Slashdot Mirror
When Should Children Be Introduced to Computers?
cjsteele asks: "When should kids be introduced to computers and the Internet? I'm torn between the prospect of giving my children a technological edge versus giving them an appreciation for more traditional ways of learning and researching (and entertainment, etc.) Though the question is open for rampant conjecture, what does Slashdot think? Early and often or slow and controlled?" Slightly tangential to an issue that was covered earlier this week, aside from the average video game, what is the ideal age for kids to begin seriously learning about computers.
"All of this comes as the result of my kids (3 & 2 years old) getting a Fisher-Price InteracTV for Christmas. This is the first step towards 'e-learning', and after watching my kids adapt to how the system works, I began to wonder in what ways this method of learning shapes later cognitive development. The big concern I have here is that the KIDS had to do the adapting, not the technology -- that means the way THEY think is being affected, which gets me a bit queezy. Any thoughts or advice?"
My oldest girl is now 4 1/2 years old. She has been using a computer for about a year now.
s /map/inde x.html
She goes to playhousedisney.com, nickjr.com, pbskids.org and a few others. These web sites are very educational as well as entertaining. She knows how to use bookmarks. She's sent me some email postcards from the these sites. (we have a list of family emails taped onto the monitor.)
She groks the whole WIMP interface. She plays Pototo Guy and Tux Paint.
We have a number of age-appropriate educational software titles that we have to boot into Windows for her to use.
Now that our family computer primarily runs Linux, I see that children's educational software is a giant hole in the Linux offerings. Even the basic stuff you buy in the discount bins at Office Depot is many times better than any of the open source "educational" software packages. I wouldn't mind so much if I could get *any* of the commercial Win packages to run under WINE, but none have worked so far. (I've only tried a few). The lack of a shockwave/director player/plugin for Linux really hurts as well.
She plays this game a lot lately:
http://www.freeworldgroup.com/onlinegame
And now she recognizes most of the states.
On the hardware side, I've taken the computer apart a couple of times (when upgrading hardware) and she was right there with me, looking inside at the guts of the system. I pointed out the ram, processor, hard drive, etc. She enjoyed that.
And it's not as if she spends an inordinate of time on the computer. She still plays with dolls. She still plays in the dirt in the back yard. Our refrigerator is still covered in crayon drawings.
<proud daddy>
I firmly believe this exposure, and a child's natural curiosity, has gone a long way toward helping her read at a 2nd grade level at 4 1/2 years old. She got several Captain Underpants and Magic Treehouse books for Christmas, and she's already read those to herself!
</proud daddy>
Kids take to computers like a fish takes to water. My second child is just now 7 months. One of her toys is an old keyboard with the cord removed. I don't see a "minimum' age at all.
Software Wars
Computer cases have this flame retardant in them that causes autism in younger children (Slashdot had a story about this). You shouldn't even allow children in the same room with a computer until they're old enough to be unaffected.
My instincts disagree with yours, so whose should be trusted?
all signs indicate that young children require real human interaction to grow into healthy, well adjusted human beings
of course
and should be kept away from electronic media.
Whoah there, cowboy. That's pretty extreme. Got any documentation for this?
Children as young as 2 or 3 shouldn't be spending ANY time in front of a screen.
Well, my instinct is that kids of any age at all shouldn't be spending more than, say, 1-2 hours/week in front of a TV. My instinct is also that that using a computer is fine, because it's not so passive. But maybe that's where my instincts disagree with yours. What makes me question other parents' choices is not when they let their 3-year-old try a computer game, it's when they let their 8-year-old watch 40 hours of TV a week, in his own room.
When my own kids were 3-4, they liked computer games, but they needed a lot of help from me, and the total amount of time they wanted to spend wasn't very much. It wasn't a "plug-in drug," because I was there with them. And they integrated it into their whole world of imagination, too, e.g., there was a parrot called "Pongalo Pete" in the Fischer-Price Pirates game, so my daughter decided that was the name of her rubber ducky.
I really liked some of the kids' games too -- Freddi Fish, Spy Fox, Pajama Sam...very cool! It's too bad there's nothing like that that runs on Linux. Now we're maintaining an old iMac for the sole purpose of running our collection of kids' games (most of which don't run on MacOS X, either).
Find free books.
You laugh. A friend of mine had his son banging on the keyboard at roughly 6 months, and understanding the connection between mouse movements and cursor movement by about 18 months. Kid is a serious UT2004 opponent at the ripe old age of 5, starts the game and connects to a good server on his own.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer