Castellarenpositiu blog

Posts Tagged ‘learning’

Radicalizing Learning Adult Education From acclaimed teaching experts Brookfield and Holst, this book offers a comprehensive overview of the practices and ideas that combine to create an understanding and facilitation of adult learning. …

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Most of the time when I reach for a book that is earning high praise from critics and professional book reviewers I flinch a little inside and begin with not a small amount of trepidation. Why? Because most of the time the books fail to live up to the hype.

And so I put off reading The Help. I put it off for quite some time and honestly, I still would be putting it off if I hadn’t, on a whim, decided, what the hell, I might as well give it a shot.

The first page had me hooked and I’ve carried this book around with me all day long today, inhaling it like it was a huge box of chocolates and I couldn’t eat them fast enough.

I’m sure by now you know what this is a story about. 1960’s Mississippi dealing with segregation and the struggle to define a love/hate relationship between women and their “help” during that time period. The main three characters in this book nearly pop off the pages with their personalities and boy, the “villains”, those selfish, horrible women who have types that are still around today, they personify the worst of what any of us could be.

I cried and laughed and grieved my way through this novel. I was, in turn, horrified by the injustice of the acts being described and uplifted by the attitudes displayed. There are no saints here, there’s no need to be. Just pure, human emotions. Mistakes made, happy moments shared and throughout the entire book there is this gripping feeling of suspense that has you racing toward the end to learn the fates of the women you began to fall in love with at the beginning.

This is a story that will not disappoint you. If you are hesitant, like I was, take the leap. I’m glad I did.
Learning Basic Skills with

Mr Pencil has so much fun to offer!. While the other reviewer are right that the pen is a little sensitive, there are so many other great things about this game that I would still gladly give LeapFrog Leapster Learning Game: Mr. Pencils Learn to Draw and Write 5 stars. My 3 year old actually loves mixing the colors and seeing what colors mix to make what, and then painting with the colors. She likes using the stamps and changing their size and rotating them. She like the color drop game where you have to pick the right 2 colors you need to mix a secondary color, and the maze game where you have to make it through the maze without touching the lines. My seven year old loves to paint pictures on it, and she love the learn how to draw animals and objects. She likes how you can save your artwork till later so she can pick up and work more on a picture, or animation. She likes the game what picture is it, where they start to draw a picture and you have to figure out which of the pictures at the bottom is the one they are drawing and see how many you can guess in the time frame. My son who is 10 even likes it. He thinks the maze game is cool, and he likes doing animation/flip books on it. This is a great cartridge and so many kids of so many ages love it. It even has cool things to learn about shading objects, making fun looking alphabet letters, lessons in color mixing and so much more. If you are buying it for just the learning to do letters with your young toddler, then you need to know that the first few times you have to be prepared to sit down with them and draw with them, because they just don’t have that steady of hand, but don’t ever disqualify this one because of that, it has way too many other things to offer. I even think it has more on that cartridge to do then any of the other cartridges, plus it’s fun for all ages.

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Virtual capitalism. Monopoly is a timeless form of amusement and one of the most original games ever invented. The cartoons and tokens alone make the game great, but its premise that players who begin with an equal amount of resources must struggle to acquire property and build a monopoly, is fantastic.

Whenever I play this game I try to steal money from the other players or from the bank as much as possible. I don’t care if I win and often I don’t even have the heart to use it–I just want to simulate real life.

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Great for the little Princess. My 4-year-old loves this game. She prefers LeapFrog Leapster Learning Game: Disney Princess – Belle & Ariel over all the other Leapster games she has, which might have something to do w/ the Princesses! However, she (and I) like this game better than the other Leapster Princess game. Bottom line: if my daughter is happy, then so am I! Great buy.

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Major disappointment with the Leapster 2. My 5 year old son received the Leapster 2 as a birthday present in August from his grandparents. We had used the original Leapster for several years with both my 5 year old and my 7 year old. The cartridge system had worked well and they had enjoyed the games. When I found that the new Leapster2 would have an online component I thought, “about time”. This is such a no brainer for expandability these days. Boy was I wrong! LeapFrog has given a new meaning to “no brainer” with its (clearly premature) release of the Leapster2.

