Monday, January 4, 2010

The Many Marvels of the DSi

These hand held video game devices are all the rage. Yesterday when I took two of my children to Wendy’s for lunch after church I counted no less than 5 DS’s on the surrounding tables. One was being used by a grandma! Truly marvelous devices. The newest hand held game system from Nintendo is the DSi. It has internet capabilities with WiFi connection and a built in camera that takes fairly good quality pictures.

We first bought one of these for Cassie for her birthday in November. Eric already had the regular DS,well used. Of course the day she opened her new toy, Eric’s game system had mysteriously disappeared and remained lost until two days before Christmas. By that time we had caved in and bought him his own DSi. The lost one was found buried under garbage in the door of the truck.

Cassie has become quite the photographer with her DSi. It can hold 400+ photos and she has already maxed out her memory card. I enjoy browsing her photos and seeing the world through her eyes. There are also embellishments and effects that can be done to the photos and she has been quite creative with these.  The coolest feature is the direct link to facebook. I was able to upload some of the better pictures to my facebook account and share them with my friends.

Eric discovered Flipnotes on his DSi. It is an animation program that allows you to create little animated movies out of your drawings. Perfect for my little budding comic book creator. And he discovered you can add sound to your videos too! Since the photo program had an upload feature to the internet I looked at the flipnotes program and discovered the same. Today I’ll be emailing in permission for Eric to upload his animations to a special website so that  I can share his creations with his fans. Check back later and I should have a link posted.

So if you were concerned that DS’s were nothing but time wasters, think again. They are doorways to your child’s creative side.

1 comment:

Diane Simmler said...

We are a techy family! Most have both a laptop and a desktop...all but me with no laptop. We don't buy all these things. The men, (I've called them my Four Wise Men) fix other people's computers, or help them set up new ones. They get all the cast offs and make them work or use parts to make others work. They've often been able to provide computers to missionaries and single Mom's that way.

We both have sons names Adam and Erik/Eric. My Adam plays guitar. My 13 year old daughter is also a true fan of Jane Austen.

We'll be married 25 years on Tuesday.