You may have seen a craze involving colorful elastic bands.
Don't despair! It is teaching children mathematics and geometry including Pascal's triangle and Fibonacci sequences. Even young children are learning terms such as hexagon and rhombus.
Furthermore, kids are also learning reading skills and fine motor skills while making friends and gaining confidence. Many are also learning about economics.
Related Stories
In response to a comment from a previous article about the loom-band craze, I investigated the matter in much more detail and with the objective of creating optimally dithered wristbands. After overcoming several difficulties, such as making anything in an adult size, I definitely believe this craze is wholesome and teaches useful skills to kids.
Most specifically, for a craft that requires all loops to be interlinked, a cursory understanding of directed graphs is essential. Indeed, I find it worrying that there are some five year olds who understand directed graphs more intuitively than some computer scientists.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Buck Feta on Monday July 07 2014, @01:44AM
That's stretching it.
- fractious political commentary goes here -
(Score: 3, Funny) by Tork on Monday July 07 2014, @02:52AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by Buck Feta on Monday July 07 2014, @03:02AM
I'm sure you'll rebound.
- fractious political commentary goes here -
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday July 07 2014, @01:55AM
When I went to read the story, I get not picture of the device. Looks like it tried to load, then goes away. I even told NoScript to load everything anyway and it still would not load.
I get the idea that we have a lot more problems than bracelets can solve... it appears that even using an HTML image tag is beyond their capability.
Funny thing - when I was in school, my teachers would downmark me for making excessively complex sentences to describe a simple concept.
Times change. Now webmasters seem to be paid by the megabyte, whether or not it displays anything useful to the customer.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3) by cafebabe on Monday July 07 2014, @03:23AM
You're not missing much without the pictures. However, I'm fairly surprised that people had problems accessing them. I use Firefox with AdBlock, Ghostery, NoScript and other security/privacy plugins. I also have a 700KB /etc/hosts file to block common advertising servers. Unfortunately, as a matter of practicality, I punched a large hole through this security to allow Google's hosted copy of jQuery. I fully understand if you haven't done likewise. So, a difference of configuration here is likely to be the problem.
Regarding the general trend, web designers are increasingly adept at making websites which don't work. Posting an image and/or selling something remains possible with 15 year old hardware and software. It isn't rocket surgery but web designers find new ways to fail at this basic task.
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by TGV on Monday July 07 2014, @06:11AM
It teaches children as much about Pascal's triangle as dropping a plate on the floor does to teach them Newton's laws.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by choose another one on Monday July 07 2014, @08:36AM
True, except that dropping stuff _is_ how kids learn about gravity etc. Watching babies & toddlers learn is actually fascinating - there are so many things that as adults we just "know", but actually it was so long ago that we've forgotten we had to learn them.
Dropping plates when very young teaches them about entropy, and when slightly older teaches them maths & economics as it is deducted from pocket money...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TGV on Monday July 07 2014, @08:46AM
I'm not denying the learn that gravity exists, but they don't learn what it is or anything about Newton's laws. That all comes as a big surprise when they start learning physics. They don't even understand why their rubber ducky stays afloat in the bath. Hell, they use words, but at age 8, they cannot distinguish a subject from a relative pronoun.
So, if I'm saying that these elastic bands teach them the same about Pascal and Fibonacci as dropping a plate teaches them about gravity and Newton, I'm saying that they do not learn any mathematical concepts.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khakipuce on Monday July 07 2014, @12:09PM
Well said. The point of maths, science, engineering, etc. is to develop and analytical mind and analyse the problem. The vast majority of people have a heuristic view of the world not an analytical one.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by lx on Monday July 07 2014, @12:52PM
It's a craze among kids so by the immutable laws of media it has to be either:
1) The savior of humanity heralding a golden age of hyperintelligent athletes curing world hunger.
or
2) A one-way ticket to psychopatic behavior, drug abuse and teen pregnancy.
(Score: 2) by TGV on Monday July 07 2014, @12:56PM
Need. Mod. Points.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by bootsy on Monday July 07 2014, @08:09AM
I am more interested in how they break down over time. Since my daughter has gotten into them I have seen a lot of them in all sorts of places where they have been dropped.
I would agree with the hand eye co-ordination bit. Not so sure they see the mathematics intuitively though.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Monday July 07 2014, @08:39AM
They don't break down, just end up some place else...
http://static.someecards.com/someecards/usercards/i-wonder-how-many-of-those-damn-rainbow-loom-rubber-bands-i-have-to-suck-up-with-the-vacuum-before-it-spits-out-its-own-bracelet-rmr-145bb.png [someecards.com]