Watch below video (Arabic)

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PUBG and Fortnite 101 – The Basics:

PubG PlayerUnkown’s Battlegrounds is a (2017) game inspired by the popular Japanese Film (2000) “Battle Royal“, where survivors fight to death till last-man-standing. Fortnite was released after PUBG by Epic Games, it relatively has the same overall concept but with different gameplay, with a common hero feature, the “Battle Royal” concept.

In short, players start the game by jumping out of a plane and landing on a terrain to fight up to 100 players and survive the battle. The terrain changes, it shrinks, it shifts and it gets harder to maneuver as the game progresses.

Both games have around 30 million active players daily and a growing community of around 200 million players. Fortnite made USD 3 billion in profits in 2018.

These games are paid on some platforms and free on others, but what is surely costly is the in-game accessories and battle-passes that you will need to purchase in order to have a successful gameplay.

What Can Parents Do?

These Games Contain Extreme Violence:

If your kids are too young for these games (13 years or less), then there are other alternatives like Splatoon 2, Minecraft, Plants vs Zombies …

These Games Are Fictional:

You have people jumping out of airplanes, rooftops, getting shot etc, all without getting hurt. You need to explain to your kids that if this happens in real life you will get hurt badly and may lead to death.

Play Only With Friends You Know:

The most dangerous part of these online games is the fact that these players chat to one another, so imagine your 13-year-old chatting with a 28-year-old pervert that you don’t know who is living in a different country.
Make sure the friends they play with are real friends, ones that you know and approve.

Keep The Game Console in the Living Room:

It is better if you keep your console in the living room or any other open space in the house. This way you keep an eye on what is happening.

Keep The Audio Loud:

The main feature of these games is the fact that players chat to one another, try to avoid headphones and have your kid play the audio from TV/Computer speaker. This way you will hear the conversation and make sure nothing out of the ordinary is taking place. Just beware that there will be plenty of shouting in the process, this is normal.

Screen-Time Addiction:

What makes anything dangerous is when we get addicted to it, and screentime is actually the most dangerous element here. Limiting screen time to kids can surely help. When talking about screen time, it’s not just about the time playing the game, it is also about the time they spend on youtube watching pro-gamers play the game.

Overall:

Kids are vulnerable and are easily affected by anything and everything around them, it is our duty as parents to stay aware of what is happening with them, keep talking to your kids, try to understand their issues, worries, and try to support them as much as you can. Maybe with the younger kids, this is easily done, but it surely gets harder with the older teenagers.

We have no other way as parents than to keep the communication alive with our kids. It is probably the best protection we can give them.

Thank you Samar Maalouf for raising the topic, had the pleasure discussing it on your morning radio show, Here’s the audio (arabic) interview:

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Unfortunately, in Lebanon and across several surrounding countries, violent behavior against children is still tolerated and somehow still considered as part the cultural values and norms in the upbringing of children.

Every one of us has a childhood story to tell that includes some form of violence. We usually recall these stories in a funny way over family dinners or with friends.

But, not everyone has the luxury to recall these memories in a positive way. There is a good portion of the society that has been scarred for life by a supposedly loved one. If you look around you, I’m sure you know or you will find many people with heartbreaking and scary stories of extreme violence and abuse from parents against children.

We all want what is best for our kids, and we are all challenged by the everyday life obstacles and worries. But, violence should not be a tool in order to force our children to better perform or behave. Remember our behavior will stay with them forever and might even transition in the future to their kids.

We are responsible for bringing these children into this world, we owe them love, guidance, support and defenitely not violence.

Follow UNICEF’s pages on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter

#ENDViolence

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However, there are certain unique things that you experience with your little girl, and only dads with girls can understand and relate to:

1- Pink, Pink, Pink

A computer displays about 16.8 million colors; a little girl sees only one, PINK. For the first seven years of her childhood, everything around you is pink. Pink here, pink there, pink everywhere. Her room, furniture, dolls, bags, dresses, all pink. You will realize that there are more shades of pink that you can ever imagine.

2- Unicorns Are Real

Yes, unicorns are real, don’t you dare argue against that. They are these gorgeous white flying horses with rainbow-colored horns. Unicorns possess amazing magical powers, but no one really knows what they can do, just accept it and move on.

3- Boys Are The Enemy

As of the age of 9, you will start hating all the boys in her class equally. As a dad, you will start practicing the 101 ways to show off your alpha male genes in every event, birthday, and outing.

4- Girls Have Their Lingo

You need a specialized linguist to decipher the conversation of your little girl with her girlfriends. They talk in a weird pitch, extremely fast, use abbreviations to every word, and jump from one random topic to another every 15 seconds.

