And from the “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail” (Abraham Maslow) file comes this little story.

This little program saved my wife and I a lot of of grief and emotional trauma while on vacation. Read on.

I am a PopSci reader and linked to DCoT via the mag. My family, which includes two VERY energetic boys, five and three, went to Disneyland for a little get-a-way. Before we went I told my wife about the ‘I’m Lost’ program that one can install on a jump drive.

We decided to buy three 32Mb drives, which are a dime a dozen nowadays, one for each boy and one for us with the same program and ’secret phrase’ on it. We also included our cellphone numbers. Two lanyards with dangling USB drives that had a ‘I’m Lost’ label adhered to them and tucked into their shirts later, we had two boys that if got lost would be found and be reunited with us quickly.

We told the boys to cry for mom or dad if they wander off or got lost and then give the USB drive to the person that found them.

Our three year old did just what we thought he would do – Disappeared. Within 13 minutes of being ‘lost’ though, my cellphone rang. My three year old whom we thought didn’t understand what we told him about the funny thing around his neck actually did what we told him. The account from our boys ‘finder’ was humorous and panned out like this: My little redheaded boy was SCREAMING for his mom. The ‘finder’ came to help him, the boy showed the ‘finder’ the labelled USB drive, the ‘finder’ then brought him to security, security plugged the USB drive in to his computer, saw the message and called me on my cellphone. When we went to retrieve our boy the security guard asked for our USB drive with the secret phrase on it. The USB drives performed just as set up to. It had my cellphone number, my boys’ first name (first name only!) to calm him down and his favorite treat.

To say the least, D-land security was very impressed and the ‘finder’ equally impressed and my redhead boy was wearing M&M’s on his lips and chin.

There it is. Not only can you retrieve lost USB drives with this you can also find lost kids. Thank you!

Daily Cup of Tech
Judging by the excitement around the interweb I might be one of the few people who considers this to be a slightly over the top method of keeping track of the kids.

At the root of this story is the huge excitement about what technology can do. And there is a lot of new technology out there and new ways of doing old things. The problem is that when the new way of doing the old thing turns into an exercise of technology (instead of getting it done) it can become ridiculous.

It’s easy to fall into this trap in the classroom. With the overwhelming number of glossy, shiny new tools on the web it’s easy to get caught up in the cool factor and forget the thinking factor. The challenge is to take a step back and think about the nail.