We started by turning the device on and creating a “player profile” for my son. Without connecting LeapFrog Leapster 2 Learning Game System – Green to the internet, or using any of his old Leapster cartridges, there is one game available. It is called Dragon Kingdom, but should be called “Short and Boring”. Clearly, the online content was the next thing to try. I installed the LeapFrog Connect software and received any updates. The software then told me to connect the handheld with the included USB cable and link my son’s player profile to the online connect program. I plugged in the cable and waited … the small info space at the top of the screen said “checking Leapster2 handheld” with little bars moving across the screen. After about 20 sec, the screen displayed “connected”. However, under the section that says “pick player profile to connect”, there were no profiles. I tried disconnecting and reconnecting … nothing. I made another profile for my daughter … nothing. I searched the website for help with this issue … maddening! I wondered if deleting the profiles and starting over would help … nope! In frustration, we put the game aside into my “to do” pile and my son moved on with his other gifts.

Several months later (we all know how those “to do” piles go), I found enough time to try to solve the problem again. I basically went through all the same frustrating steps with the same results and decided to just call customer service. Oops! – no customer support phone number on the website. Just a place to email my question. Does anyone else hate this? You finally find the time to solve a problem and you can’t even talk to anyone. You have to email your question and wait several days for an answer from India … (sorry for the rant). So, here was my email …

** “I have the Leapster2 and have put a profile (actually 2) on the handheld. I then installed the connect software and received the latest updates. When I connect it and turn it on the connect program says “checking Leapster2 handheld” with several green bars moving from left to right. After about 20 sec, it displays “Leapster2 connected” for about 3 sec, and then disappears. Then, no profiles come up on the left hand side. I’ve tried deleting a profile and remaking it, but this still never shows any of the profiles. Now what?”

Several days later I got this response (from Jobelle M) …

** “Try creating again a player profile on your Leapster2 handheld. Launch first your LeapFrog Connect Application, then the application will tell you when are you going to connect your device to the computer. Link the player profile to your LeapFrog account and activate the Learning Path, click the Parents button and sign in. On the Parents Home page, click “Link player profiles” to link the player profile. Create a child footprint for him or her before you link the player profile.”

OK, the exciting grammatical syntax aside, this is exactly what I had already tried to do (several times). You can’t “link the player profile” if there are NO PLAYER PROFILES! Although I read this response in late November, I didn’t have time to try to play with the thing again until this morning. I figured I’d try again to walk through these steps. When I started up the Leapster 2 connect software I was informed that there was an important new update (surprise .. wonder if anyone else had concerns). After downloading and reinstalling the new software I connected the handheld and … it miraculously came up with our player profiles!! Amazing. I guess Jobelle hadn’t known that there was a critical update coming …

So, I now went through the (somewhat confusing and involved) process of linking the profiles to the online “learning path” for parents. I was surprised to see that in the drop-down box for selecting the profile to link to contained all of the current profiles, and the ones I had deleted. Now I had to select from one of the three “Jack’s” and two “Claire’s”.

Next I went to the “games” section of the connect program and found 2 games that were free to download .. Letterpiller and a numbers game. I had a spare 256mb SD card and popped it in. The manual says the card will be reformatted. I downloaded the games and the Connect program said they were now installed on my handheld. I disconnected and tried to load up … nothing. Not even able to click on the SD card icon on the handheld. Hmm, I took out the card and popped it in my computer’s card reader. It hadn’t been formatted and in fact still had old pictures on it! No leapster content whatsoever. I reformatted it (with FAT32 selected) and tried again. Now the Connect program said I didn’t have a card in the handheld at all. I reformatted (again) with the FAT format option and tried again. Now when I connected to the online system the program said it was syncing to the handheld. When finished, I disconnected and turned on the handheld. Now it recognized the card was there!! Hallelujah! But when I clicked on the SD icon, the handheld said, “click on a game to get started” … but there were no icons on the screen to click. I tried to go back but the handheld was locked up. Turned it off and tried the whole connect thing again … essentially re-installing the 2 programs. This time when I clicked on the SD icon, it showed one picture (Letterpiller), but the other picture was blank. I was able to play the Letterpiller game, but there was no way to back out of it and get back to the home screen. I turned it off and back on, and then was instructed that the game was not working and to “have my parents reconnect the handheld to the internet to download the games again”. Oh joy … here we go again!!! Maybe I’ll email Jobelle …

Just so it is clear, I am an engineer with years of tech experience and plenty of history of solving other computer problems. This is a prime example of a product that was rushed to market with very little (if any) beta-testing, poorly designed online system, and scanty, disappointing product support. I wonder how many of these have ended up in the junk drawer .. or the trash can. That’s where ours is going.

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