – like the ocean, the Internet is full of many wonders, but also contains sharks.  Know Internet safety, and protect your child from the many not-so-nice things that reside on the worldwide web.

Handheld Educational Video Game Systems

There are two main problems with PCs:  they are bulky, and they are expensive.  What if you just want something for a young child to play with no matter where he or she is?  In that case, you might want to look into the wide world of handheld educational video game systems.  Systems like vDeck and a number of others are generally sold most places where toys are available, such as WalMart or Target, to name two obvious examples.  These systems have the advantage of being relatively cheap – rarely more than one hundred dollars, and often only twenty or thirty – and easy to use by any child.  Again, educational video games and student learning are available on these systems for just about any student, from toddlers to the ages of 10 – 12, so this is a great place to start looking.

Standard Video Game Systems

The video game systems that one always hears about, of course, are the big ones: Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo are the current three big contenders, with the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Wii as their respective most current platforms.  These platforms are midrange between the handhelds and the PCs; whereas, many PC’s are around six hundred to a thousand dollars, these platforms range from around two hundred to four hundred dollars, depending on where you get them and whether or not they are used.

Disadvantages of Standard Video Game Systems

The disadvantage to these systems is that their primary purpose is entertainment.  Unlike PCs, these video game systems don’t have other purposes beyond games, and unlike the handheld video game systems for educational games we mentioned earlier, most of these games are not purely for education.  Many of these games, though not the top educational video games, are still useful for children – there are music games, for instance, that are active rather than simply having the child sitting immobile on a couch, and teach things like rhythm and even harmony and singing techniques.  Many of these games, though not “educational video games” in the strictest sense of the word, are still very valuable for the child playing them – it’s up to your judgment as to what the child receives.  Of course, some of the top educational video games are available for these consoles, just as they are for the PC.  Just do some research and consider your options – some of the top educational video games for kids are available on all the platforms, while some of these great tools for educational video games and student learning are only available for one or a few.  A little research will help you make the right choice.

Once you use wireless speakers for TV, you can be assured of true home theatre experience. At one time, home theatre system meant a lot of wires to connect all those speakers. These wires looked unsightly & created problems too. It is not easy to conceal these speaker wires. Besides, this kind of a wired speaker setup is pretty expensive too.

Now you have the option of eliminating these loads of cables and removing the clutter. This can be done by using wireless speakers for TV. So you eliminate the cable wires, and still enjoy incredible surround sound. Some research found that wireless speakers are also great for kids because they can watch their favorite shows without having to interfere with messy cables.

Today fairly inexpensive solutions are available for enjoying high quality audio through the best wireless speakers 2019 UK for TV. This use of technology has resulted in fairly reasonably priced off-the-shelf solutions. So you can use these wireless speakers for your home office or even to enjoy an integrated home entertainment system with surround sound.

These wireless speakers for TV can be connected to your TV or to your home entertainment system. Now you can play your digital audio as well as video files.

Hence today complete home theater integration can be achieved by installing these wireless speakers for TV.

Setting up these wireless speakers for TV is quite simple. And there is no major difference in the audio quality between wired speakers & wireless speakers.

The wireless speakers for TV need amplification. This can be done by using an integrated amplifier or by having an external amplifier. And this amplifier will require power. Hence this power is provided by connecting to an AC power supply or by battery power.

So now you have the convenience of having wireless speaker setup all across your room or your home. This setup can be applied to a rear surround sound speaker setup; or to a remote speaker system.

There are two main options for speakers for TV. You may take an Add-on Unit or opt for Integrated Wireless Systems. The transmission to the wireless speakers in both the cases is done through RF wireless transmission, or at times through infra red. It is done through 900 MHz or through 2.4GHz bands. The audio signals are transmitted to the wireless speakers by using digital technology.

