Screencap from RoboticsToys.com

Trossen Robotics has launched a sister site, RoboticsToys. Much like the main Trossen site, Robotics Toys is definitely fired up about robots.

Roboticstoys.com aims to be the number one place to find all your robotics kits, toys, and decor for that budding roboticist in your family. Robotics is a great way to spark an early interest with children in mathematics, engineering, and the sciences. There is nothing quite like building your first interactive creation and watching it come to life to kickoff a lifelong fascination of discovery and invention. Just be careful with how much time they spend behind closed doors or you just might come home to find this thing “negotiating” allowance increases with you.

They’ve got everything from a $10 HEXBUG to a $1200 Bioloid with something in between to fit most any budget.

Little Pim’s Word Bag

When you’re learning a foreign language, it’s helpful to have frequent vocabulary reminders for words you have learned. To help with that, the creators of the Little Pim DVDs (which Jonathan and I reviewed recently) have written an app for the iPhone/iPod Touch called Little Pim’s Word Bag*. The app contains both Spanish and French nouns which are a subset of the words taught on the DVDs.

When you start up the game, choose which language, French or Spanish, that you want to study. Within each, the words are split among three different topics: eating and drinking, wake up smiling and playtime. Once you have made your choice, Little Pim the panda rolls in with his messenger bag and greets you. His bag starts shaking, signaling you to tap the bag. Little Pim then takes out an item and says the word for it. The item and the word for it go to the bottom of the screen. When the screen width is full, the words and pictures shift to the left. You can always shift them back to review words. When you’re done with a section, touch the back arrow to go to the main menu for that language.

The program is identical in both French and Spanish, except for the language. Since there are no English words in the app, it encourages you to think only in the language you are studying. This app is perfect for reinforcing the words already learned in the DVDs. Since all of the words are written on the screen, you learn the words visually and auditorily. I personally find this very helpful, since my entire family seems to learn visually. Being able to see how a word is spelled helps us to remember more.

I wish that Little Pim would use each word in a sentence, too, but at this price, it is a cute, fun, interactive and educational activity for kids. It is most helpful to use along with the DVDs, to reinforce vocabulary words, but it is also very fun and helpful on its own. I hope that they’ll come out with apps for the other languages offered on DVD.

The Little Pim’s Word Bag app is $1.99 at the iTunes Store.

Wired: Adorable panda, very useful vocabulary words, reinforces learning from the Little Pim DVDs, good price for what you get.

Tired: Limited number of words, wish there were more languages offered.

* I received a free copy of this game to review.

Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America by Patrick Carr & Maria Kefalas

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that the majority of our readership doesn’t live in a rural area. I mean, the majority of America’s population doesn’t live in a rural area—that’s what makes it rural, right? Up until about two years ago, neither did I. But since moving to a small rural town in western Kansas (population: 800) just over two years ago, I’ve become very interested and involved in community development, and particularly in the issues surrounding youth and young adults. One significant issue that comes up again and again is this: Is there a solution to the “brain drain”—that is, the reality that the brightest kids often leave for bigger cities and don’t come back? Is the solution to attract more kids back after college, to improve the education of the kids who are planning to stay, or something else entirely?

And, for those of you who don’t live in rural America: does it matter?

Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas, a husband-and-wife team of sociologists, spent nearly seven years researching this topic. They lived for a time in a rural town in northeastern Iowa (which they’ve called “Ellis”) and interviewed hundreds of people, mostly focusing on the young adults who graduated from Ellis’ high school in the 1990s. What they found makes for a fascinating story about the “hollowing out” of middle America, and they argue unequivocally that, yes, it matters, whether you live in New York City or Tribune, Kansas.

The Four Types of Young Adults

They sorted their subjects into four basic categories: Achievers, Stayers, Seekers, and Returners. Achievers are the ones who show promise early on, the ones who are academically (or sometimes athletically) gifted, and typically leave their small communities for college, never to return. Stayers are those who take over the family business or get a job during high school and end up living out their adult lives in the same town. Seekers are those who can’t wait to leave but don’t have the grades or scholarships to do it; they often end up in the military as an escape. Returners are those who come back to their small town after leaving; sometimes out of a sense of responsibility and purpose but often because the outside world turned out to be less pleasant or more challenging than they expected.

