Grammerjack

As the summer of 2016 draws to an end, it's time to plan my family's IT setup for the 2016-2017 school year. My current setup iPhones Macbooks iPads Apple TV Chromecast Audio Printer/scanner. Apple Time Capsule No-name " scooter computer " for playing with docker. Phones for kids The big change this year was that my youngest kids got their own phones. The process went well. I'm glad I spent the extra money to buy refurbished iPhone 5s's instead of cheaper phones. The iPhone 5s's have been reliable and easy to administer. The 16 GB of storage has occasionally been a problem. I restrict my youngest kids' phones so that they can't install apps. It's tedious to have to unlock and then relock the phones to install apps for them, but I like being able to have a say on which apps they have on their phones. I bought Otterbox cases, which worked well at protecting the phones. So far all the phones have survived. One phone did ge...

I sent my kids to the DigiPen ProjectFun summer camp this year. It's expensive ($1400 for 10 days). It is very well run. My kids loved the experience, and they learned a lot about the topics (animation and game programming) they took. The classes were structured as 7 days of instruction, 2-and-one-half days of final project, and then a demonstration on the afternoon of the last day. FWIW I am well versed in both animation and game programming. I've tried to teach my kids these subject. They learned more from these courses than when I tried to teach them at home. The instructors emailed me a detailed "what we did in class today" letter every day. I found it helpful to read the letter and use it to prompt discussion with my kids. A nice side benefit is that my kids were exposed to relatable role models in the game industry, through the many DigiPen students who are helping run the camp. "Dad, everybody has nose rings." Only drawback: m...