A few wireless speakers for TV also operate in the 5.8GHz band. Such wireless speakers will have less interference from home appliances like microwave ovens and mobile phones. The wireless speakers systems using infra red will require line of sight between the speaker and the transmitter in order to operate. The add-on wireless speakers have to be connected to the rear-channel speaker which is on the A/V receiver or the TV. Or they may be connected to the line-level out on the TV.

Want your daughter to catch on to coding? Start her early, and set an example.

We use ‘geek’ as a term of endearment. There are plenty of other female success stories in computing, but statistically speaking, there aren’t nearly enough geek girls. Girls can code every bit as well as boys – but they’re not learning how. Why is that? And what can we do to create a more encouraging environment for girls in tech?

The first computer programmer was a woman, but Ada Lovelace certainly wasn’t the last. Women have excelled in computing for years. Admiral Grace Hopper invented the first computer compiler, and Yahoo!’s CEO, Marissa Meyer, was the first woman engineer at Google.

The gender imbalance in computing education is unquestionable. Finding statistics about the minority status of women in computing is like shooting fish in a barrel.

Up in Canada, for example, MasterCard ran an Angus Reid survey of 1007 Canadian adults this summer. It found that only 18% who had considered a career in technology were women.

Almost one in three women who didn’t want a technology-focused career said that they didn’t think they had the skills, and one in 10 said that they were encouraged to develop them. A third of Canadians think that girls are encouraged to pursue other fields.

In the US, less than 15% of new bachelor’s degrees in computer science are awarded to women.

Early problems

There are some women who buck the trend, though. Kiki Prottsman, a computer science and structure at the University of Oregon, was the original geek girl, learning technology early on. Her father told himself computing to make ends meet, and one day, she was home sick. He gave her a book on BASIC.

“He sat me down with the book and said ‘figure out how to program this thing’,” she recalls. “By the time my mum got home, I’d made a game that if you entered someone’s eye and hair color, it would tell you which member of the family it was.”

Prottsman has spent her professional life drawing kids into computing education, but girls begin dropping out of the picture early on, she says.

She runs ThinkerSmith, a non-profit based in Eugene, Oregon that teaches children how to code by abandoning lecture-style classes in favor of hands-on experience.

“Through Thinkersmith, I’ve talked clubs of all ages,” she says. “When we’re advertising computer science to children in first through fourth grade, it’s equal.”

Girls and boys alike flock to these courses, eager to pick up the basics of programming, but from grade 6, (around 11 years old), girls are less likely to get involved in computing, continues Prottsman. “When we get to middle school, the girls drop-off.”

Social pressures

Kids are developing socially around that age, and it becomes far more important to fit in. Anything seen as ‘uncool’ becomes a threat to your social status – and that includes being a geek girl, because among certain younger female age groups, geekery is still not trendy.

This social anxiety can extend to the family unit, too, warns Prottsman. Little kids enjoy doing neat things that even their parents don’t know about. It gives a sense of agency to kids who are still establishing their position as individuals in the world.

Things change as kids get older. “When you start to get into things that you never saw your mum doing, that no one else in the family does, then you start to get those doubts,” she explains.

Eventually, this becomes a self-perpetuating problem. If girls don’t opt into technical pursuits such as coding, they don’t develop their skill sets, while boys who take the classes typically do.

“You’ll be in these classes and girls will be in their first term of computer science,” she says. “And they will see these guys that know everything, and they’re giving these long-winded answers. And the girls are comparing themselves to those very vocal few.”

Kids in kindergarten to grade five aren’t thinking that way. Everyone is on an equal playing field. This means two things: parents interested in raising technically-savvy girls should start them young. And they should be sensitive and responsive to these social pressures.

Bucking the trend

Melissa Sariffodeen, co-executive director of Toronto-based nonprofit Ladies Learning Code, has some ideas about handling those social pressures and inspiring girls to get involved.

Focusing on broader goals is important, because it enables girls to tackle other opportunities, using programming as a means, rather than an end in itself. “We’re trying to show them how it can fit into their life,” she explains.

