A Mystery Called Pottermore

What lies beyond June 23?

Just as we were turning in the shingles on the whole Harry Potter adventure, J.K. Rowling recently launched a new website that speaks of something ‘more’. No one really knows what will happen on June 23, but for Harry Potter fans everywhere, this is a welcome distraction.

Will this be a new series from the Potterverse? A encyclopedia of wondrous things, perhaps? Let’s just wait and see.

[UPDATE: Just recently, it was revealed that Pottermore will be an interactive website allowing users to explore the Harry Potter universe in great detail. The site will also be an ebook store for the whole series.]

50 Educational Apps, Sites, and Thingamajigs for Family Learning Fun

image via Mindshift

Yep, here are 50 big ones – apps, websites, software, and doohickies that your and your children could tinker with at home. A nice collection, if I say so myself, featuring activities ranging from virtual worlds you could immerse yourself with to hobbies that you may want to start with your kid. Courtesy of Mindshift’s Tina Barsgehian.

// Link to the blog post.

Zelda is a Good Name for a Kid, Isn’t It?

 
This Ocarina of Time 3D commercial not only brings back gaming nostalgia to the fore  but talks about one of the trickiest decisions you could make for your kid: coming up with a good name. Apparently, video games are a good inspiration. I do wonder how many Zeldas are out there, as well as Clouds, Samuses, and Laras.

How to Teach Binary Numbers to a Nine-year-old

Rick Regan came up with a series of clever activities to teach binary numbers to third graders. Yes, it’s the same ’1′ and ’0′ notation that’s basic to computer science classes — and now even nine-year-olds could understand it. It’s amazing what good teaching could do, right?

// Link to Rick’s blog post.

MIT Dad Creates Home System to Capture Son’s First Words

Image via Fast Company

Through a series of fish-eye lenses, advanced transcription software, and lots (and lots) of video footage, MIT cognitive scientist Deb Roy took his lab and placed it at home to capture everything that his son did. That’s around 90,000 hours worth of footage allowing him to catalogue everything from how his son learned new words to his first historical step. (We’re talking about intense home videos here.)