Tag Archives: kids
Video: What Adults Can Learn from Kids
Feature: Junior Achievement’s efforts to teach kids around the world about business
Feature: Junior Achievement’s efforts to teach kids around the world about business
By Kate Foley, Fearless Ambition
When people think of Junior Achievement, the first thing that comes to mind may be the JA they experienced when they were a kid.
“Their perception that all we do is teach kids how to make lamps and birdhouses,” says Marketing and Media Relations director Stephanie Bell.
However, Bell says, JA has grown substantially in the last 20 years, and is now a global organization that reaches 122 countries in all parts of the world.
Today’s JA offers 24 program in the U.S. alone, covering business concepts like work readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy.
“JA empowers young people to own their economic success,” Bell said. JA’s programs create an online space where teams of kids and teens can create and run a virtual marketing company together. The competitive environment in the online program mimics real business situations, which allows the students to learn what life is like ‘in the real world’.
“Students can understand the relevance to what they learn in the classroom and how it matters to their life. Our programs make that connection for them,” Bell said.
Bell, who has worked for Junior Achievement since 2001, says she feels inspired by teaching students business success at a young age.
“I really enjoy doing something with such a positive impact on young people,” Bell said. “At the risk of sounding cheesy, I hope that will help make the world a better place.”
With its global expansion over the last few decades, JA is definitely working to impact the world. Its current curricula cover six continents. Regional operating centers around the world take U.S. developed programs, and culturally adapt them to other countries to suit their own economic and cultural interests.
For more information on Junior Achievement, or to get involved, visit their website at www.ja.org.
Google aims to make app creation easy
Google aims to make app creation easy
By John D. Sutter
From CNN.com
(CNN) — It’s not uncommon these days for people to know how to build websites and create blogs. That’s largely because sites like WordPress, Blogger and Tumblr have simplified the process, so you don’t have to be a code wonk to publish.
Now, Google is trying to make smartphone app creation easy, too.
On Monday, the company announced a program called App Inventor, which claims to make app development easy enough for schoolkids.
“App Inventor requires NO programming knowledge,” Google says on its new website for the program. “This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app’s behavior.”
News sites have compared App Inventor to building with Lego blocks.
Google says it tested the program with kids.
“For the past year, we’ve been testing App Inventor in classrooms around the United States, and we’ve found that it opens up the world of computer programming to students in new and powerful ways,” the company says on its official blog.
The program is an extension of research and product development done by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
MIT’s Lifelong Kindergarten Group created a building-blocks version of code programming for kids called Scratch, which Google says was one inspiration for its new app creator. The school’sScheller Teacher Education Program also gave Google some code to make the project possible.
Eric Klopfer, an associate professor at MIT and director of that program, said he hopes App Inventor gets young people — particularly those in middle school and high school — more interested in how phones and computers operate.
“It’s not as easy as using a word processor, which is pretty close to what blogs have gotten to. It’s not as easy as that,” he said of App Inventor, “but it’s a big leap forward.”
The new program is an apparent attempt by Google to both democratize app development and increase the number of apps that are available for smartphones that run Google’s Android operating system.
The number of Android apps has been growing in recent months, but there are only about half as many apps available for download on the Android Market as there are from Apple’s popular App Store, which services the iPhone and iPad.
Fortune: The coming Android app explosion
Some tech bloggers criticized Google on Monday for looking to up the number of Android apps instead of improving their quality. Others questioned whether non-techie developers could create apps that are worth using.
“They have to hope it doesn’t backfire and simply flood the Android Market with more junk apps than already exist,” writes MG Siegler on the blog TechCrunch.
On the blog Mashable, which is a CNN Tech partner site, Pete Cashmore writes that App Inventor may lead to a number of “cookie cutter” apps that are fairly useless, but it also may have long-term positive effects for Google.
“If App Inventor is so simple that schoolchildren can make apps, some of those same children will soon become coders themselves … and perhaps choose to develop Android apps rather than iPhone,” Cashmore writes.
The blog The Next Web says app quality may suffer, but that won’t hurt the overall usefulness of Google’s Android Market for apps.
“Will it negatively impact the Android Market? It’s not likely,” writes Brad McCarty. “Let’s face it, even though we’re approaching 100,000 applications in the Market, the good ones rise to the top very quickly. There are literally thousands of useless, trash-directed applications, but they tend to get buried in a hurry.”
Google is not the first company to try to make app development simple. Nokia tried a similar program this year, according to Engadget, but Google may be the first company that is big enough to popularize the idea.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
To learn more about the program, go to Google’s App Inventorinformation page. To download the program, you have to fill out a form telling Google why you would like access to it.