There are positive signs, as tech firms begin to do just that. Google’s Made With Code campaign, which specifically engages geek girls with inspiring examples of how they can change the world around them with code.

Vanessa, Ashley, Rosie and Magarita in Palo Alto, for example, coded a mobile app to co-ordinate community cleanup.

“The other important thing is giving them more role models, so for every four learners we have one female,” Sariffodeen says. “The idea is to surround these girls with a lot of strong female role models who are cool and relevant to them.”

Ladies Learning Code runs two types of coding classes for young people: Kids Learning Code is a co-ed class for 6-17 year-olds, but Girls Learning Code is purely for girls in the same age group. The organisation is also running a national Girls Learning Code day, conducting girls-only workshops in 16 cities across Canada.

Alice Marwick is assistant professor at Fordham University and author of the Tiara.org feminist technology blog. She believes that coding classes exclusively to girls are useful thing.

“One of the problems right now is that programming is seen as male, and young men are territorial about it,” she argues. “It’s empowering for women to be judged on their intelligence and capability rather than their looks and personality. Being able to experiment in places where girls won’t be attacked or talked down to.”

Gender harrassment in programming classes happens, as Rikki Endsley’s letter to her daughter’s high school compsci teacher illustrates, and it can be devastating to even the most steely-nerved geek girls.

Dedicated classes for geek girls

Sariffodeen’s organisation has been running segregated coding classes for geek girls alongside its coed classes for two years.  The boy slots always fill up first, whereas the girls one don’t always sell out at all, she says, arguing that it underscores the issue.

The real drop-off in signups among girls happens after 13 years old, supporting Prottsman’s suggestion that the problem gets worse as girls get older.

Another problem, though, is that in many schools, there are almost no resources allocated to either gender for computer programming, placing them both in the same boat.

On National Girls Learning Code day, there will be a workshop in my kids’ city. But for the rest of the year, there is no school curriculum for coding, and the only computing education focuses on using PCs as tools in other disciplines.

My daughter will no doubt be happy at the opportunity to learn for a day, but my boy has no such luxury, outside of my own extra curricular teaching.

Faced with a general lack of resources, along with a male-dominated coding culture, what can parents do to encourage their daughters to become geek girls by promoting computing and coding education?

“Be a support system,” says Prottsman, advising parents not to let their own lack of technical knowledge impact their kids’ confidence. “I see a lot of parents asking ‘are you sure you can do this?’”

Technology can be scary for many parents who haven’t been exposed to it, but taking a little time to learn the basics can help them to speak the language when encouraging their children, and especially the girls.

“It’s about taking an interest,” says Prottsman. “When the parents want to see what they created, it means so much more.”

But above all, when trying to give your daughter access to as many options as possible in her education, it’s worth taking more time to explain to her that computing is a real option. That means exposing her to technology early, and reinforcing it often.

From the practical to the philosophical, five reasons to expose children to programming.

The coding education movement is growing. From the Hour of code movement through to the UK’s drive to teach coding for kids in schools, teachers and parents are embracing the idea of computer programming courses for children. But why is it important?

There are practical, economic reasons. There are the connections between coding and general learning abilities. And then, there are other, more philosophical reasons.

It’s a lot to take in. If you’re a parent or a teacher that needs more information about the potential of code to change a child’s future, then you’ll be interested in our five solid reasons why coding for kids is important:

Using technology creatively increases analytical thinking

Turn on your PC to get the best Internet access so you can more fun with your kids, after that you can spend an hour coding with your children, and you’ll understand how it encourages them to think analytically. Computer programming involves understanding how a process works, by breaking it down into smaller parts. Debugging computer code (trust us, there will be bugs) is a valuable part of the process.

When kids have to walk through a computer program to find out why it isn’t working, they’re analysing logic and instruction flow, and approaching things methodically. So coding for kids promotes a powerful skill, and today’s modern, child-focused computer languages mean that you’re never too young to learn it.

