Kids Can Swipe a Screen But Can't Use LEGOs 355
SpankiMonki sends this news from The Guardian:
"Children are arriving at nursery school able to 'swipe a screen' but lack the manipulative skills to play with building blocks, teachers have warned. They fear that children are being given tablets to use 'as a replacement for contact time with the parent' and say such habits are hindering progress at school. Addressing the Association of Teachers and Lecturers conference in Manchester on Tuesday, Colin Kinney said excessive use of technology damages concentration and causes behavioural problems such as irritability and a lack of control."
If I have kids... (Score:2)
I won't let them use a computer until they are 5.
They they'll get taken away by CPS.
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As long as you teach them proper Engrish.
I'll bet Mavis Beacon has a distro for that.
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If only there were some way to combine technology and social interaction. Something like a systematic way to express and broadcast thoughts and feelings for the purposes of sharing one's mind with other humans and visa versa.
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I thought that, until I had a kid.
The problem is once they're about a year old, there's nothing to do with them. They can't talk, they aren't old enough to understand the concept of playing with someone else...all they can really do is run around and bang into stuff.
However, I vowed to never be that guy who lets a TV raise his kid. So instead, my kid gets Sesame Street via Netflix on an iPad. Kid's 18 months old and already knows how to use a tablet.
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. . . I don't know who they are.
uphill and snowy (Score:3)
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With a very angry cat, I assume?
Parents fault (Score:3, Insightful)
Most parents today are horrible. They do NOT interact with the chile like laying on the floor and playing with them. Get your asses off the couch and lie on the floor playing with your kids showing them how to stack blocks, and play.
I gave my daughter a earfull having my granddaughter use the ipad at 2 to keep her entertained. No you play with her using physical objects, and interaction.
Re:Parents fault (Score:5, Insightful)
Most parents today are horrible.
So, just like all parents have always been everywhere, except in the halcyon myths of ahistorical memory, then.
Stories like this are hilarious. Do people really think that "moral panic over new tech" is going to sell to anyone who's been paying attention, well, ever?
Bad parents will always parent badly. New tech has nothing to do with it. Removing new tech from bad parents won't make them better. It will make them parent badly in different ways.
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Historically, this would be siblings, cousins, and nephews. Family units had lots of kids and the older children would help raise the younger. If you go back further, family units stuck together like clans and everyone raised everyone.
These days you're lucky if one of your immediate parents are in the same town and can watch the kid. Times change. Nature's slow on the uptake. That motherfucker still thinks we should be screwing our brains out at 13 so we can raise the kids before we die at 30.
Yeah man, I RE
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yeah, like in the old days
you, go outside and play and don't come back until dinner
Simple Solution (Score:2)
I gave my daughter a earfull having my granddaughter use the ipad at 2 to keep her entertained. No you play with her using physical objects, and interaction.
There is a simple, less confrontational solution to this which solves both problems at once and provides an important, although expensive, lesson about not giving toddlers unsupervised access to delicate electronics. Introduce your granddaughter to the joys of a toy wooden hammer - the sort that comes with the hammer through peg sets. Then stand back and watch the fun although of course once the screen cracks you'll need to remove the iPad for safety. Even if the hammer is removed I was always amazed at ho
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Most parents today are horrible. They do NOT interact with the chile like laying on the floor and playing with them. Get your asses off the couch and lie on the floor playing with your kids showing them how to stack blocks, and play.
I gave my daughter a earfull having my granddaughter use the ipad at 2 to keep her entertained. No you play with her using physical objects, and interaction.
Most parents today are horrible. They do NOT interact with the chile like laying on the floor and playing with them. Get your asses off the couch and lie on the floor playing with your kids showing them how to stack blocks, and play.
I gave my daughter a earfull having my granddaughter use the ipad at 2 to keep her entertained. No you play with her using physical objects, and interaction.
You should really do both. My daughter had her own desktop computer before the age of 2. Mainly because she was so fascinated by me working on one all day. I loaded a bunch of edutainment programs on it for her. We didn't use it as a baby sitter though. We would do things together on it. Though sometimes she used it herself. But we also played with MegaBlocks when she was at that age too. It was fun to see how high we could stack them, or chase each other around with them on our fingers. As she got older we
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My kid's a year and a half old and can already use an iPad to watch Sesame Street and Curious George. He also still finds time to run around in circles, bang on things and play with his toy cars. It doesn't have to be one thing or the other...it can be both.
