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Pre-Teens Build Successful iPhone App
Apparently the children of the world are out to make us at the Switched offices feel, well, a tad unaccomplished. When it isn't nine-year-old Indian girls working for Microsoft, it's 11-year-olds getting astrophysics degrees, and sixth graders getting $6.5M to fund video game ventures. Even non-prodigy children seem to stumbling across rare interstellar phenomena these days.So it's not that shocking that 11-year-old Owen Voorhees and his brother, 9-year-old Finn, were able to churn out an iPhone application. Despite their pre-teen status and programming skills learned on the fly, the duo produced a polished app that reached number 13 on the most popular paid-apps list in Apple's app store (education category).
Their application, 'Math Time,' is a simple flash card program that drills kids in basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Tapping one button displays the problem, and then tapping another reveals the answer. It's not terribly sophisticated, but it gets the job done.
'Math Time' is available in the app store for $0.99 if you wish to encourage their entrepreneurial spirit. [From: Inc.]
Teen Texting Craziness
Syracuse University professor Laurence Thomas made news last year for walking out of the classroom whenever his students disobeyed his "no texting in class" rule. Wouldn't the kind of student who would text in class be happy to have class canceled?
In January, 13-year-old Californian Reina Hardesty sent 14,528 text messages from her cell phone. Fortunately for her daddy, he had her on an unlimited text plan.
Two high school cheerleaders in Seattle were suspended from school in December when school officials found out that they had taken nude pictures of themselves on their cell phones and, mistakenly or not, wound up with them circulating through the football locker room. The girls' parents have filed suit against the school. You'd think they would just let the embarassment die quietly.
In December, while on a class trip (according to an Internet rumor anyway), the above message appeared on 18-year-old Elizabeth Frisinger's phone after mistakenly texting her dad, back home in Cleveland, that she'd just lost her virginity. Whoops!
Outdoing Reina Hardesty, 15-year-old Ohioan Paige Hornev averages 15,000 text messages a month. That comes out to the impressive, or pitiful, average of 500 text messages a day.
Thinking about Emily Jenning's texting abilities just makes our thumbs hurt. The Vancouver, British Columbia teen pumped out an absurd 41,600 text messages in the course of a single month -- we did some quick calculations and that works out to about one text every minute.
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Comments
44
Subscribe to commentsbratgirl3Jul 5th 2009 7:07PM
All of your comments were very amusing. First of all, I would not be surprised if "Hope's" response wasn't planted there to spark the debate. Personally, I think both the app and the ability to create it are awesome! Who cares what the purpose of the app is? Why even engage someone in a discussion about an age-old, time-tested method that teachers having been utilitizing for years!! Two elementary school students had the motivation, drive and intellectual ability to create a computer application...... could you? To me, that point was lost. If the education system is so poor and children are not achieving at the same rate as the rest of the world, how do you explain a 9 and 11 year old having the capability to produce a "polished app"?
Just to address the flash card issue.... memorization vs. using a calculator.... As a special ed teacher of 25 years, by middle school.... if they don't know their facts, they MUST learn to use a calculator and believe me.... they need to be taught. They don't just know how to operate one. It's a survival skill. We all use one, every day.
So let's NOT knock the education system in this country because most of us are doing the best we can with what we have. Let's applaud the teacher and parent who fostered the drive and creativity in these two young men!
Erin1283Jul 5th 2009 7:44PM
Personally, I think that these children should be lauded for their accomplishment. I, at 25 years old, couldn't have created the app and I think that it is fantastic that they made an educational app, an accomplishment in and of itself given that most would have preferred a more mind-numbing game. Besides, it will reach kids via the best way to get their peers' attention: by way of technology. Kudos boys.
Heather KJul 5th 2009 11:09PM
I hope all these comments were posted in the same few minutes, I am sure Hope has seen a different view now. There is no reason to berate her. Have you never made a statment you wish you could take back? And yes my grammers not that great I hope ther is an I-Phone app that can help me.
CaelicadoAug 6th 2009 4:09AM
Shame on children for using flashcards to learn their basic arithmetic! [Note the sarcasm.] When I was five years old, I learned my multiplication tables by using flash cards. However, such an utterly disgraceful method of learning seems to have had no negative effects on my mathematical skills. Quite the opposite seems to have occurred. Now that I am sixteen years old, I can solve complex algebraic functions mentally, including but not limited to quadratic, rational, exponential, and conic functions- all of which I do not believe I would be able to solve without the basic foundation of skills in mental arithmetic that I developed through the use of those accursed flash cards. Shame on me for learning in such a way. Really.