“Hello World” is a simple game I often play with my 4 year old son (‘Mr 4’). We fire up Twitter, say ‘hello’ from Fremantle, Western Australia, get a globe or an atlas (old school, I know, but it is wonderfully tactile) and wait to see where people are saying hello to us from.
Within minutes, we get at least ten replies. Some come from around the corner, many from around the world. We look each of the places up, we talk about the person who said hello, what language people speak there, what the weather is like there now, time of the day, what sort of things people eat there and so on.
Yesterday, we got replies from Fremantle, Perth, Northam, Sydney, Hobart (Australia), Elgin (Scotland), Birmingham, Leek, Ringwood, London, Lichfield (England), Johannesburg (South Africa) Grand Rapids, Detroit (United States). The range and number of replies depends only on the time of the day we play “Hello World”.
Mr 4 and I love the game.
Now, I am not some pushy parent who wants their child to do things like memorising countries of the world by heart (Mr 4 might do that anyway, whether I want it or not). But I do want my child to see that there is a big, diverse, exciting world out there waiting to be ‘discovered’ today and any other day.
In the parlance of a classic TV ad:
- Twitter followers: 1378
- Replies to our “hello”: 14
- Worlds: 1
- Sense of wonder about the world: priceless
PS. Dedicated to those who think nurturing connections online with Twitter is a waste of time…