And if it were only one or the other, I'd still rather have the kid know how to use technology than blocks, anyway.
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I think you're just a terrible person. Shutting out your parents from interacting with their grandchildren because they criticized you. What a rational response. I would think most children would be very understanding in comparison to you.
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Huh. Apparently slashdot has a lot of grandparents.
I get what you're saying, but think you could have stated that better. Here we go:
Wow, if my parents tried to tell me how to raise my kids in such an abusive manner like Lumpy did they wouldn't have much access to their grandchildren after that. You must have very understanding children.
My parents are great. My wife's parents have been pretty good so far. But if they ever tried to "give me an earful" for something that isn't even wrong, called me a "horrible parent", and swore at me about it, I wouldn't want that sort of negative abusive attitude around my child.
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So are you planning to reconstruct an unchanged society to loose these unchanged children in 20 years from now? If not I feel like maybe teaching them to use the social systems of their time might be valuable -- long ago children used to learn Middle English, but as it turns out technology changes (as does everything else), and children (and parents) much change with it.
I'm not saying that spacial perception will suddenly cease to be important, but the idea that children don't change is absurd.
/ As is the i
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I wonder who raised them?
The television did.
Kids these days... (Score:5, Insightful)
Exposing children to new technology is a terrible idea.
An Egyptian legend relates that when the god Thoth revealed his invention of writing to King Thamos, the good King denounced it as the enemy of civilization. "Children and young people," protested the monarch, "who had hitherto been forced to apply themselves diligently to learn and retain whatever was taught them would cease to apply themselves and would neglect to exercise their memories."
Time Limit and Age, plus school is doing it (Score:2)
We didn't give a tablet until age 4, for a very long car trip is what started it. They don't get it every day. Usually once or twice a week, and we limit it to 30 minutes. Sometimes an hour if it's a non school day.
But my daughter love's lego friends. And my son is huge into super heros/star wars lego's. Yes they are expensive, but we find sales usually.
I find it's about all around letting them do things. Out side play. Some kinect for bowling once in awhile instead of tablet time. Studying/reading/
Problem solved (Score:2)
Just use an app to make Lego constructions on a tablet. Teachers these days have NO connection to reality!
How to describe a pre-schooler (Score:5, Insightful)
Colin Kinney said excessive use of technology damages concentration and causes behavioural problems such as irritability and a lack of control.
Seriously? These `behavioural problems` describe every pre-schooler I've ever met.
Re:How to describe a manager (Score:2)
FTFY.
Think of it this way: Your kids are geting a head start at Harvard Business School.
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Colin Kinney said excessive use of technology damages concentration .
tl;dr. can anybody give me the gist of this statement?
Tactile interaction? (Score:2)
My theory on this is that when we moved away from keyboards and mice in the use of phones and tablets, we did away with the last remnants of manipulating three-dimensional solid objects while interacting with computing devices.
I have this vague feeling that our connection to, and assumption that we can leverage, our animal evolutionary history is becoming more and more tenuous as we spend more of our time and focus interacting with items lacking analogs in nature:
Won't someone think of the children! (Score:3, Insightful)
The main quote comes from a teacher who works for a think tank(that needs funding) talking about conversations he had with other teachers... not stuff he's done himself.
"I've spoken to a number of nursery teachers who have concerns over the increasing numbers of young pupils who can swipe a screen but have little or no manipulative skills to play with building blocks – or pupils who can't socialise with other pupils, but whose parents talk proudly of their ability to use a tablet or smartphone."
Besides the manipulation issue (Score:5, Insightful)
which is already concerning, as fine motor skills are very important, the other sentence in the article that worried me was the mention that kids now have trouble memorizing even simple lines for a play, since they are used to information being easily always available so they aren't putting in the effort of learning it.
As much as easy global information access is great, unless you learn the basics it's quite difficult to make sense of what's available and to have an informed opinion. Just because you have a river of information always available it doesn't help if you can't relate to it, it makes you that much more susceptible to being influenced, because since you are not able to discriminate between quality information and misleading or wrong information, any page/blog/article of somebody with an agenda can just point to "studies" that support their point (no matter how objectively wrong that point is) and it transforms informed discussions into popularity contests.
I don't think it's tinfoil hat time in terms of there being some sort of overall arching conspiracy about this, but it sure is concerning when you have a society like ours where media has many orders of magnitude more funding and impact than academia, I mean, even the word "academia" nowadays is overlaid with negative connotations (at least in North America) rather than the respect it should evoke: these days an actor/model stating an opinion can easily counterbalance hundreds of scientists/academics with fact-based studies.
