parenting

Over the past several years I have watched in dismay as the budgetary consequences of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) force schools to adopt zero-tolerance policies toward education. I have seen in my own neighborhood a "successful" school reduce its science instruction down to 20 minutes a week for 1st-3rd graders because of fears that a single child's lack of performance on a standardized test might result in a budgetary take-down. Mr. Holland's Opus was a poignant and sadly prescient story of a bureaucracy that had its sites set far too low when it came to … Read more

Now I have heard everything. On top of all the duties that moms are supposed to do, some are now babysitting their kids' Webkinz online pets while the children are away at summer camp.

In the world of overintensive parenting and martyred moms, can we all agree that spending a half hour to an hour a day caring for pretend critters is a good place to draw the line at ridiculous demands that are made of our time? (Of course there is no mention of dads being asked to take over this ridiculous "duty.")

Webkinz never die but … Read more

I don't know about you, but there was a lot of excitement at the Tiemann household when this image popped up on the screen. It meant that nights of field work, evenings of programming, and a weekend of multimedia production all pointed at one, inescapable conclusion: my crazy bat project was a SUCCESS and the promise I made to my daughter was KEPT!!

First things first. If you have been following this blog, you know that a week ago I had the crazy idea of trying to record bats. After finally having an opportunity to use my aforementioned SONY PMC-D1, and after spending another few hours trying to convince myself I had captured something, in the end I felt a bit like one of the members of the Warren Commission looking at the Zapruder film and asking "you want me to make a finding based on this?" If I was going to convince my daughter that we had, in fact, captured and identified bat sounds beyond a shadow of a doubt, it was going to take more than a few suspicious noises of post-processed audio before I could be satisfied that the burden of proof could be met. In the days after my first blog posting, things were looking fairly bleak for the project, but I was determined to prove that with a little technology (a little more than you might suspect), I could, in fact, make good.… Read more

The first time I saw Education.com a few weeks ago, I immediately thought I was looking at a work of genius.

With articles titled "Getting Your Pre-Kindergartener Ready to Read" and "Scientists Say Kids Need More Video Games" the site hones right in on the fears and anxieties of the modern parent. "Look. An article on 4H programs. I think that'd be a good way to round out the extracurricular activities." "Is there any information on a home spectroscopy system for trans fats testing?"

I know this target audience. I … Read more

Type the word "education" into Google and the search engine will spit up 690 million results, with top links to a U.S. government site, Wikipedia, the New York Times and Apple Computer.

For PTA types, that much information could be a curse. That's why a Silicon Valley upstart aims to cater to time-pressed parents with a new reference Web site that's all about child-age schooling.

The site, called Education.com, launched in beta Thursday. According to CEO Ron Fortune, the site is designed to be "the WebMD of education" for parents and teachers … Read more

An e-mail exchange with another Craver yesterday, for one reason or another, led to my embarrassing revelation that photos exist of me at a very young age wearing a pair of big, fake fennec fox ears. It's embarrassing, yes, but after reading this post on Geekologie I realized that things could be much, much worse. The poor little munchkin in this photo will have to deal for the rest of his or her life with the fact that there exists visual evidence that he or she used to get pushed around in a Star Wars stroller. To be more … Read more

This is just sad. Technology is a wonderful thing, but there are times when it's just unnecessary--especially in parenting.

Take, for example, the "Reverse Alarm Clock," a prototype device from Carnegie Mellon University. Using icons such as the moon and sun, Electronista says, it supposedly trains kids to sleep and wake up at appointed hours. (Good luck with that.)

Apparently, some university researchers need to get out of the lab and spend a little more time around living beings, particularly families with small children. Otherwise, they'll continue to come up with ideas like the "Intellicot,&… Read more

This may seem silly if you haven't experienced parental sleep deprivation, but anyone who's cared for a newborn for any length of time will undoubtedly understand its usefulness. The "Itzbeen Timer" tells you how long it's been (get it?) since a baby's last nap, feeding, diaper change or anything else you're sure to forget a minute later.

Could a pencil and paper do the trick too? Sure, but that assumes you can remember your own name after the first week back from the hospital. In addition to alerting you for each appointed task (… Read more

If you're a parent, chances are you've tried a baby monitor. And chances are even greater that you've tried one that sucked. That, at least, has been our experience and that of practically every other mom and dad we know.

Hammacher Schlemmer is trying to right this widespread wrong with a $200 "Superior Baby Monitor" that does address one obvious flaw in many other models: This one uses "digital enhanced cordless communication" (DECT) that will automatically find an open frequency among 60 channels, avoiding interference from phones, microwaves and other electronic appliances. (In … Read more