Are laptops for school children a good idea?

I’m sitting here with my daughter’s school laptop in bed (feeling crapola with a cold) as I write this so I’m aware that I’m being a bit hypocritical…

Here’s the thing. My daughter has gone to a new school this year. A school that insists that every child should use a laptop from Grade 5. Their argument is that we live in an age where computers and digital devices are a part of our lives and that we should make use of every tool we can to educate our children. And yes, I get that.

But since we’ve had this third computer in the house we barely see our 11 year old. It’s Youtube 24/7 - or until Groover goes mental because we’ve been shaped again. She doesn’t seem to read books anymore - it’s chapter after chapter of fan fiction.

We insist that she uses the computer in public and we’ve learned that you take the laptop away from her at bedtime - what I’m not seeing is a whole lot of homework done on the computer and given that, I wonder why the school doesn’t store the wretched things in the classroom. Do they really need to take them home?

The only good thing is that at least she’s not fighting with my son now over the second computer.

So here I am enjoying her MacBook interface on our wireless system (which doesn’t seem to work for my work laptop) and whinging.

Partly it’s the lazy parent in me that finds it hard to cope - I get tired of continually taking it away from her and telling her off for exceeding our bandwidth quota again.

And part of it is my old fashioned sense of media. I want my child to enjoy books as books! Not fan fiction. Although, having said that if she was writing her own stories… well now, that would be different. And maybe endless reading of it will lead to writing her own…

In the meantime my darling Dipp has earned a merit award at school. So maybe the laptop isn’t the monster I make it out to be.

Oh, you ask, why do I have precious time on the new toy? Ah, she’s out on her brother’s bike getting some fresh air.

I asked her first!

Some parenting tips please! How do you manage computer time in your home?

photo credit: Apollo-Jack

Why I’ve cancelled my facebook account

Well… deactivated it… it’s VERY difficult to pull out of it completely… I just got sick of all the poking, vampire biting… yes even hugs…

In fact, no words today… I’m going to let BBC3 do the work for me:

Thanks to Nigel and Steven Humour for the link. :)

Useful, random and untrue

I really love this photo - straight out of the camera - the morning light is so buttery.

Guera tagged me for the eight random things meme with a twist. Now I’ve done the 8 random things meme before but not with a twist… but then, the next day, my new found blogging buddy Mrs M from New York Renovator tagged me with the 7 useful things about me meme and so I thought - randomly - that I would combine the two and do the:

7 Useful Things About Me Meme - with a twist!

And here’s the twist - one of these useful things about me is a lie. Guess in comments which one…

1. I can’t sleep if my feet are cold. This is useful if you want me to go to sleep.
2. I have made two teddy bears in my life. Just in case you need one made anytime.
3. I am a fast reader, especially when I like the book. Need something read? Call me.
4. I’m a very good navigator specialising in clear directions. Who needs TomTom? I can even do a BIM accent.
5. I can make an excellent sponge. Afternoon tea anyone? I’m your girl.
6. When it comes to Belbin’s personalities at work - I’m more your resource investigator.
7. Having said that, I love me a good spreadsheet. Excel is my friend.

Okay there you go. Seven useful facts about me… well six facts and one fiction.

Which one is the fiction?

Who is tagged?

And I tag for those of you who are interested…

1. Niki at her new version of Hot Water
2. Hugamuga - my son… very interested in his useful facts!
3. Hazelblackberrry at A Bex and a Good Lie Down
4. Ken Armstrong from Ken Armstrong Writing Stuff
5. M from EasternMax
6. Simone from Simone Van Hattem
7. Karen Cheng from Karen Cheng’s Snippets of Life

Now just to make life a little more interesting one of these blogs is not like the others… can you pick the odd one out?

BB08 - could it get any worse?

Last week the most popular search terms which ended up at my blog were “Rima” and “Rima bb08″. Now that of course was because last Friday night on BB08, Rima broke her leg during FNL and so I imagine there were a few worried viewers wondering what had happened to their favourite - now what was the term Ben used? Ah that’s right - height challenged housemate.

It was probably also due to the fact that there were a number of “tasteful” photographs, that her husband claims Rima is “quite happy with” circulating the net.

Excellent.

Now BB has sunk to the level of “dwarf porn” - not that Rima is in fact a dwarf, she says she has a very rare condition, so rare in fact that the condition was named after her.

Any normal reality television program might have stopped there, but BB doesn’t know where the line is, so they got together with another fellow who doesn’t know where the line is and asked him if he’d like to enter the house as a guest.

Recently described in a seminar I attended as the “Sum of all our fears”, enter Corey Worthington, a minor, aged just 17, now a guest in the freak show that is Big Brother 08.

To supervise him, they’ve challenged the recently evicted nanna, Terri, who cites her influences as Pauline Hanson and so you know, is the modicum of tolerance, with the task of guiding Corey in the house.

Her entry caused a full two minutes of continuous bleeping as the housemates expressed their joy at seeing the oldest ever housemate back again, a housemate they themselves chose to evict.

Channel 10, I can handle the f-word, but call me squeamish, references to dwarf porn after my Sunday roast do disturb me.

Excuse me. I need to shower. I feel a little dirty.

Thinner is better

I know, I know, you were thinking I was about to post about Fashion Week again… you were weren’t you? But no.

