Holiday Gift List for Modern Kids

Toy companies offer today's children a roster of robots almost from birth. Kids aged five and up can command  Botley the Coding Robot to go around objects and to master an obstacle course. The MindWare company (mindware.com) provides easy-to-follow instructions that enable eight-year-olds to assemble and program robots operated by batteries, solar, hydraulic, or chemical power. Some robots from MindWare use artificial intelligence and infrared sensors. One climbs smooth surfaces using a suction system.

     Rapidly advancing technology makes learning to read more important than ever. The best books to give young children are the ones adults enjoy reading to them over and over again. When my granddaughter was young, my favorite was Click, Clack, Moo Cows that Type by Doreen Cronin. Keith Bellows does more than provide motivation to read about the world. In 100 Places That Can Change Your Child's Live, he describes tantalizing destinations, lists places to eat and stay, and even suggests the most worthwhile souvenirs to bring home.

     A globe is the perfect gift companion to help children locate where they live and to plot a trip around the world. Globes also give kids a sense of distance and a sense of the correct size of continents. From  home, would it take longer to get to the Arctic or to Africa? At the equator, land masses on two-dimensional maps appear accurate in size, but distortion increases away from the North and South poles. Greenland begins to look as large as Africa even though it is thirteen times smaller.

     In a "Peanuts" comic strip, Lucy once broke into a conversation the other kids were having about what gifts they wanted to say she wanted real estate. While a deed to several acres of real estate may be out of the question, giving children government bonds would give them a stake in their countries' futures. If an older child requests a smartphone, couple it with an index card listing three stocks and their trading prices on a day in December. Show him or her a smartphone can be used to keep track of stock prices not only to engage in social chatter.

     Food commercials tempt kids to put down their smartphones and come to the table when there is something good to eat. Why not involve children in baking and cooking their own good eats? Gift them with recipes, pans, pots, and oven mitts to make their favorite cookies or pasta dishes. In the same vein, crafty adults might gift wrap lumber, a tool, and directions for making a picture frame or yarn, knitting needles, and directions for making a scarf.

     Some organizations have found ways to involve children in their causes by matching contributions with rewards. For example, a portion of the price of every gift purchased from the UNICEF Market (unicefmarket.org/catalog) goes to deliver food, vaccines, mosquito nets, and other lifesaving supplies to children around the world. Presents of UNICEF games, puzzles and art materials not only are fun, but they also are a way for children to aid kids suffering in crisis areas. In the World Wildlife Foundation's catalog (wwfcatalog.org), potential donors find a wide variety of gift ideas for kids. One of the most popular World Wildlife programs, symbolic animal adoptions, couples a donation with a child's gift of a soft plush version of an adopted animal, ranging from a familiar elephant to an exotic blue-footed booby.

     Finally, a $25 gift card from kiva.org introduces children to a form of venture capitalism. Using their card, they can choose the country, man or woman, and project they want to support. Computer updates inform them every time part of their loan is repaid. Holiday gifts can show modern kids it is both blessed to receive and to give.

Want to Reach Global Citizens?

Watch and reference what global citizens watch. Nielsen's research found 57% of adults aged 18 to 34 spend 11 hours a day on interactive social media. Trendwatching.com noted the Lisboeta hotel in Macau, China, and pop-up stores in New York City and Hollywood were using characters from a Japanese app in their decors. Emojis and other social media and app icons now join Disney characters as multi-format global presenters, especially in venues that attract tourists from around the world.

     Since potential customers already are watching something on their smartphones, they are a captive audience for anything, such as merchandise, food, films, and concerts, associated with what they are seeing right in their hands.

     The AFLAC insurance company has combined the traditional advertising art of creating recognizable characters, like Tony the Tiger, to connect customers to their brands with emojis from apps and social media. Working with the medical tech firm, Sproutel, AFLAC turned its recognizable duck into a companion for hospitalized children. Kids receiving chemotherapy can hook up their free ducks to IVs that demonstrate how that process works. In addition, when kids tap their ducks' chests with emoji discs, ducks act out feelings to show the medical staff and visitors if they are sad, happy, or about to cry or throw up.

Out-of-this-world App Helps Kids Behave

Shortly after reading about three factors that contribute to a kid's bad behavior, mentioned in The Good News About Bad Behavior by Katherine Reynolds Lewis, I learned about the Space Nation Navigator smartphone app. The book and app go together. Lewis claims a child's bad behavior is related to:

• less play time,
• more social media exposure,
• fewer confidence-boosting real world connections, including household chores.

