Nine Shift

Education: Father plays puzzles and games with sons

Dear William,
 
Since your email in March I have set up a business and I would like to link to your sites and was hoping that you would link to our site.
 
Since your kind message I have been on a bit of a journey in a bid to improve the quality of time with my 2 young sons. I have spent a lot of time playing puzzles and games with them and seen their concentration and social skills really improve. I now see this being sa important as the family meal. We hardly turn the TV on now (they don't ask for it) and I am happy that they are picking up learning to learn skills.
 
I have now set up a business called Rocketheads which aims to make it easy for parents of boys to find engaging, fun toys that improve quality of relationship and develops learning skills. I know from speaking to a lot of dads that they want to buy better toys, games and puzzles but they find it difficult to find the time. Our site tries to make it easier with a pre-selected only 50 products making it easier to browse. Response during beta testing has been positive. 
 
We will be ready to launch in the next week and I was hoping that might link to our site. We are already linked to a few of your articles and we will be linking to your smartboysbadgrades site.
 
I believe that it would be an appropriate and relevant link for concerned parents. Please take a look at our site any feedback or questions would be welcomed www.rocketheads.com/store
 
Thanks for your time.
 
Rajinder Rana

Gamers and Learning: Still early

The development of incorporating games into education and creating games for learning is still in its infancy. That's the conclusion of your NineShift reporter attended the premiere conference on Games and Learning this month.

The technology is primitive compared to entertainment games. There is a lot of defensiveness about the worthiness of games for education. There is an internal debate about whether games are "fun."  And there is an avoidance of "moving the needle," eduspeak apparently for measuring outcomes.

Nevertheless the real world utility of games for work is so abundant and increasing (see for example, a recent article in NYT about how games are being used to protect our ports) that the value of games in education seems obvious if not yet documented. 
  Photo: Game educator playing devil's advocate.

Why Aren't More Gen Xers CEOs of lifelong learning programs?

Why aren't more Gen Xers lifelong learning CEOs?
We asked Gen Xers to tell us their thoughts.
They did.

Two theories:
1. Baby boomers are not retiring, thus preventing Gen Xers from moving up to CEO positions in lifelong learning programs.

2. Gen Xers value family, friends, leisure time and do not want the increased work time that goes with being a lifelong learning CEO. 

Suzanne Kart, LERN's brilliant Gen X expert, noticed that there were lots of Gen Xers in our marketing institute this month, but across the hall there were none in our executive leadership institute. That led to our investigation.  For responses and comments from 10 Gen Xers, click here.

For Willie Watchers Only

Some of you are Willie Watchers.  You enjoy my Willie stories and want to know what he is up to.  Our son Willie has been a major player in Nine Shift, teaching us about the 21st Century.

Willie is still in Portland, Oregon, one of the country's most liveable cities, bicycling to work and living without a car (no problem).  Working, reading, playing music, took a university course last fall, spending time in the out of doors, dealing with landlords, and .... growing up. 

He has not lost his sense of humor.  When I asked him to explain to Julie (his mother, my wife) why I wear several pairs of shoes during the course of one day, he responded, "Dad, I'm not going to fight your battles anymore."    The "anymore" made it a great line.  Photo: Willie on the Oregon coast.

Car Sharing grows as autos decline

Auto manufacturers are going out of business, but car sharing companies are growing.  Actually there is a relationship there: the more car sharing companies, the fewer auto companies.

While in Madison, Wisconsin, this month saw two new car sharing companies.  Communitycar.com  is a Madison only car sharing service.

Then there is U-Haul, not so local, not so small, with its UCarShare brand.  I was expected to see the big vans and trucks, just available by the hour.  I was surprised to see sleek attractive small cars, and delighted to see the green slogans all over the back.   Photo: U-Haul car sharing car in Madison, Wisc.

Boomer dilemna: save the car but don't buy one

I've been talked to several Boomers, and thinking myself, about how to make it to the end of the road without buying another gas powered car. 

Just talking with good friend Paul in Portland who has an SUV for mountain fishing trips, but drives it only 8,000 miles a year, about half the normal mileage for cars a year.  He expects it to last 20 years and be his last car. 

So even though Boomers are trying to save the auto industry, and can't understand a world without cars, even they/we are considering ways to reduce our car purchases.  Another ill omen for the auto industry.

Transition time: industrial 'fabric' withers

This week a congressperson, in trying to defend his attempts to keep an auto dealership alive, said the elimination of auto dealerships was eroding the very "fabric" of our society.  He's right.

In Portland this week, I talked with good friend Paul, who worried about the same thing. This of course happened 100 years ago. In Lady Chatterly's Lover, a main character says, "I feel like I swallowed gall...I'd wipe the machines off the face of the earth again, and end the Industrial epoch absolutely, like a black mistake. But since I can't, an nobody can, I'd better hold my peace, an try an live my own life: if I've got one to live, which I rather doubt." 

Then I had dinner with son Willie, now age 22. The General Motors bankruptcy "made my week" he said.
Which reminded me of San Francisco mayor Newsom's remark about SF newspapers disappearing, "No one under 30 will notice."

So it's quite possible no one under 30 will be affected by the decline of the auto. What do you think?

 Different generations, different reactions.  Both reflecting reality from two different perspectives.

Cars: Ford still does not get it

Even among the wreckage of GM and Chrysler, Porsche and others, Ford still does not get it.

The media for the entire first week of this month was filled with stories on the GM bankruptcy, with the cover of The Economist entitled "Detroitosaurus wrecks."  But the biggest story that week was Ford, not GM.

But first, let's rehash the media's insistence that cars are still the future of transportation. The Economist reported, "The car industry is no dinosaur. GM's demise should not be read as a harbinger of doom for the car industry."  (Yes it should).

And a NY Times reporter wrote that no one could have predicted GM's desperate troubles a few years ago (Yes, we did in 2003. Hey NYT, look this way, over here....)

Now back (literally and fiscally) to Ford.  So the week of GM's bankruptcy filing, Ford announced that it would increase production, producing basically the same number of cars but doubling the number of F150 trucks.  Yes, those gas guzzling, low mileage, big polluting monsters that Gen Y is sure to hate.

Kinda easy to see where this will take Ford - - down.  Photo:  We're not sure what Ford is thinking, but we do know it involves pink hats.

Electric cars: Another way to kill more people

Electric cars are likely to kill even more pedestrians than petrol fueled cars.  That's because electric cars are so quiet pedestrians will not be able to hear them.  The maker of one electric car says that the cars will have pedestrian warning sounds available to the driver, but the driver will have to activate them. 

Electric cars will kill a million people a year

Well, the results are in. With 234 electric cars on the road* (we made that number up) NineShift can safely predict that electric cars will kill a million people a year.

No, we don't necessarily think smaller cars are less safe than big gas guzzling ones.  But we do know that gas driven cars kill a million people a year, according to the World Health Organization, which has declared cars the third most preventable cause of death.

And we can safely predict that electric cars will kill just as many wonderful talented children, artists, university presidents, authors as well as just plain folks. 

*In the US as of July, 2006, there were between 60,000 and 76,000 low-speed, battery powered vehicles in use, up from about 56,000 in 2004, according to Electric Drive Transportation Association estimates. From Wikipedia.