First Day of Spring! See It Through A Child’s Eyes

Mar. 20, 2009 It’s overcast here on the water today, which shifts my annual spring ritual into a different lens of wonder. Whenever things get too wacky in my world (and lately, that’s been hourly) I instinctively start removing clutter of the mind, media, and heart to time travel back into childhood, and just stop ALL stimulation. These days I worry that kids never fully … [Read more...]

Boogie For the Babes: UCLA Dance Marathon For Pediatric AIDS

Feb. 20, 2009 Derek Lee, one of our UCLA pals, is dedicated to dancing 26 hours straight with thousands of students tomorrow starting at 11am. He’s inching toward his goal with only a tiny bit more to go, and you can help put him over the top as he amps up awareness to help kids who are infected with or affected by the disease. Dance Marathon has raised nearly $1.37 million … [Read more...]

Beyond Tech Toys: Pico=A Playful Invention Company (Part Four)

Feb. 6, 2009 Today I had the pleasure of speaking with global fellowship recipients in Stanford's Innovation Journalism Program (here's VentureBeat's audio of Director David Nordfors explaining the concept of innovation journalism). I tried to explain Shaping Youth's version of innovation learning and thankfully, had asked Scott Arpajian, co-founder of virtual world Dizzywood … [Read more...]

Wii Are Family: A French Look At A Global Gaming Phenom

Romantic that I am, I took French in 8th grade yet proceeded to live in locations where Japanese, Chinese or Spanish were the language of choice; yet somehow, French still sticks in my brain. There are plenty of language resource hubs and brain data expressing the myths of kids' critical learning years for foreign language, but regardless of linguistics research all I know … [Read more...]

One Week Countdown! Vote For Your Favorite Ashoka Youth Venture!

What better way to kick off the New Year than a quick click to put fresh faces of change to work on the world’s big issues? Ashoka’s Youth Venture, a global network of over 2,000 youth-led teams, picked 30 teen finalists (ages 13-18) to put their plans in motion and make change in the world. Now it’s YOUR turn to vote ‘em up and whittle ‘em … [Read more...]