I apologise if it looks like a promotion, but nothing commercial in it. My friend Ian is a kind grown up who has his own kids but he is still a young dreamer hinself. He wants to bring more love and happyness to the world and invents new ways. I admire his efforts and try to help.
His new project is http://www.sendfelicity.com/ and http://www.facebook.com/sendfelicity The idea is - Send Felicity encourages crafting the future with your own hands. Every day during the month of December, Felicity from Thin Air will surprise you with fun family activity ideas, illustrated by some of the most loved children’s book illustrators in the world. There will be eight arts and craft activities interspersed, allowing children and schools to contribute their work in a curated online exhibition. Ian and his crew got little off the schedule, it is a great amount of work, but they'll strive to fulfil the idea!
Here is his own invitation I wanted to share with you
Dear Moms With Apps Reader (he shared it in our community blog),
As a parent, you’re probably pretty happy to be living in the 21st century. Aside from the lack of flying cars and robots that do the house cleaning and washing, we’re pretty much all the way there, right?
We’ve got:
* phones that can call across the world for almost $0
* magic boxes of all sizes and shapes that allow us to buy stuff and sell stuff
* pocket sized computers that enable us to teach or distract children
* little ovens that cook stuff almost instantly
* cars that run off stuff that grow in the ground
* the ability to buy things from anywhere in the world. Anyone can be a seller and anyone can be a buyer.
All science fiction that’s come true, before we even noticed it. Google started up twelve years ago. YouTube five. The iPhone three. The iPad hasn’t even had a birthday yet.
Yet with all this cool and absolutely useful technology – why do we hanker for handmade goods? What have we lost in the bazaar style markets of eBay and the iTunes App Store. Why are we willing to pay more for something that’s been made by a person the slow way, instead of a machine in an efficient way? Why are there so many handmade and craft markets springing up around the world where we can meet the makers?
I’m a parent of two daughters. Grace who is 11 and Ella who is 8. As a parent, investing in their future like so many of you, I’ve grown interested in using these tools, like DVDs or the iPhone/iPad or whatever new gizmo, to ensure that my kids have a headstart in life. Even though the 21st century seems much brighter than the 20th, parents across the world share the same problems in education, as Sir Ken Robinson so eloquently points out.
I also stumbled into making family oriented software by accident. I had a lovely app idea and wanted to work with a children’s book illustrator friend. As a result of that, I discovered Momswithapps and joined its developer community. Through it, I listen to the successes and struggles within this vibrant community of developers – many of them parents, like you and I – with their hearts in the right place, stymied by the increasing noise of marketers and pedal-to-the-metal advertising.
There are roughly 4,500 apps approved every week. In October 2010, Apple approved almost 19,000 apps (some of the updates, some of them new.) Now, if I was setting up shop to sell stuff, I would be pretty disheartened to know that I’m a pebble on the beach.
At the same time, as a parent concerned about our headlong rush into this new world of GoogleYouTubeiPhoneAndroidiPadblahblahblah, I worry about where our education system is going. Are we really waiting for Superman to swoop in to save us? There’s a publishing crisis, a creativity crisis, an education crisis, there’s the economic crisis. Sir Ken Robinson pretty much nails it. We need to change, for the better.
So I and a bunch of concerned parents from around the world have decided to step up to the plate. We’re just parents, like yourselves. Our backgrounds come from a range of expertise. We’re software developers, children’s book illustrators, handmade artisans, writers, designers, educators – but still parents, invested in our children’s future.
We refuse to believe that a simple block of steel, glass and plastic can contain an education experience that’s better than living in the real world. But we want to take advantage of technology and use it to inspire, build thrilling learning experiences and teach our children how to innovate in an uncertain future. We also want technology to bring us closer together as a family and not further apart. We want to teach our children that living in the 21st century means being a good citizen, in real life and in the digital world. Sharing, collaboration, mutual respect is the same – whether the other person is standing next to you or across the world.
If what I’m talking about resonates with you, I’d like to invite you to come and help us remake the future with your own hands.
You are cordially invited to help us create happiness, or felicity from thin air. This December, we’re running an audacious experiment, disguised as a holiday advent calendar. We’re trying a new way of learning, a different way of using technology to bring families together, a better way of teaching creativity, to model ways of sharing and collaboration in the real world to our children. We’ve tried the absolute best we can to create a wonderful experience for you and your family. Please come and meet Felicity from Thin Air at http://sendfelicity.com.
Yours respectfully,
- Ian
Founder: Being Prudence
Please, take a look))) Pictures are so handsome)))
Actually Ian is an apple developer as I am, and he is going to release an app with Felicity - but if you don't have a gadget or don't want to buy an app - you're still welcome - cause these activities are available online on site and fb page. So you're welcome participate in this joy))) It is free.
AS for us - we've already made baubles, cooked a dream
), and we're going to record a song)))I'd love to hear your feedback. I wish Ian luck and hope he manages to change the world))) to add more felicity from the Thin Air)))