Before the internet there were just as many crackpot theories around, however they were not presented as if they were the same as science, if you went to the library you wouldn't find in the astronomy section geocentric books shelved together with heliocentric and general relativity ones: now with your browser on the "internet library" you can find professional-looking sites pro/anti everything and without the tools learned in school/university how can you make sense of which is right? especially in cases where the science is counter-intuitive for a particular issue?
Absurd conclusion. Everything is learned. (Score:3)
Kids will be familiar with whatever he/she has had time to play with. Ability to build legos doesn't come built it, kids who haven't seen one will still have to learn how to build them.
What's next? (Score:2)
The simple solution is to (Score:2)
App (Score:2)
Parents responded by... (Score:2)
Parents responded by waving their hands in a brisk right-to-left motion in front of their eyes. "Hey!" They exclaimed, "Why won't these annoying lecturers just go away".
Wrong problem (Score:2)
LEGOs can be used infinite ways, to create all kinds of things from the imagination. Guess what? So can an iPad.
It is the lazy f'n parents, who take the easiest way out to pacify their over protected brats, and wonder why they cry when they don't get what they want later in life.
Minecraft is the new Lego (Score:2)
What happened?
They discovered Minecraft.
They are still building (virtual) things and using their imagination and problem solving skills.
I now save hundreds of dollars a year not buying Legos.
Win/Win
LEGO, not LEGOs. (Score:4, Informative)
It is the same singular or plural.
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We are talking about little kids. You tend to get them the Big Blocks instead. They come in a bucket and you use them to build random square objects. Sets for older kids tend to be more detailed and well beyond the scope.
Re:most lego's are a rip off (Score:4, Insightful)
We are talking about little kids. You tend to get them the Big Blocks instead.
... because little kids don't have the dexterity to use regular Legos. The reason two year old kids can use an iPad and aren't ready for standard Legos is because the latter requires more skill. TFA claims claims that exposing kids to technology is causing our civilization to spiral down the drain, but provides no evidence whatsoever, other than anecdotes and conjecture.
Re:most lego's are a rip off (Score:5, Insightful)
It also fails to acknowledge that LEGO is itself technology -- relatively modern, high technology in the grand scheme of humanity -- or provide any meaningful distinction between "good" technologies like verbal language and "bad" technologies like iPads.
As with virtually all "kids these days" rants it's nothing more than an attempt to relive the past by forcing it on today's young people.
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The reason two year old kids can use an iPad and aren't ready for standard Legos is because the latter requires more skill. TFA claims claims that exposing kids to technology is causing our civilization to spiral down the drain, but provides no evidence whatsoever, other than anecdotes and conjecture.
While no hyperbole such as civilization spiraling down the drain or even anything close to it TFA say that:
Children are arriving at nursery school able to "swipe a screen" but lacking the manipulative skills to play with building blocks, teachers have warned. They fear that children are being given tablets to use "as a replacement for contact time with the parent" and say such habits are hindering progress at school.
While as you write there is little support for what is written beyond anecdotes and conjecture it most definitely is something that deserve attention and scientific studies not people getting their panties in a bundle over imaginary luddites.
Re:most lego's are a rip off (Score:5, Informative)
We are talking about little kids. You tend to get them the Big Blocks instead.
... because little kids don't have the dexterity to use regular Legos. The reason two year old kids can use an iPad and aren't ready for standard Legos is because the latter requires more skill.
How did we go from building blocks for 2-year old kids to standard lego blocks? You know there is a difference, do you? If not, please STFU. Just to help you and those who sadly do not know the difference:
TFA claims claims that exposing kids to technology is causing our civilization to spiral down the drain,
TFA is not claiming that. You are claiming that it does, though.
but provides no evidence whatsoever, other than anecdotes and conjecture.
Anecdotes and conjecture are valid form of preliminary evidence with which to request further scrutiny of something.
Also, from personal anecdote (feel free to dismiss because ZOMFG anecdote!) kids at that early stage require specific stimulus to develop hand fine grained motor skills. Playing with sand, clay or building blocks (not standard lego blocks, but building blocks for toddlers) help do that.
Going into the (ZOMG!) anecdote: One of my nephews had a learning disability co-related to not developing hand fine motor skills, some type of proprioception problem related to ADHD/Asperger/Autism. He simply could not hold a pen without it falling off his fingers. Good fortune it was detected on time, and was put on specific corrective therapy to develop not just finger strength but the necessary coordination to do what he needed to do with his hands during that state of his body/mind development.
