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.]

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.

 
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.

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.

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.)

The implications of his research is staggering: it seems that the children do learn language at moments that we’re not even aware of. Those seemingly random utterances, well, are not really random. What’s also fascinating here is that the technology we have today is at a level where we could obtain such intricate data.

For more details, scoot on over to his TED Talk where he shared more details about his work.

// Link to Deb Roy’s TED Talk, The birth of a word.

I know it’s been quite a long time, but let me make up to you - be ready to really read, write, and romp this 2011!

Happy New Year!

[image via legophotos]

image from SF Weekly

In this recent article from SF Weekly, writer Ashley Harell talks about how the iPad is fast-becoming the choice technology for teaching kids with autism. Although research is still being done, I believe it’s still good inspiration for developing more technologies that children with special needs could use.

[iHelp for Autism, via SF Weekly]

Who says programming is only for adults? Take your pick, with Wired.com’s wiki of programming languages for kids, you surely can choose whatever your child will fancy. (You’d probably dive into it, too.)

[Teach Your Kid How to Program, via Wired]

It’s been six months since I last posted here at ReadWriteRomp. Things have gotten a little busy actually; grad school and freelance work have taken up a whole lot of my time.

I intend to change that. Starting next week, I have a whole lot of new things to share. Hopefully, I’d be able to delight you again with stories of reading, writing, and romping. Stay tuned!

Rodge Bucao

ReadWriteRomp is all about fostering a culture of thinking at home, and what better way to start it all than with doing a bit of reading? Here’s a great book list from Listverse that will certainly have something for everyone.

[The Top 10 Books for Inquiring Minds, via Listverse]