Coding for kids can be a foundational skill

Coding skills can support and fuel many other skills and activities in a child’s life. The analytical skills themselves can enhance their capabilities in other areas, but coding for kids can also inspire other endeavours.

Coding their own video games encourages storytelling skills, and gets thinking about graphic design. Older kids may enjoy thinking about ways to solve social problems with code. Building web sites, as nine year-old Lauren did with Cool Kids Studio can inspire a child to think about communication, and to write from an audience’s perspective.

“This blog is for parents and teachers who want their kids to control technology,rather than to be controlled, and to create with it, rather than merely to consume.”

Let’s not forget entrepreneurial skill. Lemonade stands are great. Nothing wrong with that. But coding gives kids a shot at building the next killer app, and perhaps even selling it. This seems a little bigger and bolder somehow.

Just ask Chris Owens, who was making $700,000 from bundling Mac software online at 14. Or Nick D’Alosio who wrote Summly in his parents’ bedroom when he was 15, and sold it for $30m two years later. That’s a lot of lemonade, right there. Coding for kids isn’t about making money – but it can give them a platform to test out their business skills.

Tech jobs are in high demand

Technology skills are in short supply now, and they’ll be in short supply in the future. Two thirds of Canadian technology companies anticipated a significant skills shortage in a November 2013 survey, while four in ten leaders in London, UK’s technology sector cited a talent shortage as their biggest challenge.

Outsourcing programming work to inexpensive countries is a good idea in theory, but far harder to accomplish in practice. Teaching coding for kids now is a great foundation for their future success.

Programming computers builds self-confidence

Coding for kids builds self-confidence. It gives them the basic tools to create their own worlds, with their own rules. Children can apply their coding experience to their own creations. This gives them a sense of satisfaction, and proving to themselves that they can succeed.

Coding means control

We all want our kids to be able to change the world. If nothing else, we want them to have the control to shape their own world as they want it to. Code is one way to shape reality.

More than ever before, today’s rules are executed in code. Whether you’re being approved for a bank loan, trading shares, or even being told what to watch on your TV, algorithms control it all. Facebook’s software frames how you communicate with your friends. Software routes your voice and video calls from one place to another. No wonder tech VC Mark Andreessen said that software is eating the world.

Tomorrow’s adults will either be shaped by those rules, or help to shape them.

In his book, Program or be Programmed, Douglas Rushkoff talks about major milestones in human intellectual development: the development of text, the invention of the printing press, and then, the emergence of computing and the Internet.

Each of these developments ushered in something new. Text meant reading. The printing press meant writing. And then, finally, computing bought in programming. Except, he posits, it didn’t quite work out that way.

Each of these developments made new capabilities available to a small elite. It didn’t reach the masses until the next development happened.

When text was invented, a few people could read. The rest simply had to listen. When the printing press emerged, a few people could print their work, but most could only read what the elite printed. Finally, when the computing era came along, anyone could distribute their work via a blog or Facebook post – but relatively few people could create those platforms by programming.

Here’s Rushkoff talking about it at the SXSW interactive and film conference in 2010:

Today, there’s no excuse for a generation to lag behind a technological elite. Teaching coding for kids sets them up to take control of the technology that they use, and mould it for their own purposes.

This blog is for parents and teachers who want their kids to control technology, rather than to be controlled, and to create with it, rather than merely to consume.

Most kids in the western world will grow up knowing how to use a Powerpoint presentation (lord help us) or to watch a YouTube video, or play on an XBox. Far fewer of them will grow up understanding how the underlying technology works – and how it can be used to build other tools, for their own purposes.

The question is, which group will your kids fall into?

Technology can bring amazing things to a child’s education, but underneath all of the coding courses, build-it-yourself computer kids and educational robots, there’s a dirty little secret: technology is expensive, and lots of families can’t afford it.

iPad apps are great, if your family or school has the hundreds of dollars for the hardware. The same goes for PCs. Even a relatively cheap Raspberry Pi needs a monitor or a TV to operate, and the adaptor will set you back another few bucks. And then there’s the Internet access to pay for. The result? A digital divide between poor kids, and everyone else.