The Root of the Problem

This is, of course, a vast oversimplification of the book. Carr and Kefalas devote an entire chapter to each of the four groups, outlining the reasons many of these young people make their respective decisions. Some of what they found is surprising, but a lot of it isn’t. Rural communities expend a disproportionate amount of effort, resources, and training on the very kids that aren’t likely to stay; and the ones who stay often get little attention. It’s a point of pride to be say you had a part in somebody’s success, of course, and it’s become an ingrained habit to send off promising young adults to make something of themselves. However, this inefficient practice is what has gutted so many small communities across the Midwest and it has had a devastating effect.

What troubles me the most is that when they talked to administrators at the Ellis high school, there was no surprise that their smartest kids were being put on a path to leave: it’s what they’d always done, and they knew they were doing it. The problem lies in the fact that decades-old behavior is very hard to change. After you spend ten years training a kid to think he’s “too good” for his small town, can you turn around and convince him that he should stay?

Why It Matters

This matters to me personally, because I struggle between two opinions: wanting to make my own community a place that thrives and attracts more young people; and wanting more for my own children (and the kids I meet here), for them to have experiences and encounter diversity that simply doesn’t exist here. (For instance, I am the only Asian male in the entire county.) Carr and Kefalas make a compelling argument for why the rural brain drain matters (both to the rural communities but also for the entire nation) and then offer some of their insight on possible solutions.

It’s a huge problem that will not be solved easily, and the authors aren’t selling a magic bullet that will address everything. Simply building amenities is not enough to attract young professionals if there aren’t jobs. Small towns have to find a way to give the academically gifted kids the best possible education while laying the foundation for them to return; at the same time, this needs to be balanced by programs that address the Stayers, giving them necessary job skills for the modern post-industrial economy and acknowledging their importance to the survival of small communities. Immigration is a touchy subject, but in many cases the influx of immigrants will play an important part in sustaining small-town economies; finding a way to integrate newcomers is crucial.

There aren’t a lot of easy answers, but Carr and Kefalas do a great job of digging into some of the causes of the hollowing out. I found the writing easy to read and a good mix of the anecdotal and statistical. I highly recommend Hollowing Out the Middle, particularly for those who live in small-town America, but even for those who don’t. This is not a problem that will be solved without support from the majority of the population that lives in metropolitan areas.

You can purchase Hollowing Out the Middle from Amazon or your favorite bookseller. Also, visit HollowingOutTheMiddle.com for more information, including a book trailer and the preface to the book.

Jonathan Liu reads as much as he possibly can. This is an edited version of his review on his books blog.

Go ahead, try this at home! Image: Kathy Ceceri

Right around the time I started writing for GeekDad, I embarked on an adventure of learning about chemistry at home with my kids. Since I’m the type to obey any warning about using things only as directed, this was a giant leap for me. By the end of the year, though, we had performed more than 30 experiments, most of which were pretty cool, and we hadn’t even burned a hole in the kitchen counter.

So imagine my delight at being contacted recently by Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly magazine published by the American Chemical Society. They have a wonderful little column called “What’s That Stuff?” that looks at what’s really in things like Silly Putty, self-darkening sunglasses, Cheese Wiz and artificial snow. This week, they’re examining the chemistry of hand warmers, those little packets you can stick in your pocket or shoe to keep your extremities warm in winter weather. And it turns out that when you Google “hand warmers” and “chemistry,” one of the first results is the experiment the kids and I did on our blog Home Chemistry!

As we discovered, the kind of hand warmers we were investigating contained iron powder, which quickly began to rust when exposed to air. Ignoring the warning (!) and opening the packet lets in more oxygen and speeds up the reaction, creating so much heat that your iron mixture will start to smoke. (Since we didn’t have lab glassware, we did our experimenting in a small canning jar designed to be heated.) After the reaction cooled down, we also played around with the iron powder using a magnet, which made it act a little bit like ferrofluid.

