Joy, Play, Curiosity – these are the pathways to learning. Learning is the pathway to tomorrow.
Children – the world begins here…

 

INSPIRE KIDS
(and those that teach them)

You can Do anything – anything is possible, Try new things, take risks, make mistakes, Delight in the big and small, Think positive – it makes your brain work better, Make Friends – we learn better together, Get messy!

And with this passion, now the story…

Mobile kids’ games, Etsy, Amazon Publishing, App Store…

A Journey through time

a short story

Once upon a time (all stories start this way), when I had time to take time I fed my curiosity on how things work and why. “Why” IS my favorite word by the way.

Many years back, before all children were glued to their tablets 24/7, I thought what a great platform Mobile could be for wee ones! Right?! So, having taught art to kids for so long, I thought what would be more fun than learning about color and shapes on a device where you could just use your fingers to get instantaneous results. So, content? HMMM. Well how about coloring pictures for the ABCs, or shape Puzzles? Learn as you play. I decided to do both.

So, I did some flows, some wires and some sketches. I got some little ones to tell me what they thought and then I set about making the apps.
 

 

Then I got busy with work and my time out of time stalled…

A little bit later in time I started to think about how could one make money doing something they love from home? We all have had these thoughts. So, I started researching and talking to friends and looked into Etsy. HMMM I had a lot of assets for my game, why not use those to see what setting up a store on Etsy is all about. So, I did. And, I got to set up a company, make a business plan, all that.

 

Then I got busy with work and my time out of time stalled again. I had a store but no time to manage it,
deep sigh…

Some more time passed. I was wondering about publishing to the Apple App store and cross platform dev. I found a little time and came up with the simplest game I could using images only. I didn’t have the chops to write native code so I thought HMMM I know Flash and ActionScript, I wonder if I could use that? Low and behold you can! So, I started making assets and a game and investigating the cross-platform output options which of course led me to distribution. The bane of my existence – lots of good ideas nowhere to take them. So, I signed up as an Apple developer and learned all about publishing to the App Store.

 

 

Then I got busy with work and my time out of time vanished into space for a while
again…

Time rolled on (as it does) and when I had a little more of it I decided to write a kid’s book, so I did. Well I wrote two; Uchu and the Big Dog and Uchu and the Dinosaur. I started to illustrate them when, wait a minute how the heck am I going to distribute/publish them? HMMM I had recently read Wool, one of my favorite books ever, and had read Hugh Howey’s story about how the book happened and I was so inspired. So, I followed his trail and started researching this thing at Amazon about self-publishing. Amazing…

And, of course, time ran out (slippery little devil) with the books half done…

 

BUT

The moral to this story is that I am ALWAYS curious, passionate and will find a way no matter what. These personal projects, besides being super fun, are really more of a way for me to explore alternative solutions to traditional problems. I will always ask Why and then I will always answer with How to get there.

And they lived happily ever after (all stories end this way).

THE END for now…

 

PS Here’s some great quotes that always inspire me:

“I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.”  Eleanor Roosevelt

“The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.”  Aldous Huxley

“If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.” Émile Zola

And this Ted Talk is truly inspiring:

The child-driven education (Sugata Mitra)
https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education