We’ve put about 6 hours of video recordings from our teacher training session onto an iPod Nano in MPEG4 format, and the Nanos are being carried to teachers in countries where Internet connectivity is thin or doesn’t exist.

And we’ve added a couple hundred photos, and videos produced by our first year participating schools.

In a subdirectory on the Nano, accessible from a computer, are copies of various documents that may also be useful to teachers and Project Happiness leaders.

As time goes along, we will add more video, including video from more schools, and more documents that teachers can modify and share. The Nano should be able to hold about 20 hours of video.

The Nano can also drive a regular (NTSC or PAL) television monitor, so it can be used with a group of teachers.

And when everyone is trained, the device can be initialized and then loaded with your own tunes or local video. (We supply a set of backup CDs that can be reloaded onto the Nano from a computer if desired.)

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Jessica does a lot of thinking about young people – and her focus is quite good.

Her post suggests to me that the important thing is that we should always be teaching hyper-skills (meta-skills and meta-learning) – skills that allow kids (any age!) to organize and reorganize their thinking and their actions when the environment changes.

For me this is totally, totally key to what I’m doing these days. As a PhD Computer Scientist, I have skills that are generalizable. But, in case you hadn’t noticed it, VERY small numbers of programmers are now creating applications that millions and millions of people will use. A couple hundred engineers at Google can create online products that are used by hundreds of millions. A small group at Apple creates an operating system (based on FreeBSD) that supports fabulous software on devices undreamed of even twenty years ago.

So when I first started writing software in the 1960s, we were anticipating a global need for millions of programmers. But today, even though there may be lots of programmers, there are some very small groups who are responsible for the majority of today’s software. And consequently, what I have been doing recently is “re-treading” myself so that rather than concentrating on software-creation, which is a less-in-demand skill, I’ve been focusing more on visual, audio and written journalism. And on online strategies for my customers.

What’s that have to do with helicopter parents? Well, as parents you should be ensuring that your kids have the skills to step up above what they do day-to-day, and rather than beat their heads against the wall trying to get mundane things done. Ensure that they have the ability to pop their head “up above the surface of the water” look around and see the environment, and then retool what they’re doing in order to achieve long-term goals.

[See also: an archive of the Meta-Learning Lab // or another archive]

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