Video: Business TV: Why youth culture matters to business
Business TV: Why youth culture matters to business
Hear expert business advice from Anastasia Goodstein, Author and Founder, Ypulse, as she talks about the importance of youth culture to business and more business marketing tips for those eyeing Gen Y.
Anastasia Goodstein: The first is that youth culture really defines the popular culture, so whatever is really hot and happening with young people ends up being what’s hot and happening in fashion, in music, in internet, in entertainment, in the culture that we all consume. I think the other reason is because it’s your next generation of consumers. Even if you’re making a product that isn’t necessarily geared towards them right now if you’re not thinking about how to reach them your audience is going to die out. Again I sort of referred to the network news, at least in this country, the US, you know the average age of the nightly news viewer is someone in his 60s which is why all you see is Viagra ads when you watch the nightly news.
If they want to reach the next generation of consumers they have to sort of understand the culture that they’re coming from and the media and entertainment that they’re consuming
See more business news television shows featuring these experts, as they give their top expert business advice at http://www.yourbusinesschannel.com
Teaching Kids to Take Charge by Infecting them with “I Can”
Kiran Bir Sethi at a Ted Talks conference shows how her groundbreaking Riverside School in India teaches kids life’s most valuable lesson: “I can.” Watch her students take local issues into their own hands, lead other young people, even educate their parents.
The founder of the Riverside School in Ahmedabad, Kiran Sethi has launched an initiative to make our cities more child-friendly.
Money-Smart Kids: No money for money education?
Money-Smart Kids
No money for money education?
By Tom Henske
From Westport News Online
Last week — while reading Karen Blumenthal‘s article in The Wall Street Journal, “Is There a Cure for Financial Literacy?” — I was reminded of one of the impediments to improving financial literacy in our country. Citing data from The Jumpstart Coalition, Karen reminds us that only three states currently mandate personal-finance courses. This is certainly too small a number and I have a few hypotheses as to why.
I’m not convinced that I’ve seen a significant nationwide push by educators to mandate such curriculum. Clearly, no one could actually think that mandating personal finance courses in our schools is a bad thing. I would also like to believe everyone would rank money education on the top of the importance list. Let’s face it, everyone — whether they are worth $10 or $10 million — will need to have a foundation of money knowledge. We all need to deal with money in some way, shape or form. In short, money is not a topic that can be avoided or escaped.
A few educators I’ve spoken with shared that they do think it’s a good idea, but the money is just not there to make it happen. I understand the reality of school budgets does not allow for everything to get into the curriculum. My next question would logically follow: should we consider a reallocation of existing dollars to be refocused toward formal financial literacy in our classrooms. I hear the chants now: “Join the club and get in line.”
Maybe we just have a difference of opinion as to where financial literacy falls on the priority list. Certainly English is important; math is vitally important, too. I’d like to think that money-skills should make the top five list. Here’s why…
We know our children are absolutely, positively, without a doubt, going to need to interact with money (save, spend, donate and invest!) in their future — from managing income made at summer jobs to helping pay for college, and in life beyond the classroom. Indeed, there is a higher probability that they will need to use money knowledge more than the skills learned in many of their other classes. I just can’t understand why we wouldn’t be able to find the money, or reallocate money, so that children can walk into their respective colleges and have a basic understanding of their own personal finances.
After further discussion with these educators I think I’ve uncovered part of the challenge. Could it be that educators don’t themselves feel comfortable with their own personal money skills; thus they feel they aren’t in a position to try and teach this to others? We all can certainly appreciate the apprehension to avoid topics we are not comfortable with. Could this be the stumbling block that allows the absurd statistic of only three of 50 states having mandatory money skills curriculum?
I would recommend we simplify things a bit and talk more about the behavioral aspects of managing one’s finances that lead to either success or failure of one’s financial plan. As much as we would like to think the panacea to all financial planning woes is choosing the right “home run” mutual fund, the reality is the most important variable separating success versus failure in the retirement preparation game is one’s propensity to save.
The bottom line: if you save, you’ll accumulate the dollars necessary to enjoy a secure retirement. If not, you will be scrambling to continue to make money so you can live.
Therefore, learning to save (and thus budgeting, a technique which allows you to save) is the key. Clearly this is a concept teachers could get comfortable speaking on and could easily work into numerous lesson plans. By simplifying the subject matter to the concept of saving, we eliminate the concern teachers might be having on the topic and simultaneously teach our children the single most valuable lesson that will be crucial to their financial well-being in the future.