5- Mom is Always Right

No matter what you do, she will always side with her mom. You could spend the whole weekend with her doing all the things she loves, but whenever there is a moment of truth, Mom is always right!

6- She Will Put Makeup On Your Face

We’ve all been victims of makeup testing. As a girl, she needed a model to practice her makeup skills on and what better model to have other than her bearded dad.

7- Dads Can’t Dance

God knows you try to be a good dance partner, but your beer belly gets in the way. Don’t worry she will always tell you that you were great and you don’t need a diet.

8- Fashionista Dad

She insists on having your expert opinion in fashion but always picks the other option. Dads always tend to choose the most conservative outfit. Not cool.

9- Bye Bye Pink Floyd, Welcome Ariana Grande

Say goodbye to your car playlist, the one that you spent a full weekend to put together. In their lingo, its called “old” and “boring” music. Your only way out of the walk of shame is to sing along Ariana Grande’s greatest hits.

10- You’re The King of The World

You haven’t experienced true love in your life until you feel your little girl’s love for you. Every look, hug, kiss or word she says to you is an out of this world experience. If you’re feeling down, sick, tired or your battery is dead, don’t worry all will disappear with a hug. In under 10 seconds, she will fill you up with enough positive energy to move a mountain.

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Whatever you do, it is always about providing your children with the best education in order to prepare them for the future.

Today, education is not a luxury, it is a basic human right. No child is supposed to grow up without having the opportunity to go to school. Of course, not every parent can afford to send their kids to private schools. But a lot of the public schools are as good as their private counterparts, in many cases, the instructors and the academic programs are the same. It is also important to note that Lebanese kids under the age of 15 are admited to public schools for free.

Now, more than ever, Lebanese families are facing financial difficulties leaving many of them with the unfortunate decision to drop their kids out of school. Other kids are also forced to leave school after the unfortunate loss of a parent and their inability to pay their tuitions.

On a parallel note, we should not of the refugee kids, these abandoned little children that we see on TV, we come across them at every intersection, they are sitting at the edge of the road waiting for the red light to approach you and ask for money. These kids should not be on the street, we cannot get used to seeing them begging for money. They need to be in school, they need to have a decent education, they need to have a better tomorrow.

Unicef and the Ministry of Education launched a social campaign called #AbtalAlMadrasa in order to raise awareness about the importance of education. We all agree and approve about the importance of education for all, it’s time to take action and do something to help out.
check the video below:

Follow the Unicef Lebanon accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) and help build a better future for these kids.

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The app is easy to use, just set up your phone in front of your baby and open the app. It will automatically take a series of pictures when your baby smiles, all you need to do is to review the photos taken and select the ones you like.

Dimples is being developed only on iOS for the moment, it still has a few days left to complete its funding on Kickstarter, so if you like the app go ahead and back it up so that they make it happen.

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Whether you gave your kids a phone to check on them when they go out with friends, call you after school activity, keep in touch when they go to summer camp, or you have simply fallen victim to peer pressure and got them a mobile phone because everybody in school has one.

Whatever the reasons are for giving your young ones a mobile phone, here are some tips to keep them as safe as possible from predators, sex offenders, and pedophiles.

Create A Safe Contact List:

Make sure to add close family members, school friends, and people that they are allowed to communicate with to their contact list. Tell your kids to exchange phone numbers in school and save each other’s numbers.

Do not Answer Unknown Numbers:

Tell your children not to accept calls from numbers that are unknown or not on their contact list. There are sick people out there who call kids hoping to open a conversation with them.

Confirm New Numbers With Voice Calls:

If your children receive a chat request via SMS, iMessage or WhatsApp from a new number claiming to be a friend from school or even someone they might know from summer camp, make sure to verify the number with a voice call.

Tell your kids to inform you whenever they receive a new request so that both of you can call the number and verify in person that it is truly a friend and not an adult impostor.

Do Not Chat With Adults or Older Kids:

Young kids and teenagers are vulnerable and mostly unaware of malicious intends. Talk to your children and educate them about the dangers of communicating with adults or even older kids. A grown-up has no reason whatsoever to chat with a 13-year-old.

Keep Pictures And Profile Photos Private:

Most predators would cross-check a number to make sure a younger person owns it before approaching them. On WhatsApp make sure to set the profile photo in the privacy tab to appear to contacts only. This way only friends in the address book can see the picture and not strangers.

Do Not Share Private Photos and Videos:

This is one of the most sensitive topics to tackle; we are all guilty of taking endless selfies, photos, and videos. But, this is a must-have conversation with your kids, and it is not an easy one.