Finnish-based Space Nation (spacenation.org), a space tourism startup, collaborated with NASA to develop a real life astronaut training app for smartphones. Before downloading Space Nation Navigator, you can preview some of the activities at spacenationnavigator.com. To help develop astronaut skills, new missions and minigames are updated daily. Quizzes help kids discover the science that enables astronauts to travel in space, and physical challenges prepare students to endure space travel.

     Space Nation participants enter a global competition to earn badges and prizes, including the grand prize: a trip for four to the moonlike scenery in Iceland, where Apollo astronauts trained. Eventually, the Space Nation Astronaut Program aims to launch one candidate into space every year.

     For other space-related activities for kids, see the earlier post, "Space Explorers."

Travel Tip Reminders

Even though airlines are allowed to offer short times to make connections with different flights, travel experts recommend allowing  two hours between domestic flight connections and three hours to make connections with international flights.

A US friend who broke a foot in Spain found out Medicare does not cover medical expenses outside the US.

Since poachers use social media photo tags to locate rare animals, safari travelers are advised to disable geotag functions on smartphones.

Might be a good idea to discourage a culture of begging by not handing out cash or goods while on vacation.

On a trip to a park where wild animals run free, stay in vehicles. Don't get out to take pictures like one visitor who was saved from attack when a friend called out to tell her a bear was approaching.

Be aware of surroundings when taking all photos. On trips, I've seen someone back up without noticing he was getting too close to the edge of a cliff, a giant wave knock down and swamp a couple, and a child about to step off a board walk into a volcano's flowing lava.

Has DON'T Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Gone Too Far?

The absence of other customers in a store, where I was shopping, this week caused me to realize the growing number of options for NOT doing-it-yourself (DIY). Enter information about your style and size on an app, and you'll receive a selection of clothes. Decide what you want to eat and a meal to help you lose weight, a pizza, or the ingredients you need to prepare your own meal will turn up at your door. If you are willing to at least drive to a store, you can email your food, toys, or discount store shopping lists and the store will gather what you need/want and have your package ready for pick-up.

     It's not just a matter of creating apps-platforms to engage attention, technology has decided how we manage our lives. Now, there even are apps telling us to stop using apps. It doesn't take a smartphone to ask young people:

• Where would you like to travel?
• What would you like to eat?
• What is your favorite outfit? 
• What world problem would you like to solve?
• How much would you like to weigh?
• What sport do you like to play?
• What kind of song would you like to hear?
• What GPA would you like to have?
• What kind of movie would you like to see? 

Then, have young people decide how to "solve" any of these questions and begin their DIY solution. Decide on a time for them to show-off their solution (on a platform?). Or, invite original thinkers to communicate and publish their DIY ideas in a zine, hand drawn (some in the form of comics) and written (possibly as music). Also, look for a local library that has a section devoted to zines or a Zinefest, where other original thinkers share their zines.

New Uses for Mobile Apps

It's been awhile since I visited trendwatching.com, but, as always, this website is full of new ideas from around the world. This time, I found tech-fueled, mobile app ideas from the Asia Pacific that are worth imitating.

Using the LINE app in real time Burberry brought its fall fashion runway show to Japan. But brands aren't just using apps to sell things, they also use them to offer lifestyle, social issue, and financial solutions to their customers.

Directory apps are responding to the need to help app users find the categories they want amid game, shopping, travel, and a million other options. Indonesia-based Oiffel, Shopious, and Kleora are among the providers of directories that assist consumers by compiling lists of online shops. For businesses that use its iPads, Apple is bundling apps for specific industries. GottaGo in India provides a very useful list of nearby, clean restrooms. Other apps locate parking spaces.

Governments are discovering new ways to use mobile apps to assist citizens. The Delhi Police Department receives complaints about police officers seeking bribes and harassing citizens in India on WhatsApp. Partnered with the Shanghai government, the WeChat City Service app enables smartphone users to locate hospitals, make medical appointments, find visa services, check driving records, and browse library books.

Rural areas in BOP countries at the socalled Bottom of the (Smart) Pyramid have apps to locate rickshaws and the best fishing areas. All in all, more than half of the world's smart phones are in the Asia Pacific.