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When Should You Buy Your Kid A Laptop?
GuitarNeophyte writes "Marketwatch News reports that some people say that we should be buying our kids laptop computers well before they get into the higher education realm. Even as early as middle school. From the article: 'These days, it's almost unquestioned that college-bound students will tote laptops back to school. For parents of high school and middle school kids, the decision to invest in a laptop is far from given.'"
When your kid is responsible enough to have a laptop and look after it.
Until then; you get an abicus, son.
You buy a kid a laptop when they are so cheap that you can afford to buy a new one every month. You know they're going to get broken, stolen, lost etc.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
Until you trust your kids to browse the internet and use their computer responsibly, give them a desktop and orient its monitor so that it can be seen by you and your spouse when you casually walk by. (BTW this means do *not* let them have a computer in their bedroom!)
Giving them a laptop to take to their friends' houses is just inviting them to access all sorts of nasty stuff.
The best possible choice? Set up your offspring's computer(s) in your own home office. What you loose in distraction, you'll gain in piece of mind and time spent with them.
a laptop is one tool for education and can be used as part of a kid's schooling, but buying one just for the sake of buying one and giving it to a kid and expecting them to become smart is just silly.
what question should be asked is "when is a good time to start using a laptop in the context of my kids wider education" and I think that comes way after being able to write and read and do math and critically think what they read and not before
Sorry,
My children will not have their own laptop until they get to about 10th grade.
Why? They need the basics, read, writing, and math. Having a computer just makes them more dependant on the spell checker, the calculator, etc.
Maybe it's just an unspoken myth, but computers don't make you smarter. Having access to loads of information doesn't make you smarter.
Good study habits, excellent reading skills, solid math and logic will get them to where ever they want to go.
Disclaimer. I use a computer all day as a system admininistrator/programmer. I enjoy using computers, but they don't make me smarter.
This space available for rent.
I'm sure your kid would've amazed you with a desktop as well...I figure laptops are not necessary for children to be exposed to the internet & computing.
& as far as laptops for college? Unnecessary. I hated it when people were play solitaire in front of me while the prof was attempting to teach.
Why a laptop, though? As cheap as laptops are, desktops are cheaper and more upgradeable. You can buy your kid a desktop computer during the middle school years, and upgrade it occassionally until the kid gets to high school or college and needs (or wants) a laptop or a faster gaming machine.
:)
I had a laptop for a bit in high school, purchased used with my own money. It was fun, no doubt, but it wasn't something I really made full use of until college & work. That's when the portability of a laptop really kicked in as a necessity for me. Do students really need that kind of portability?
At any rate, I do agree with the notion of having a computer instead of an xbox or PS2 - at least, that's worked for me. Of course, a lot of friends had gaming consoles so I could just mooch off of them
My first laptop I got for my senior year of high school. I didn't have parents who just went out and bought me expensive computer equipment, of course, and that's why I'm kind of laughing at this article.
The only way for the kid to really grasp the value of his new laptop is if he works his ass off all summer to earn the money to buy it himself.
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
The only way for the kid to really grasp the value of his new laptop is if he works his ass off all summer to earn the money to buy it himself.
Well, normally I would agree but in the case of my laptop, which was purchased 12/1996 for the sole purpose of me bringing it to college (tight spaces for desktops) 8/1997, I have to disagree.
My laptop was about $3600 at the time. I fully understood the true value of the device and the sacrifice my parents made to make it a reality for me...
My proof? It remains in full working order to this day on my coffee table in my living room -- relegated to web browsing and SSH and plugged into the wall for power (the battery started keeping a charge for less than two minutes in 2002).
Just because I didn't "work my ass off all summer" for it doesn't mean I wasn't able to appreciate it and care for it properly.
I find laptops absolutely essential for college. The problem with desktops at school is that you end up working where you sleep. I find it incredibly useful to have one place to work, one place to sleep, and the rest of town to enjoy myself. One coffee shop I frequent (I mean 6 times a week, for several hours at a time), is filled with fellow students just working on their laptops or books & papers. I really can't work nearly as efficiently when my computer's in the same place I relax or sleep -- I've tried!