You need to advise your kids not to share personal or sensitive photos and videos even with their closest friends and relatives. Most important to learn to say no if someone asks them to do so and understand that this is not acceptable.

Do Not Share Personal Information:

Make sure you talk to your kids about the risks of sharing confidential information about themselves, their home, family, and friends. They could be tipping off online predators, burglars and giving out valuable information and passwords.

Social Media Platforms and Online Predators:

Most social media platforms allow 13-year-olds to have personal accounts. If your kids have a social media account, then make sure that their profile and content reflects their age.

Once your kids are online, the risks of online predators become higher. They are now posting publicly and interacting with people outside their approved circle. They have additional platforms to use and most of the time they cannot validate the identity of the people interacting with them.

It is very easy for any predator to create a fake account with a fake picture to pretend to be someone else. Make sure to advise your kids to keep their accounts private and limited to their friends, and most important not to post anything without making sure it is appropriate and will not harm them in any way.

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Code Angel is a small project on KickStarter with big potential. Its financial goals are modest; they have already reached their initial objective. But, this is a project worth backing.

The founders have been teaching high school students to code for more than 20 years, and they have packaged their experience into educational gamified content using affordable technology.

What is Code Angel?

Code Angel comes pre-installed on a Raspberry Pi computer so you can start learning to code straight out of the box.

A digital version of Code Angel is available for those who wish to work on their computer.

Code Angel teaches the principles of computer programming through 12 interactive game projects designed to teach coding with Python. Each project follows the same six key steps to help build an understanding of computer programming and computational thinking.

The code behind each game is explained in a series of short animated video tutorials written by experienced Computing Science teachers.

If the code doesn’t work, then it can be uploaded to the Code Angel website. The support team will highlight any bugs and will explain how to fix them.

Code Angel can also work for adults who want to learn how to code.

You can learn more about Code Angel on their website or facebook page

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Today, you can now relive the slot-car experience with a modern, techie and state-of-the-art interactive gameplay. Anki Overdrive is a classic miniature action-packed car racing game with a futuristic twist.Anki Overdrive

I’ve wanted to try the game for some time now, and I finally managed to get my hands on one during my last trip to Dubai. The Starter Kit is sold at 899AED ($244) while the Supertruck is sold separately at AED349 ($94).

I couldn’t wait to get home to play with my kids and challenge them. We spent the whole weekend racing and trying the different cars and weapons. Let me tell you one thing, Mary-Jo, my 10-year-old, turned out to be one hell of a racer, beating the boys

Overview:

You can battle and race the Supercars on a custom built track of your own. You will need the Anki Overdrive App to control your vehicle; you can also customize your Supercar’s speed, weapons, and defenses through in-game upgrades. Each Supercar is a self-aware robot, driven by powerful artificial intelligence (A.I.).

You can challenge friends in a variety of game modes, or, go head-to-head with AI controlled Commanders. You will unlock new powers and benefits the more you play.

How Anki Overdrive Works:

1- Unbox your Starter Kit and construct your track. The box contains 2 Robotic Supercars (Skull and GroundShock), two riser pieces, six curved track pieces, one four-car charging system, four straight track pieces, one tire cleaner.

2- Download the Anki OVERDRIVE app (for iOS and Android), create a user and select the car that you will be using in the race. Make sure that everyone is connected to the same WIFI network.

3- Charge the Supercars using the power adaptor before the race.

4- You’ll have to play a tutorial round before you can move to challenges and battles.

5- You can play an Open Game or Tournaments to earn stars and ranks. The robotic Supercars come with their unique weapon systems and the technology to intelligently think for themselves on the battlefield.

Skull’s weapon of choice, the Plasma Cannon, fires a single, massive ball of energy ahead of it. If it hits an opponent, it will explode, causing damage to everyone in a large area.

The ElectroPulse causes GroundShock’s core to continuously discharge its energy around it, creating a circle of lightning that destroys the nearest enemy.

The Supertrucks:

Supertrucks are big, powerful, unpredictable and come with a big trick up their sleeve. Rage Mode. The truck is a stand alone item and not included in the Starter Kit, but it is a fantastic angry little thing, it is slow to pick up the pace but once rolling it is unstoppable, I just love racing it.

The Tracks:

With the modules found in the Starter Kit, you can build eight unique battlefields. You can always get creative and expand your track by adding extra modular track pieces such as long straightways, add more twists and turns, intersections, jumps, intersections, and elevations.

Overall:

I am in love with this game; the kids can quickly put it together on their own as it is easy to assemble and pack. I can play and have fun with them as well as playing with my “grown up” friends Najib, are you ready for a challenge?

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The results are hilarious. I want to try this with my kids.

Thanks Oday for sharing

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