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Last weekend my wife and I kept her eight year old niece for the weekend as a reward for her learning how to ride her bike without the training wheels, a very big day for her. It was kind of a test run for us since we don’t have kids yet and things went fine.
A reoccurring theme for the weekend was “Why?” to most everything from where we went to what we were having for dinner. I’m sure you parents are snickering and thinking no kidding you better get use to it.
I’m going to list the 10 questions selected and you can compare your answers to those provided in the article’s link. Just imagine a small child asking you these questions.
- Why don’t all fish die when lightning hits the sea?
- How much does the sky weigh?
- Why can’t people leave other people alone?
- Why aren’t birds electrocuted on wires?
- What is time?
- Why is the moon sometimes out in the sky in the day, too?
- Why did God let my kitten die?
- Why do I like pink?
- Why is water wet?
- Why does my best friend have two dads?
After reading these questions I realized I got off easy last weekend. I better study up for the next visit.
photo by Stacy Shireman
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
Last week I had the opportunity to participate in an e-textiles (electronic textiles) workshop given in my department. The workshop, taught by Leah Buechley, was pretty amazing! Buechley, an assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab, defines e-textiles as the integration of ubiquitous electronic and computational elements into fabric. Now I know all of this sounds pretty fancy and high tech … and for me it was pretty advanced as I don’t have a background in electronics, technology, or textiles. That being said, I think the most fascinating part of this technology is that I was able to complete the two day exercise even with my lack of experience in this area. This shows that if I can do it, anyone can, which is another key aspect of e-textiles.
Leah kicked off the workshop by showing us some of the products she has created. The most fascinating one was a jacket or pullover made with biking, jogging or walking in mind. On the back of the jacket there was the head of an arrow pointing to the left and one pointing to the right (< >). The arrow heads were made up of numerous small led lights. A piece in the sleeve of the jacket allowed Leah to turn on each of the arrows. What she created essentially were turn signals sewn into the back of a jacket that she works out in. All the wiring is sewn into the jacket in a manner that leaves the clothing soft and physically flexible. This really sparked my interest!
There were about 15 of us that participated from all different areas of the Consumer Innovation Department. We started out with long-sleeved shirts and ended up with a long-sleeved shirt that made different sounds depending on the amount of pressure applied to four pressure-sensitive patches. All the hardware was contained in the shirt itself. To arrive at this end product, there was a great deal of sewing involved! I loved this part for two reasons 1) I like to sew and 2) it was quite entertaining to see so many of my male colleagues sew (as I was one of only three women in the class)! We used a LilyPad Arduino toolkit, iron-on conductive patches, conductive thread and regular thread to create the final product.
You may be thinking that all of this sounds cool and fun, but where can this technology really take us? That is in part why this workshop was created. Imagine a world where those of us addicted to our pedometers don’t always have to remember to grab it and hook it somewhere on ourselves. What if our clothes recorded our step data? Imagine a world where the gentleman standing next to you on the elevator who is wearing a plain t-shirt is actually having tests run to measure for heart rhythm disturbances. Imagine that the comfy sweater your grandma always wears is actually taking biometric data and sending it to her primary care doctor. This is what e-textiles can mean to us.
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
Moderation pretty much applies to everything we do — even texting. Believe it or not, the average teen texts 2,000 times a month — that’s 67 text messages per day. This trend lays the foundation for technology’s latest ailment — texting tendinitis. With all these thumbs in constant motion, physicians are saying this is causing injuries.
Symptoms include back and neck pain, thumb numbness, hand pain, elbow pain and acute inflammation of one of the forearm tendons — primarily the thumb tendon. Back pain is caused by poor posture while texting.
Doctors state that most teens and their parents have no idea how much teens are really texting or that they are texting for up to two hours per day. A doctor in Australia is recommending phone manufacturers to place warnings with their products about the risks of overuse.
Teens diagnosed with TTT or ‘texting teen tendinitis’ today could be looking at arthritis or thumb joint replacement surgeries in their 40s and 50s. And not just teens — this could apply to anyone who overuses their Blackberry for business or personal communication.
Prevention recommendations include limiting text messages to 50 per day, maintaining good posture (no slouching), doing hand exercises to build up muscles and using touch screen phones versus keyboard phones.