Today I’m just drooling over the keyboard at the Mac Book Air. Noice.

And why is this slim technology my focus for right now? Well I want to win one. Or an iPhone. But preferably a Mac Book Air. You might want to win one too? The place to check out is Upstart Blogger.

btw if you are thinking of starting a blog - there are some useful tips on this site.

In other thin news, today I signed up (but haven’t paid a deposit yet) for a kickstart fitness program. Two weeks of hell starting May 12. So at the end of May I should be thinner, fitter and companion to a new computer. And that will be noice.

Seagulls steal chips… from a shop

I seem to be collecting youtube videos on seagulls.

First there was my little video of the seagulls looking at themselves in a shiny sculpture… and now there’s this one (discovered on Steven Humour) of seagulls stealing chips.

They are cheeky little buggers aren’t they. I can remember Groover’s angst as he left the bakery at Rottnest Island (mmmmm) with a pie and before he had taken one bite having it snatched from his grip by a marauding seagull.

We rescued a seagull once.

We were staying on Rottnest… we went every year for a week’s holiday growing up… and it was raining. A seagull chick had fallen from it’s nest and was being pecked and attacked by some adults. Mum rescued it and put it in the oven… to keep it warm! The door was open. She wrapped it up and fed it milk I think… or something.

We brought it home with us on the ferry in an icecream container cradled in tissues and when we got home Mum made it a little home out of a cardboard box. She cut slats in one site - like a jail - and the little seagull grew.

It was pretty intelligent actually. And toilet trained. Well, sort of. It used to squirt its business through the slats onto the kitchen dining floor. Luckily we had tiles. You had to watch where you stepped coming home.

Eventually it grew too big for the cardboard box and Dad built it an aviary along the backfence. For some reason he’d built the side wall with foot wide partitions extending out which worked really well with some chicken wire.

We called our seagull - Rasputin.

He was a fine guard-dog er… seagull. Every time anyone walked past he’d do that seagull screech. Could wake the dead.

We’d let him out to practice flying and one day took him down to the beach and set him free among his seagully friends. Maybe he came back and visited us. It’s a bit hard to tell.

They all look the same to me.

Upgraded to 2.5.1

I really thought I’d wait to see if they had all the bugs ironed out - there were 70 fixed in this upgrade - but then I thought what the hey and upgraded anyway. I’m like that.

I had a hairy moment when all I was getting was a white screen… but then I remembered to overwrite the new default theme and all was well.

Thank goodness.

Although… and this is a bugger… photodropper doesn’t seem to work anymore. :(

Which is why I’ve added this random scene… it makes me feel better.  (And now I can centre photos without mucking around with the code. )

Bloggers and their readers - a special relationship?

Being a blogger, one of the fascinating things for me is thinking about this new blogosphere world and the relationships we make as bloggers and readers. I get why I love reading blogs… because writing one myself I’m keen to see what others write. And of course I love the interaction between bloggers. The commenting, the discussion. I love your reaction to what I write… even when I’m put firmly back in my box! :)

But there is another group of readers - the readers who don’t blog themselves. The lovely River is a case in point. (although maybe you do have a private blog?)

So when Bo contacted me and asked if I’d help her in her research into that relationship, I was keen. If you’re a blog reader and you don’t have a blog yourself - she’s looking for you:

Do you have a favourite blogger that you want to talk about?

I am an Honours student from the University of Queensland, Australia and I am conducting an email-based survey that looks at the experiences that blog readers have with their favourite bloggers.

To take part in this research you cannot be a blogger yourself and you cannot know the blogger offline.

AND

Please note that for ethical and legal issues you MUST be 18+ years of age and an Australian Citizen to partake in this research

If this sounds like you and you would like to participate in this original and exciting research project then please email Bo at:

s4029966@student.uq.edu.au

All inquiries are very much appreciated!

Bo McGrath
School of English, Media Studies & Art History, 4th Floor, Michie Bld
University of Queensland

I look forward to reading the final paper Bo, good luck!

Me and Chas Licciardello

Claiming that my son is a huge fan and would be sick-makingly jealous if I had my photo taken with him, I stood next to the (surprisingly not tall) Chas Licciardello from The Chaser and smiled.

Of course it’s me who is the big fan… and Hugamuga… but one doesn’t want to be so uncool. Oh except… um… I guess it’s pretty lame to then display the photo on your blog… And I don’t want to appear a stalker but that’s 2/5!

I took the family to The Chaser’s Age of Terror Variety Hour at His Majesty’s Theatre this week. I was amused, I laughed out loud, I sniggered, I wondered if we’re going to have a problem in the future recycling all those reusable green shopping bags…

Hugamuga LOVED it.

It’s like a Uni Review crossed with the Chaser’s TV show. The demographic was young. It was fun.

Details of the show.

Speaking of things happening in Perth… apparently the World Blog Awards are in our fair city in August…

How the other half lives

I went to Sydney in January and a group of us ended up in a pub one night where I was told the graffiti in the men’s loos was amazing.

So I sent one of our party… a bloke… into the conveniences with my camera to show me.

He did.

And then I wondered how it compared with the ladies… as you do. So I abandoned my sav blanc, and took my video to the loo.

Have you ever wondered how the other half lives?

I think the girls win…

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