Sharing work
I was working on a word list app for my kids.
It strikes me that I'm doing what my parents did when they wrote out some words on about 6 pieces of cardboard. It's taking me longer, but the results are generalisable, and shareable.
My first memory of reading is of some flash cards my parents had made. They were quite big, made of thick corrogated cardboard, but white, not brown. On each my parents had written a word in brown marker. There were probably six or so, but I only remember "teddy bear". I think I always got this one right, because it was the biggest. Maybe it having two words helped, but I don't remember knowing about spaces.
Cut to this weekend. I'm making flash cards for my daughter, who is learning to read. I'm not very good with scissors and pens, but I can program, so I'm writing a web page with some javascript to populate it. The words can go into categories, and can have associated images and audio files. The set can be expanded or changed relatively easily. It's taken a lot longer for me to make this that it would have taken my parents to make their set. But, anyone who wants it can grab a copy of what I've done and customise it themselves. So rather than making some flashcards, I've made a way for anyone to make (and share) flashcards. And it's available to any one of the billion people with internet access.
This change in reach is a benefit of the Internet. Another benefit of the internet is that I didn't even need to do this, no doubt somebody somewhere has already done it better. But I like programming, like my daughter likes scissors, and markers, and glue.
Tags: internet