Tom Henske, a Westport resident and partner with Lenox Advisors, a wealth management firm with offices in New York City and Stamford, developed the Lenox Money-Smart Kids Program in conjunction with MassMutal Financial Group. He can be reached at [email protected]
Video: Susan Beacham provides advice on Teens and Money on the Dr. Phil Show
Katie is a teenaged girl who wants a lot, and who expects her parents to foot the bill. She asks for manicures, haircuts and clothes without any thought to the financial cost. Susan Beacham sits down with Katie to discuss her family’s monthly income, and shows her the amount available to spend after mortgage payments, utilities and other bills are taken out of the paycheck.
The Most Successful Teen Celebrity Entrepreneurs
The Most Successful Teen Celebrity Entrepreneurs
The recipe for success is to do one thing really well, diversify and go viral.
By Maureen Farrell
It’s hard enough to land a line in a TV commercial, let alone snag a starring role in a feature film. Or bag a record contract. Or a chunky book advance. Or a big box store endorsement deal.
But achieving all of the above, with some philanthropy on the side? Now that’s serious entrepreneurship–and it’s all in a day’s work for a rarefied clique of teenage celebrity entrepreneurs who have star power to spare.
These preternatural, barely post-pubescent brand-builders have dabbled in multiple entertainment genres, bagged endorsements, raised money for charity and even sold their personal stories and photos to the tabloids.
In Pictures: 11 Teen Celebrity Entrepreneurs
The path to becoming a multitasking multihyphenate? “Don’t try to do it all at first,” says Frederick Levy, a Hollywood agent and author of Acting in Young Hollywood. “The most successful tween and teen stars have built either an acting or music career and then branched off into other areas. Once people like you on a television show, they’ll buy your albums and your clothes and almost anything else you want to sell.”
That’s what 16-year-old Taylor Momsen is doing. A cast member on the CW’s Gossip Girl, Momsen’s manager, Sam Maydew, says her first love has always been music, but “at 12, people won’t take you seriously.” Now after three successful seasons as Jenny Humphrey, Momsen’s musical career is taking off. The lead singer in punk band Pretty Reckless, last year she signed a contract with Interscope Records and will be on the Warped Tour this summer.
Momsen has company among teen celebrities who spread out into other areas, but unlike most, she didn’t rise out of the two tween and teen star factories. Entertainment conglomerates The Walt Disney Co. ( DIS – news –people ) and Viacom‘s (VIA – news – people ) Nickelodeon are the machines that built A-listers like Miley Cyrus, Hillary Duff and the Jonas Brothers.
“These platforms put celebrities in front of millions of young people,” says Mitchell Gossett, an agent with United Talent Agency who represents Victoria Justice, the star of Nickelodeon’s Victorious. “Most of these actors are multitalented. Once they’ve been adopted by Disney or Nickelodeon, they can start marketing ancillary products.”
Still, with the changing media landscape, Gossett says even teens who have been crowned by Disney and Nickelodeon as the next sensation must find ways to get their names and faces out to the public virally by cultivating a Web following. Gossett, who formerly represented Miley Cyrus, credits her success to her own knowledge of viral marketing.
“Miley had this machine behind her, but she also knew how to use the Internet to generate the undercurrent for her extraordinary rise,” says Gosset. “The machines like Disney are looking to young people to help them figure out how to use the Internet most successfully.”
Some entrepreneurial youngsters have found a way to make YouTube a platform for launching their own careers. Sixteen-year-old music sensation Justin Bieber was discovered by agent Scooter Braun through videos he posted on YouTube. Bieber’s talent and his YouTube following sparked a bidding war between Usher and Justin Timberlake to sign Bieber to their respective labels. Usher won.
“I used to fly around the country looking for talent, and I still do, but nowadays another way is to spend hours a day on the Internet looking for the next star, ” says Gossett.
Miley Cyrus and her Hannah Montana franchise have spawned multimillion-dollar empires both inside and outside Disney. But she’s not the only one. Find the 11 top teen celebrity entrepreneurs here.
11-year-old college graduate
From HuffingtonPost.com
Meet Moshe Kai Cavalin, the 11-year-old who just finished setting the bar impossibly high for college students everywhere. Not only did this youngster just graduate from college at the age of 11, but he did so with honors, holding down a 4.0 GPA, and his favorite subject is astrophysics.
He is also an accomplished martial artist, winning several national martial arts championships; his idols are Albert Einstein and Bruce Lee. He’s going to use the next year to take up scuba diving, write a book for kids on how to succeed in school, and work on his martial arts skills.
Moshe isn’t into video games because “it’s not helping humanity in any way.”
Read more about Moshe here.
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Watch a video report from CNN below.