Feel free to dismiss this as you wish. Whatever gets your intellectual kicks.
With that said, I'm not against kids using technology. I was delightfully fascinated when I saw my older daughter (now 5) using my smart phone at the age of 2, and I'm fascinated how my youngest one (1.5 year old) fiddled her way into unlocking my phone (despite it being locked with a swipe-shape lock.)
But I keep my daughters away from technology if that precludes them from the other type of tactile-proprioceptive activities that have been developed over time to assist in their development: finger painting, puzzles, blocks, sculpting with silly putty, running around.
All those things are fun, but they are not just for fun. They have an evolutionary purpose.
There is a reason why kids play with soil instinctively. It is not just curiosity. It is the child mind and body instinctively seeking activities that trigger learning and development.
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There are three sizes, I think. The standard LEGO size, the Duplo size, and the Mega-block size. The last one is HUGE, and it's so big I'm not sure I see a point. My experience so far says they can hold and manipulate the Duplo by the time they are 18 months. Not expertly, but enough to put some pieces togethera, and there's nothing wrong with a little challenge. Plus, Duplo are far more reasonable to merge with the small LEGO size when they graduate, while Mega Block size are so big they're basically
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Megablocks are not LEGOs... proper LEGOs... LEGOs... LEGOs... LEGOs...
Disclaimer: I am Danish
And you don't use LEGO as a mass noun? For shame!
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We are talking about little kids. You tend to get them the Big Blocks instead.
In what universe?
For the last two years every toddler-owner I meet is incredibly proud that their 2-year old knows how to swipe (and they keep reminding everybody in sight).
"Oh, you should see him use the iPhone!".
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My parents had me on technic sets before I hit third grade. Back in the days where a tv couldn't watch your kids that was the best way to keep them occupied for weeks on end. It was either that or puzzles, in which I had the horrific adventure of putting together a 1000+ piece space puzzle... the kind without any nebulae or anything that could give you a reference point. The only thing that was "easy" was the edge pieces. Now that I look back on that, it seems pretty evil, but that was fun for the times.
I c
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Children arriving at nursery school don't need a $40 set to be building for an hour.
Re:most lego's are a rip off (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't know that the bricks could only be used once, and in one specific order.
Re:most lego's are a rip off (Score:5, Funny)
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Assemble once and KRAzyGLuE? Doing it wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:most lego's are a rip off (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:most lego's are a rip off (Score:5, Interesting)
Reminds me of one of the most frustrating realizations of my life. When I was a kid, I was a big fan of Lego. I often asked for lego as gifts but rarely got any.
As an adult, I found out why. My mom asked me what a little boy in the family might want as a gift. I asked what he was into, and one of the things was Lego. Apparently he was a big fan too.
"Then you can't go wrong with more Lego," I said.
My mom replies "But he already has Lego."
*GIANT FUCKING FACEPALM*
Now it all made sense :-(
Re:most lego's are a rip off (Score:5, Informative)
Specialized Pieces (Score:4, Interesting)
Those same pieces can be used to build what ever you can imagine.
No so easily nowadays. Lego comes with huge numbers of very specialized pieces which are taylor made for that particular model. You can get the basic bricks but most Lego today is aimed at building one model and then playing with it rather than getting a pile of bricks and letting your imagination run wild.
There is one exception though: Mindstorms! This is simply brilliant and the new EV3 version even runs Linux! It's one of the few toys that are around today that I really wish I had been available when I was a kid.
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Those same pieces can be used to build what ever you can imagine.
No so easily nowadays. Lego comes with huge numbers of very specialized pieces which are taylor made for that particular model. You can get the basic bricks but most Lego today is aimed at building one model and then playing with it rather than getting a pile of bricks and letting your imagination run wild. There is one exception though: Mindstorms! This is simply brilliant and the new EV3 version even runs Linux! It's one of the few toys that are around today that I really wish I had been available when I was a kid.
I have a six year old, and this is mostly true. There are a large number of non-standard pieces, which makes digging for pieces much more frustrating. On the other hand, there are a lot more possibilities when it comes to building things with articulations. My son builds robots all the time (cannibalized from various robot sets), and I showed him how using a ball-and-socket joint at the shoulders and hips, and a hinge joint at the knees and elbows makes it more like us. And he doesn't know any better, so
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The best Lego set we ever bought for my son was a castle set at a garage sale. It didn't have instructions. He just put together pieces and made castles, they didn't have to look like anything pre-made at all.