There are lots of families living in poverty throughout North America and further afield. In the US, 19.9% of children live in poverty, according to the US Census. One in three US citizens living in poverty is a child.

Poverty may not be the same as low income. The National Center for Children in Poverty cites research suggesting that families need around twice the Federal Poverty Level to meet their basic needs.

The US Census says that the Federal poverty level is $16,057 for a household of two, one of whom is a child. For households with two adults and a child, it goes up to $18,769. Not much room for food and heating there, let alone PCs and Internet connections.

In 2011, 8.8% of Canadians – nearly three million people – lived on a low income. Lone parents featured heavily in that mix.

Avoiding a digital divide

STEM education can dramatically increase a child’s future prospects, but parents working two or three jobs to put food on the table don’t have much time or energy to think about a technology education. How do we stop those children falling through the gaps?

A targeted approach is important, says Jennifer Arguello, senior tech advisor at the Kapor Centre for Social Impact. She advises focusing on the most affected groups, which tend to divide along racial lines. The US Census shows black and hispanic families consistently earning significantly less than the median household income averaged across all races for decades.

“One startling statistic is that the median black family makes $32k a year, and the median latino family makes $38k a year,” she points out. “The median annual salary for a tech worker is more than those incomes combined.”

Arguello is getting those figures from the Level Playing Field Institute’s infographic on the subect, which in turn draws data from the US Census Bureau and Dept of Labor Statistics. It shows a clear digital divide between caucasian communities, and communities of colour.

Updated 2013 figures from the US census show black households earning a median $34,598 per year, compared to the $51,939 averaged across all races, and the $58,270 earned by the average white household.

This is why the Kapor Center works mainly with black and latino communities, focused in Oakland and California’s Bay Area. It supports organisations attempting to improve digital literacy among disconnected communities.

Why aren’t schools taking care of these programs? “One problem for computing education for the nation is that the standards proliferating Common Core don’t emphasise computing,” Arguello explains.

Common Core is the American educational initiative dictating what K-12 students should know in English-language arts and mathematics by the end of each grade. The problem is that the creators of the program haven’t factored computing technology into the standards, but instead concentrate on more establish skill sets.

“They are math, science, and more traditional subjects,” Arguello says. “If educators are being held to those standards and they don’t include computing, then the initiatives to go above and beyond may not exist.”

That leaves other organisations to try and redress the growing digital divide. The Level Playing Field Initiative is trying to do that with the Summer Maths and Science Honors Academy (SMASH). It takes kids from low income families of colour over three years on a free STEM education program which includes a five-week summer course.

“You should see how lacklustre these kids are to go back to the schools after that summer course,” Arguello says. “The schools don’t have these classes to offer.”

Most of the SMASH students major in STEM outside the program in school, and 100% of them graduate high school, with almost the same percentage going on to college and university.

“We are talking about a population that is 70% first-time college-goers, so it is a really at-risk population,” she continues.

Bridging the digital divide with mentorship

Other programs seek to combine skills training with real-world business involvement. Hack The Hood teaches young people how to build basic websites, with mentor involvement.

The 15-21 year-olds also visit tech companies to see how it’s done and make contacts there. And then, the organisation connects them with small businesses who need websites creating, building valuable links for young people who will soon be entering the workforce.

Susan Mernit, co-founder of Hack The Hood, explains that the organisation also runs a six-week summer Boot Camp for young people.

“They turn from consumers to producers of technology,” she says, adding that the organisation, currently in Oakland, plans to expand into eight cities in the Bay area next year.

Technology access is key

But digital literacy isn’t the only challenge facing young people from low income families. Basic access is just as much of a problem in the growing digital divide.

“We believe that affordable access has to be prioritised right alongside any curriculum or effort to do any digital literacy training and skills,” says Zach Leverenz, CEO of EveryoneOn, a nonprofit group trying to eliminate the digital divide in the US.

