Family Tech Blog

Tag: storytime

  • Facebook Portal is a Microphone, Camera, Smart Speaker, and Screen for Your Home

    Facebook Portal is a Microphone, Camera, Smart Speaker, and Screen for Your Home

    Facebook can’t stay out of the news. Going to Washington to testify about their privacy breeches, chain messages about hacked accounts, and copycats creating fake profiles to trick people’s friends. Today, the social media giant is in the the news for a different reason, they’ve released a smart speaker. Now you can keep Facebook Messenger always running in your home. Sound good?

    Facebook Portal is a touchscreen smart speaker that seems to be created mostly to keep you connected with friends and family through messenger. The camera follows your face while you chat, allowing you to walk around the room or even talk with more than one person and then zoom in to focus on one or the other. The team claims that they use a 2d tracking technology, not face id in order to locate people in the room. This is to curb possible privacy concerns when it comes to facial recognition. Portal and Portal Plus also have an on/off switch for the mic, and a privacy clip that you can attach to cover the camera lens. It’s almost like the folks at Facebook think you don’t trust them with your privacy.

    portal.facebook.com

    The smart speaker also connects to Spotify and Pandora and will use Alexa to connect to some smart home appliances and devices. You can watch videos on Facebook and Facebook Watch and they claim that more video partners are coming soon. (YouTube, Amazon Prime, and Netflix anyone?) One feature everyone thinks is neat is the ability to read stories for children through chat and use augmented reality filters to increase the fun of story time. The example used features the story of the three little pigs and not only does it progress through story artwork as you read but it puts the mask of the characters on the reader while they read that character’s lines. A fun idea to make young ones sit down and chat with grandma, gramps, or auntie for a while longer. 

    portal.facebook.com

    What Parents Should Know

    My family doesn’t have a smart speaker in our home. Not even the one Amazon made for kids. I don’t like having an “always on” microphone hanging around. I’m pretty particular with how my data is used. I don’t mind Amazon using my shopping history to recommend things for me to purchase but I’d rather they not do so using my conversations with my wife. 

    Facebook is trying to ease users minds with their privacy focus on Portal. The audio chip that hears you call the wake word (Hey Portal) is separate from the one that sends audio to Facebook and even that is encrypted end to end. (The data is scrambled up for its whole journey across the internet from your device to Facebook and then to the recipient, if applicable.) They include the clip to cover the camera and even an on/off switch to disconnect the power to the microphone and camera. 

    These devices preach a message of connection and try to focus especially on connecting with older members of your family and to your kids. We know that connection over a screen isn’t always as beneficial as face to face connection but sometimes it IS our only option. In this case, a free standing device that exists mainly just for these kinds of connections (think, telephone in the 1980s) isn’t too outside the box. Even with all of their privacy additions, though, I still have a concern about putting a device with a camera and microphone in it in my living room that was designed by and always connected to Facebook. 

  • Is iBooks Storytime Looking to Replace Mommy and Daddy?

    Is iBooks Storytime Looking to Replace Mommy and Daddy?

     

    “I’m bored.” This is the most terrible phrase for a parent to hear their kids say. Seriously, parents would pay ungodly amounts of money for just a couple hours of boredom. Boredom sounds so relaxing but our children are complaining about it. Our most common response to this phrase is “Go get a book and read.” We still have a couple who can’t read so they want us to read to them. That’s a good thing to do (More on that later.) but aren’t you busy? I know I am. Now you can say “go turn on the TV and read.” It’ll even read to them. But is that such a good thing?

    Enter iBook StoryTime

    Offering classic kids books, new stories, read-aloud narration, and Hi-Def illustrations, StoryTime is looking to be “an engaging place for young readers to enjoy the stories they love.” (App Store) StoryTime is available for AppleTV as well so stories can be viewed on larger screens. Pages flip automatically and there is an option to turn off the narration so you can read to your child yourself.

    The question is whether or not apps like iBooks StoryTime encourage reading or just disguise screen time to seem like it’s educational. Many experts have recently concluded that too much screen time is bad for the development of children. Obviously we can see the concerns with attention span or problems in social situations but one issue that relates specifically to this app is :

    an internalization that all actions have an immediate effect, and all stimuli elicit a quick response. – Psychology Today

    screenshot-2016-11-30-12-44-14This constant immediate reward from the quick response of digital media can lead to a preference to screen type activities and addictive behavior. 

    Reading to our children is critical. One of the most significant benefits is how reading together builds and strengthens our relationship with our kids. If a pre-recorded narrator is doing all the reading to our children, they are building a relationship with that screen and not with mom and dad. There are of course enough benefits to reading, no matter how. Kids who read well do better in every subject in school. Children who have been read to are better at communicating and reading to them at a young age makes it easier for them to learn to read when the time comes.

    Numerous studies have shown that students who are exposed to reading before preschool are more likely to do well in all facets of formal education.

    The most important thing is balance. An app like StoryTime can be a great tool to inspire and encourage reading in our children’s lives. It can also be a way to distract them so that we can do whatever thing we feel is urgent enough to cause us to neglect the important activity of bonding with our kids. We just have to be careful.

    My wife can’t even read a book on a screen. She says that there is something to the tactile effect of turning a page. The smell of the pages and even the sound of pages rustling as you go from chapter to chapter. I’m not sure if science backs up all of that but there is a ton of research leading experts to believe that even though an app like StoryTime can be a good tool, nothing beats sitting with your child, opening up a book, and reading together.