Had I been more forward thinking, I would have thrown away all his Lego instruction sheets and booklets.
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There's no reason kids can't do both. There's something to be said for learning to understand and follow instructions. I really liked doing it as a kid. After that, I'd take it apart and make my own things. And now I don't have to call someone to put Ikea furniture together for me.
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He had a space shuttle model that he put together one time, and as far as know it still remains in the shape of the space shuttle. It didn't grow dinosaur engines, it didn't have wooden castle doors, it never had gears and shafts and pistons protruding from the wings, it just stayed a space shuttle model. The castle, on the other hand, was sometimes a tube, sometimes a fort, and sometimes a box, depending on what he was playing.
He's now 25 years old, and I don't suppose he's all that interested anymore.
not trolling, really. well, maybe a little.. (Score:2)
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Anything weighing more than ten bricks.
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I'm going to go with this part:
http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=54092c01
It can be the front of a plane or something else that looks like the front of a plane.
The rest of the parts in that set seem pretty useful though:
http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemInv.asp?S=3182-1
Is your imagination broken dude? I could use that part for *TONS* of different models! Granted, it's gonna be a cockpit, but it doesn't have to be an airplane cockpit... It could be used on a racecar, submarine, spaceship, crane, whatever! (I think I would use it on a monorail - that would be fun!) You could also face it backwards or sideways for a very unique model! It could probably also prove useful somehow in a GBC module. (http://www.greatballcontraption.com/)
Yes, there are many specialized parts
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Ship's prow (upside down)
Several hinged for a claw.
Aerodynamic fairing around the parts of a vehicle that fits into the front of another vehicle to lock it into the assembly (c.f. the Phoenix from Battle of the Planets)
Scoops on a water wheel, or teeth on a rotary digger
So there's four off the top of my head in a couple of minutes without any brinks in reach to doodle with.
Stop trying to blame other people for your lack of creativity.
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Offset vertical joints for a stronger structure (look at actual bricklaying)
Shims to close a gap due to rotation of peg axis.
Spot color
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But they can't anymore. It used to be that way, but now that all the lego toys are tie-ins with Star Wars or the Lord of the Rings or something, almost all the pieces are specially molded "bricks" that really only make sense in the context of whatever the kit is. You can't really use such pieces for anything more than what they were designed for.
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If a wooden block can be a car and a stick can be a gun, I'm gonna call shenanigans on this. It's not a limitation of the specialty pieces, but of the imagination.
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at which point, all combinations of blocks and arrangements have been exhausted, the blocks thoughoughly used-up and worn-out, the $40 set must be tossed into the garbage.
congrats. you "beat" legos.
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That sounds like a fun computation problem. (or maybe a 'Redmond-style' job interview question)
You have 2 2x8 lego bricks, how many ways can they be put together?
How about 3?
4?
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Even if we cut off the symetries, there`s an infinite number of ways that you can assemble them. Don`t believe me ? Hehe let`s start from the beginning ..
Lets say, we use either as the bottom one, but that`s considered symetric, so we only look as a fixed bottom one and another to attach to. You could put exactly over it, then you could move up on the side for a total of 8 positions. Either side are symetric. Then, you could move it to the side by one, and repeat. You could also move it to the other side, b
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If you only built your Legos one time then you missed the point. Even the ones were kids are like "oh this is awesome I'm never taking it apart" ultimately wind up disassembled and part of something else.
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IF you only use it to build one set, then you are the problem, not Lego.
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Actually, there are quite a few nice sets which I`ve purchased for my kids. I agree that there's a lot of bad sets out there, but I look at my old sets instructions advertisement pages, and there was also a lot of bad sets 30 years ago but we didn`t happened to purchase them either :)
http://www.lego.com/en-us/crea... [lego.com]
http://www.lego.com/en-us/crea... [lego.com]
http://www.lego.com/en-us/crea... [lego.com]
http://www.lego.com/en-us/tech... [lego.com]
Ok, that last one`s for me :)
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Except that you're actually wrong.
minifgures (lego people) and their tools/accessories aside, the models today are almost completely made from select colors of commodity pieces.
What's changed is that the range of commodity pieces has expanded some, and models in general tend to make more use of some more elaborate pieces that attach in ways which allow more articulation of the model as well as smaller pieces (meaning they favor plates over bricks).