And for every ten folks that has a laptop, maybe one brings them to class. The ones that do it for solitaire would be unlikely to pay attention in class even if there was no laptop. OTOH, I've got friends that swear to using tablet PCs as notetaking devices.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
Second quote that stuck out for me:
Wow. I have an army of teachers that prayed I kept my inside/outside classroom behavior to a minimum (let's say the principal and I got to know each other really well). I am a staunch supporter of separation of duties - much like in the work place. I work from 8-5, and anything beyond that is my time. I am talking boundaries here people!I don't see what is wrong with a computer lab just being a computer lab, and a classroom being a classroom. If things become too blurred with computer technology then we are going to loose basics in the classroom: spelling, basic math by hand, structured thought, and a respect for authority and setting.
Laptops aren't necessary (but are still helpful, since labs can be crowded at times) in college unless you're a computer science major. My laptop was invaluable during a system administration course that I recently took. It's also been very helpful throughout my four years, as it gives me the ability to ssh into the school's server and work on my programs wherever I happen to be.
Laptops are useful, but, as with everything in college, it's up to the student to use them responsibly. If you're the type that will automatically fire up solitaire when the laptop is on, you shouldn't have one or should keep it off during class.
i am amazed at the number of computer illiterate 18-22 year olds on campus. i would guess at half of that population, easy.
always mosh clockwise
I tried using a laptop to take notes at one point. It just doesn't work. A notepad and paper are FAR superior to a laptop for taking notes. The computer is just a distraction. That's it.
Actually, I went through several computer "aids" for taking notes. The first was an iPaq. You just can't enter information fast enough (think, scrolling, botched text recoginition, poor tactile feedback as a "pen") to effectively take notes compared with a notepad. The largest problem, though, was that most classes involved diagrams or notations that you simply can't do on an iPaq as fast as you can on a notepad. There's just not enough room.
So I got a keyboard attachment, since I can touch-type at something like 50WPM or something. (I haven't bothered measuring, it's a wild guess.) This helped with the text parts of notes, but it utterly failed for every class except history. The only reason it worked for my history class was because history involved taking down a LOT of text notes. (And the only diagrams in that class were timelines, which you can "fake" by just writing "Year: Event" on each line.)
I also tried using a full-fledged laptop in a CS course. It's also completely ineffective due to the "diagram" issue. CS courses aren't all code - most of them involve decision trees or logical tables or some other graphical representation of a concept. (Try drawing a finite state machine using only text. It just doesn't get the message across as effectively as pen and paper.)
The laptop was useful on campus - but not in class. In class, it was only a distraction. It was insanely useful between classes where you might get an hour off and sit down somewhere and do some homework without wandering back to the dorm.
Don't get a laptop with the theory it's going to help you in class. It won't. That doesn't mean it can't help you in college at all, but if you try and use it during class, it'll just wind up being a distraction.
Except in history class. :)
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
I have both a desktop and a laptop. Take either away, and my lifestyle wouldn't work out. I take my laptop to class and take notes (copious notes - 2,000 lines or more of plain text for a semester in one class) on it. I can't read my own writing, and I can type extremely fast, so it works out really well for me. Additionally, I go to the law library and study there most of the time, taking more notes on my laptop. Then I upload them to my desktop (actually, I use Unison to synchronize both machines to a server located elsewhere - nerdiest law student, EVAR) and compile them into study outlines from there.
Try doing any of that with pen and paper, even if you can write fast enough to keep up with the professor and still read your own writing.
As to the actual point of this article - buying laptops for kids in high school or earlier - I am not a fan of the idea, for a lot of reasons. But the one that I'm going to mention right now is this: High schoolers are, on average, less mature than college kids are, and tend to lose and break anything that's remotely portable. It's bad enough that they're out crashing the family car, don't send them out with a $2,000 laptop to bust up, too. Your kids can use your "family PC." Kick them off if you need it. If they want their own computer, they should buy one. It's a really good time to learn priorities and responsibility, and you shouldn't spend money to deprive them of the opportunity.