Hello Barbie: Why I'm saying No!

Part of the reason I do not support CCS and avoid CCS aligned materials especially CCS aligned websites is because of the data mining. So you can imagine my horror when I learned about "Hello Barbie".

Just like a real friend, Hello Barbie doll listens and adapts to the user's likes and dislikes. 

What does this mean? It sounds harmless enough. However it's not just harmless. Mattel is using Hello Barbie to datamine your children or anyone else using the doll. The conversations you have with the doll are recorded and stored on Mattel's servers. The TOS states:

We may also use, store, process, convert, transcribe, analyze or review Recordings (along with text and transcriptions derived from the Recordings) in order to provide, maintain, analyze and improve the functioning of the Services, to develop, test or improve speech recognition technology and artificial intelligence algorithms, or for other research and development and data analysis purposes. We do not use Recordings or their content, including any personal information that may be captured therein, to contact children or to advertise to them.

All of that basically means the recordings we collect will be used to help us with marketing and whatever else we feel we need to use it for we just won't use the doll, Hello Barbie, to directly market to your child. Meaning the doll will never say to your child or anyone else using the doll to buy this or that, but you better believe that Mattel is using the info for their gain and whatever else that falls under "other research".

So you might not buy one, but your neighbor might have so be aware of what your child is playing with even at Jane's house.  This Hello Barbie doll looks like a normal Barbie -- you might not even realize they are using a datamining toy.

I know many will say datamining is everywhere you can't avoid it. It's on the computers, google, facebook, smartphones, etc. While true this I believe is in a whole new realm and has pushed the envelope even more.

And for the record I don't have a beef with Barbie or any other fashion type doll in general. I don't care for the Bratz or Monster High dolls -- mainly because I don't care for the make-up and look of them -- but Barbie and other fashion dolls are fine with me. -- I just don't like this Hello Barbie!

People need to start fighting back on the datamining and say NO more!

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission if you click a link and purchase something. See our full disclosure policy for more details.

Affordable Homeschooling

Affordable Homeshooling and keeping it CCS-FREE

One thing homeschoolers love are FREE resources. However, with CCS (Common Core Standards) free might not be the best thing.  I haven't talked much about CCS, or at least not here on my blog, but I am a strong Anti-CCS supporter.  I believe CCS is meant to "dumb down America". I believe the public school system is broken and that no child should be in the system.

I believe that homeschoolers should fight to keep homeschool curriculum CCS-FREE and do their best to use CCS-FREE resources.

Thankfully we have resources like The Homeschool Resource Roadmap to help guide us and inform us of the CCS status of nearly 2,800 curriculum and resources options. I should disclose at this time that I have no financial gain from Homeschool Resource Roadmap, but I am an admin of  Christian Homeschool Oasis (CHO) , the facebook group, that was born in conjunction with Homeschool Resource Roadmap.

I see homeschoolers, in general, recommend things like Starfall, Khan, Spelling City, and others. These things are recommended because they are free, but they, in my opinion, are not the best options because of their CCS connections.

There are other resources that are CCS-FREE and good for the pocket book too. It just requires maybe looking a little bit deeper on the net, being okay with not being an exact copy of the CCS connected resource and sometimes being a little bit more involved and a little bit more planning on your part.

On today's periscope I talked about some of these things and as promise here are the links I mentioned:

What is CCS?

See Truth In American Education for more information.
Also this Youtube Video by NoTo CommonCore is helpful in answering the question: What is CCS?

Is the Curriculum/Site/Resource I want connected to CCS?

As I mention above The Homeschool Resource Roadmap is a good resource to find out if the curriculum/resource you are looking at has CCS connections. It is a database that is being added to and updated regularly that list the CCS status of nearly 2,800 items. Out of the the nearly 2,800 items listed about 60% of it is CCS-FREE (known as Independent on the Roadmap).
The Roadmap list things based on 4 categories

• Independent

• Correlated

• Coincidentally Connected

• Explicitly Aligned

Check out the roadmap. Nearly the whole site is free to access. The subject area where it takes the same info from the Common Core pages but list the resources based on subjects does require a ONE time fee.  Currently that fee is $4.99.  The Homeschool Resource Roadmap owner is thinking of raising the subscription in the next few months, but if you buy now you don't have to worry about that. Your subscription is a one time fee so if you you buy now at the $4.99 price you don't have to worry about the price going up -- seeing you already have access. 

Why have a subscription to the subject area if I can access the common core page for free? Well the simple answer is the the common core page requires you to know the name of the product you are looking for.  With the subject area you don't need to know the name of the product you just have to know the subject you want.. If I'm looking for math options then I would look under the math section.

Okay so I have decided I want to keep my homeschool curriculum CCS-FREE now what? 

Now you use the Roadmap to find CCS-FREE materials, but I will give you some pointers to start with. 

Instead of Starfall maybe Mighty Book or Kiz Phonics or Sight and Sound Reading or Progressive Phonics. Instead of Spelling City/Vocab maybe Spelling Help Online or AAA Spell. Instead of Khan (math) maybe XtraMath or AAA Math or CIMT.

Missed my live periscope? "Katch" the replay on katch.me or watch the embedded video below.




Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission if you click a link and purchase something.

Common Core Standards

Being a homeschooler one might think that CCS does not matter or it will not effect me. However this is far from the truth. We are finding that many of the popular homeschool curriculum choices are aligning with CCS. For a list please see The Educational Freedom Coalition.

What is Common Core (State) Standards? For more information on what the this is please see Michelle Malkin's Site.