Sure that X-wing may have a special R2-D2 minifigure and win
Re:most lego's are a rip off (Score:4, Informative)
This is completely wrong. Here's the instructions to the latest X-Wing. [lego.com] Flip to the back and count the number of "special molds" yourself. Do you see anything in there that can't be used for anything but an X-Wing?
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There's almost no point in it being a lego toy, because you're just assembling a crude model of an x-wing, and the only thing you can make with the set is...an x-wing. Why not just...play with a model x-wing?
Seriously... watch the lego movie... or hell just look at some of the sets they've released based on the movie.
I think this one illustrates my point:
http://static.indigoimages.ca/... [indigoimages.ca]
Take a good look at it. The 'goblet' piece is a gun. The wagon wheels are the engine turbines, the turbine housings are th
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Re:Relevant Skills (Score:5, Informative)
The issue is not the building blocks themselves, but the serious lack of coordination skills on the part of the children.
If you can't get a couple of blocks to snap together, how are you going to deal with tying your shoes?
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15 years ago they were grumbling these kids couldn't run nor catch a ball. Horrors, what will they be saying in 2025?
That use of a direct neural interface has rendered children unable to swipe to unlock.
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"Kids these days can't even swipe a tablet, all wired-up as they are with these direct brain interfaces! It's terrible I tell you, terrible!"
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"Kids these days can't even swipe a tablet, all wired-up as they are with these direct brain interfaces! It's terrible I tell you, terrible!"
In 2025, they probably will be stuck in their Buy 'N Large hover recliners, with drones delivering everything and informercials streamed directly to their heads-up or retinal displays. They won't need silly things like "interfaces" for antiquated notions like "choice".
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couldn't run nor catch a ball
Yeah, that's what they said. Now we've got a nation full of lard asses piling into SSI disability because their bodies are ruined.
Fifteen years from now we'll have all that plus they'll be profoundly nearsighted from excessive iPhone use starting at age 2.
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Re:Relevant Skills (Score:4, Insightful)
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I have packed a car for a road trip countless times in my life, and my ability to find the correct pattern to fill all available space is directly attributable to my extensive practice with LEGO bricks.
Actually, I think my ability to pack parts onto a PCB layout tighter than most other engineers and layout designers is also drawn from this, and that does have direct job benefits.
Someone who played a lot of Tetris might have the same skills; I was never interested in that game.
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Having skill at playing with building blocks is not useful to most modern jobs. I'm sure the children are not great at milking cows either.
Either of those would make you stand out in a job interview alongside a bunch of people who only know how to swipe.
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Lego skills are very useful for engineering. I've been in software development 30+ years and still apply skills I learned from lego, lincoln logs, and erector sets in the 60s and 70s. You can use these sets to build almost identical looking structures in many ways . Some will fall over when you barely touch them. Some can be rolled and even tossed a short distance without falling apart. Software is the same. You can put classes together to make a robust & stable system, or use similar classes to m
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I submit this could be an improvement over the helicopter kids.
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I saw a video on Youtube titled "A magazine is an iPad that does not work." It featured a 1-year-old child tapping images on a magazine, expecting something to happen, and being somewhat frustrated that nothing does. There's a kid who may never throw a ball in his or her life.
Now I'm trying to figure out if that actually matters or not -- I certainly don't see ball-throwing as a necessary skill for life anymore, it's now strictly a form of recreation. We're no longer hunter-gatherers, we don't have to cl
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My first baby will be born in a few months. My intention is for tablets to be used only outside the house, when we are in a public space like a (family-appropriate where I'm not being an ass taking my young child) restaurant, and quiet activity is most important as to not disturb neighbors (even though they should be okay with occasional child noise going to a family-appropriate restaurant). It might be appropriate in a car as well, when I'm alone with them and should be focused on the road, not them.
Real
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"Children today are retarded - physically, mentally, and emotionally, and they come from retarded parents."
False, by every measure.
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I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words. When I was a boy, we were taught to be discrete and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint.
Hesiod, Eighth Century B.C.
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"Failing to check a citation and perpetuating a spurious quotation is little different from lying".
-- Socrates
"I only lied because it was the easiest way to get what I wanted".
-- Bart Simpson
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What happened to playing with matches?
The problem is that it's all the frickin' strike-on-box junk nowadays. Good old fashioned strike-anywhere matches are getting harder to find. You have to dig deep through grandma's junk drawer to find a box, and then you still have to sneak them out to the garage to see which of grandpa's mysterious cans of fluids are the most flammable.