“Relevance is driven by the affordability than it is the opposite way around,” Leverenz says. “Trying to convince someone that the Internet as an activity is relevant without making it an affordable offer, just to bring it into their homes and then have them build their own value propositions is a tough thing to do. So affordability and relevance of skills is a package.”

Driven by the fact that a quarter of US households are without Internet access, EveryoneOn partnered with national and regional ISPs to get cheap deals on Internet connectivity to disadvantaged Americans, ranging from as low as $10 per month.

The organisation also procures refurbished computers with Windows and Microsoft’s Office suite, and partnered with non-profits to offer free digital training.

Even if schools do offer some technology education for children, there’s still a gap, Leverenz says.

“The home connectivity piece is important. The anywhere, anytime learning approach requires access outside the classroom and after school hours,” he explains.

“We care a lot about creating digital learning strategies that are holistic for all students. We feel that it’s important to do that out of school,” Leverenz adds.

The stakes are rising. A disproportionate percentage of kids in poverty are black and latino. Tech jobs could be the way out for many kids in disadvantaged communities, but the US Census says that only 4-5% of the tech workforce are currently from those communities. There’s a big imbalance to redress, and it will take years to make the shift. But the opportunity today lies both in technology training – and in basic technology access.

One of the biggest dangers for kids who have tablets is screen fever. Leave a child to their own devices (or device) and they’ll get sucked into an endless variety of games and apps. A little screen time goes a long way, but it shouldn’t take the place of social interaction and connection with the physical world. Here’s a way to merge kids’ art projects and screen time in a way you wouldn’t have imagined.

Adam Kumpf, a graduate at MIT, has invented a kit that lets you create unique art projects with your little ones, while folding their best electronic friends into the mix. He has created instructions for building an iPad inventor’s kit on the Instructables site for makers and hackers. See it here.

“While it’s super fun to invent your own futuristic iPad gadgets, it’s also an engaging way to explore the fundamental concepts of mechanical systems, physics, basic electronics, interface design, and engineering,” says Kumpf on his Instructables page.

The inventor’s kit costs around $15 to make, and consists of materials that you’ll find at your local stationery store, and perhaps lying around in the basement or shed. You’ll be looking for random scraps of wooden blocks, pieces of foil, pencils, and so on. They’re the same kind of thing that you’d use for kids’ art projects without an iPad present, but this kit is designed for some serious electronic enhancement.

The Instructables site includes some project ideas, including making a stylus for drawing with (putting a piece of foil around a pencil turns it into a stylus for your capacitive screen), a wooden ruler for drawing straight lines, and even a wooden ‘knob’ that you can use to turn things on the screen.

All of this is incredibly low-tech, but it can produce some inspiring results. A while ago, Kumpf made a real-world wooden piano out of clothespins, that could be used to play an iPad keyboard.

Aside from the fact that it’s cheap to produce, the advantage of all this stuff is that it can work on any tablet, or even iPods, at a stretch. That means you’re not locked into any one ecosystem by an expensive app.

Kids’ art projects like this are the modern equivalent of the old joke: children love presents, but what’s really interesting is playing with the box. With some parental encouragement, it will get them to think about screen time in more interesting ways.

Kumpf has some suggestions for projects using the inventor’s kit on the Instructables site, including creating something with more than one contact point so that you can zoom on the screen, or a compass that you can draw a curve with. Or how about a wooden slide to control – well, something that needs sliding?

The only downside here is that kids have to work with the software that they have. Developing software designed to be manipulated like this will be beyond most young peoples’ capabilities (and most adults’, come to that) but they can still have a jolly old time developing hardware objects to manipulate apps that they already have. Apps that focus on drawing and painting would be a good way to start.

The idea here is to get kids thinking about physical ways to interact with digital technology. We do a lot of kids art projects with our young ones at KTN, including family painting sessions,. This is a neat way to bridge the gap between tech and non-tech with some geeky crafts, though – and to produce something pretty awesome along the way.