Check out the column on hand warmers and if you want, try our experiment at home. Believe me, if I could do it, you can too!

(Kids and parents who are interested in chemistry will also like the ACS’ video podcast, ByteSize Science.)

Sadly, precious few maps have survived the centuries. But one of the most remarkable collections I’ve ever seen came to my attention via the magic of Twitter. The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection has a breathtaking online gallery of 19th Century maps drawn by children, most of whom were young women. The quality is astonishing, making even my best attempts at map-making look rather childish in comparison.

From the site:

In the 18th and 19th centuries, children were taught geography by making their own maps, usually copies of maps available to them in books and atlases at their schools or homes. Below is a group of maps and geographical diagrams made by children in the 19th century; and some of the school atlases, geographies, and wall maps that may have been their sources. These old maps made by children were hand drawn and colored, one-of-a-kind productions, and it is amazing that any have survived down to our time. That they have is due to luck and the efforts of families to preserve the history of their children. These maps have a special poignancy today in the way that they reflect the optimism of youth from another time.

Via @bookn3rd

Image: Poisson Rouge

With a lot of kids’ time so planned out these days, with their fun and learning both quite regimented, it is important to let them just be free to explore interests on their own. There are lots of ways to do this off-line, but some free form places exist online as well.

One of my kids’ very favorite websites is Poisson Rouge. Most of the site is aimed at young children, perhaps ages eight and under, though that’s just my estimate. Once your child is old enough to just barely work a mouse, set them free on the site. There are no directions to read; it is all discovery play and learning. And it’s free.

Kids can wander through the alphabet, play with colors, phonics, opposites, puzzles, dot to dots, make and listen to music, play games, appreciate and make art, learn about optical illusions, tell time, do some coloring in, learn constellations and play with many other activities. There are even activities to help kids practice using a mouse. Most of the few words on the site seem to be in French, with a few in Spanish and a few in English. Other smaller bits are even in Greek and Chinese. But since language isn’t a big part of playing on the site, not knowing French never gets in the way of the fun.

One of the newest pages that Poisson Rouge has added is for Christmas. From the main page, just click on the little potted tree. You can decorate several Christmas trees and have little men sing and play instruments for you.

It takes a long while to try out everything at Poisson Rouge. It’s like having a set of over 200 virtual toys. A lot of trial and error and intuitive clicking will keep your kids happily occupied for a long time. Clicking on some toys on the main page bring you to one activity. Clicking on others will take you to a screen with a whole other set of things from which to choose.

If the grownup in you just can’t stand not knowing how things work ahead of time, or if your child just can’t figure out what he or she is supposed to do on a certain page, there is a user guide to step you through. But remember, use this as a last resort. See what your kids can come up with first.

Helpful Tip: Always click on the red fish to get back to the main screen.

The website also has an area for slightly older kids called Encyclopedia Interactica. It also has mostly wordless discovery play, but the dozens of activities are more advanced. My eight year old daughter prefers this part of the site. “It’s educational! They have multiplication!” she says. In addition to multiplication, they also have airplane wings, angles and protractors, planetary motion, music, teeth, solar eclipses, addition and subtraction, gear ratios, constellations, the human body, rockets, the life cycle of a butterfly, temperature, ocean currents, solar power and more.

There is also a section called Poisson Rouge TV, which has little fun videos to watch starring many of the toys in the other parts of the site.

To support Poisson Rouge in their continued efforts to offer quality activities for kids, consider donating some money, or buying something from their shop. Prices are in euros. (This is a completely unpaid/uncompensated message.)

I can not say enough great things about this site. Ever since we discovered it a couple of years ago, my kids have been learning and playing there regularly. It is a great fit for geeky kids especially, since they tend to try things to see what happens, and to figure things out themselves. Poisson Rouge is perfect for that. And new activities are constantly being added. They have even made one of the games into an iPhone application.

Wired: Poisson Rouge offers hours and hours of exploratory fun for young kids complete with colorful fun screens and educational content.

Tired: None.