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
How can health be tied to learning and gaming? Ann Thai, assistant director at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, wrote a blog post on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation blog that outlines a recently released document entitled, Game Changer:Investing in Digital Play to Advance Children’s Learning and Health.
The post and the document raise a great question about the interconnectedness between fun, learning and health when it comes to kids. Something interesting that I pulled out of Ann’s post is:
How do we know what kids are learning from playing games?
Being that I’ve been on an analytics kick lately over here at Crumple it Up HQ, the question really resonated with me. I’ve spent a lifetime playing video games and there is no record whatsoever of my ability to learn. I know that I’ve learned how to type my initials into the high score column, but that doesn’t really tell me much. Until recently, there hasn’t ever been a platform to record meta-data into some sort of gamer profile. There’s never been a profile that follows me around from game to game.
Wouldn’t it be noteworthy if we could tie game play into learning and health?
Strategy games seem to be ripe to teach and measure a child’s cognitive ability to grasp a concept and implement learning into game play. I’ve played strategy games that integrate my choice of tactics into an overall score, but it’s all a free-for-all. I have to know what tactics to use for a given situation or just wing it and muscle my way through. What if the game provided some kind of instruction and measured my ability to follow those instructions? And what if it then analyzed my ability to learn across different situations and different games?
What about morality based games? I love the idea behind an open-ended world that allows me to choose my own adventure, such as
KOTOR and
Fable on my old Xbox. Measuring the moral decisions a child makes throughout a game seems like an awesome way to start to collect data on how kids cope in game play.
Once all this information is collected, it can be analyzed and trended. After talking with my friends
Tom Stitt and
Stew Apelzin, I think that’s where the real value lies.
What do you think? Can metrics attached to the back end of game play help us understand how kids learn by playing games? Can that information then be used to integrate better lessons into better games? Can it tie back to making kids healthier?
photo by: RodrigoFavera
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
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First came Space Invaders wrist in the 1980s characterized by joint pain caused by continuous pushing of the button required to play the popular arcade game. A decade later came ‘Nintendinitis’ or thumb soreness from pushing the controller buttons for extended periods of time without interruption. Today, physicians are seeing an increase in physical injuries caused while playing the popular Nintendo Wii or ‘Wiiitis’ — the latest ailment to come out of the video game era.
Although a majority of Wii accidents cause more damage to your TV screen than your body, some injuries can still send you straight to the emergency room. Here are a few of the reported injuries that you should take precaution against:
Hand bruises and lacerations: Beware of low ceilings, ceiling fans and lighting fixtures and don’t swing your arms too high. Move surrounding furniture to give yourself enough room to maneuver. Finger lacerations have been reported as players collide with glass lighting fixtures overhead. Christina Aguilera bruised her hand when she collided with a nearby table lamp while playing a heated game of Wii Sports Tennis.
Black eyes: Players’ wide swings have been reported to cause injury to others around them that rival boxer-style ‘shiners.’ These injuries are usually not self-inflicted and the biggest culprit is Wii Sports Tennis. Players should identify their playing space before playing and stay within their borders.
Dislocated knee: Most commonly a result of falling off shoes with high heels while playing. Arguably the most preventable ‘injurwii’ of them all.
Shoulder injuries: Soreness most commonly associated with prolonged playing without interruption. Laying off the Wii for awhile and taking Ibuprofen have been successful antidotes for shoulder injuries.
Elbow injuries: Most commonly the result of getting hit with the Wii-mote of another player or colliding into surrounding furniture.
Broken straps: The thin Wii-mote wrist strap frequently breaks under the abuse exerted on it by players. Your best defense is to hold the Wii-mote securely.
TV damage: Plasma screens, which are glass, almost never survive the impact of a thrown Wii-mote. LCD TV damage ranges from dead pixels to areas of dimmer backlighting to no picture at all. Thrown Wii-mote damage is so common that Lcdarm Technology markets an impact resistant TV shield to cover your TV screen while playing Wii games.
While you don’t need full hockey gear to engage in Wii gaming sessions in your own living room, you do need to exercise caution, common sense and moderation to experience health and happiness while using the Wii.
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
