Resources for Parents and Educators

The Curiosity Cycle: Preparing Your Child for the Ongoing Technological Explosion

Videos

• PBS Off-Book A set of short videos on technology and art.
• Khan Academy A whole bunch of great online videos for learning math and science topics covered in elementary school on up.
• Cosmic Journeys A series of videos about space.
• Nova Science Now and Nova. High-quality science videos.
• Roving Mars Great video about the Mars rovers.
• Alien Planet Scientifically accurate video about what it would be like to send a robot probe to another planet.
• Brian Greene Space, Time & The Universe, The Fabric of the Cosmos, and The Elegant Universe. These Nova videos are the closest thing we have to the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
• Stated Clearly Comprehensible animated descriptions of biology.
• Powering the Cell: Mitochondria A video about powering cells.
• How Do Birds Fly? Great, short explanation of how birds and planes fly.
• Ephemeralization Great video to watch with your kids about the power of engineering and progress.
• Gut Bacteria Might Guide The Workings Of Our Minds We have 10 times more foreign cells than human cells.
• Humans Need Not Apply Well-made and depressing video about the future of work. Change comes not from new tech, but from ten-year-old tech that is now cheap.
• The History of Our World in 18 Minutes Life came from a sequence of local disturbances.

Books

• Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Engelmann, Phyllis Haddox, and Elaine Bruner. All of my children, except for my illiterate daughter (she's only 4, so there is still hope), have learned to read using this book.
• The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind by Michio Kaku. Accessable introduction to the excitement surrounding brain science. Kids 10 and up can read it on their own, or you can read it with them and discuss.
• Philosophy for Kids: 40 Fun Questions That Help You Wonder about Everything! by David A. White. A book of fun questions that can start great discussions with your kids. It even has teaching tips to get the most out of the questions.
• This Book Made Me Do It by John Woodward. Many neat tidbits for teaching kids new skills for things such as cooking, growing plants, and amazing their friends.
• Optical Illusions: The Science of Visual Perception (Illusion Works) by Al Seckel. Great way to interest your child in perception and how the brain works.
• Python for Kids: A Playful Introduction to Programming by Jason R. Briggs. In our new world of creation, your child can be a digital sorcerer. This is a comprehensive book for teaching kids to program using a language called Python.

Websites

• Codeacademy A site for teaching computer programming. It leads you through exercises.
• Khan Academy Programming Another site for teaching computer programming, aimed at children.
• Cool simulation of water Explain to your children that the physical world can be simulated on computers.
• Paper.js Get your kids interested in programming for the web by letting them play with these fun and interactive animations
• Graph Theory Introduce your kids to graph theory. Explain that nodes are people and links are friendships. Fun to move it.
• Learn to Program with Your Kids A blog post I wrote that lists free resources for learning computer programming.