Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
With the affordability of laptops I opted to purchase my child one as opposed to an Xbox or PS2. My thinking was it allowed him not only to play games, but also familiarize himself with the keyboard, internet, word processing program, etc. He quickly became proficient and amazed me how much I actually learned from *him* about computers. I was a bit reluctant at first letting him use the internet; however, we had a discussion on what's acceptable and I have parental control on the internet. I think in today's society you're doing your kid an injustice if you wait until their high school years to introduce them to this technology.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
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
What ever happened to pen and paper? God forbid we actually make kids LEARN the English language, let's just hook them up to spellcheckers ASAP and stop worrying about it.
I don't think ANY child should be given free acess to a spellchecker until he or she can read and write at a college level. It's meant to allievate your work, not do it for you.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Other kids retaliate by stealing the bully's identity and linking him to Islamic radical websites.
Welcome to the new future.
My first thought was, "When their rich uncle gets out of the poor farm." But I've actually been considering a used laptop from RetroBox -- they dispose of corporate assets and have laptops starting under $50 -- though you'll have to get over $100 before you can get anything over 300 MHz and 128 MB.
Of course, all you bargain hunters will now swoop in and grab them... where's that "back" button?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Buy your kid a laptop as soon as possible so they'll get out of the house and download all of their illegal music, movies, and software off of someone else's access point (not to mention all of l33t spl01ts they'll be using).
In the future youth street gangs will stand on the street corners with laptops leeching unprotected wi-fi.
My sister is 12. She can type nearly as fast as I can - and while she does make use of that internet shorthand that I hate so much, I think a laptop would probably be a good thing for her to have. What kind of laptop is a little harder to call. I would probably suggest something limited enough that it would almost work out as an appliance though. Perhaps a linux system designed specifically for school type applications.
A really good idea would be for school boards to develope a little knoppix type system that could be provided to kids as nessecary - on a DVD-RW perhaps, to allow for saving their projects.
I'm only six years out of school, but I swear, kids these days are amazing. At 12, most can type quite quickly. When I was in school, at 15 I was one of three students that could type with any speed.
.
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.
Yes, that's right folks. Because I'm buying their kids a laptop. Me and my closest friends, geographically speaking. Our taxes are buying a bunch of kids that I don't have equipment that will be obsolete real soon which most of them will never know how to truly use. Except as email and chat hardware of course.
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7416
So don't worry about it! Move to Georgia, specifically Cobb County. Sure, we'll force your kids to listen to Creationism being equated to Natural Selection, but they'll be hearing it from an mp3 on their very own iBooks!
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Could you adopt me?
When Should You Buy Your Kid A Laptop?
Tuesday, April 10th 2007 between the hours of 9 AM and 11 AM local time.
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.
Maybe you should pay more attention to the lecture instead of what your fellow students are doing? As for kids not needing to be exposed to the Internet, just when do you think someone should learn about this new fangled Interweb thingy? Or would you like them to disrupt your game playing on your machine to do homework?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I understand you don't want to spoil your kids, so it's the desktop that should do the traveling. Like in the old days, when we had to drag our desktops uphill to school and back home through the blistering cold. Which is nothing compared to my father, who dragged around a PDP-11...
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Two years ago I started attending a computer engineering program at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. I bought a laptop with wlan when I started, but I sold it about a year later. Why? There were computers available in abundance everywhere and I got tired of toting around a 3kg laptop and my regular books in my bag. I could not afford a lighter laptop at the time. But on the other hand a lighter laptop would probably have a screen that was too small for my taste.
I decided to get a new desktop machine at home and kept my home dir in school in sync with a folder at home using unison. That worked great in both the WinXP and Red Hat environment that the school is using.
If you're going to get a kid a laptop, I suggest you go the cheapest and most durable route possible.
Voila: http://wegenermedia.com/ibk300bby.htm
These are clamshell iBooks, which are basically designed for K-12 kids. They are made with that Fischer-Price ABS plastic for a reason: durability. Wegener Media refurbs iBooks. They are a bear to upgrade, so have Wegener stuff the iBook with all the RAM you can (512MB SO-DIMM, bringing the onboard RAM up to 544MB) and a nice fat hard drive. When I got mine upgraded by them, I got a Fujitsu 30GB drive.
These won't run Tiger without something like X Post Facto to convince Tiger to install, so stick with Panther. Current patch level is 10.3.9. MS Office 2003 will not install on an 800x600 resolution, so look for Office v.X Student-Teacher which is very happy running on a Clamshell.
This is not a good gaming lappie under X. ATI Rage Acceleration, which allowed these machines to play games like Unreal Tournament (1999) and Quake III Arena under Mac OS 9.x, was not carried over to X. There was a whole class-action lawsuit over this, and if you have an old-school iBook or a Beige G3 or a Wallstreet PowerBook you can get the cost of X refunded if you turn your disks in. However, in some cases, this inability to do 3D Acceleration might actually be a good thing.
You should be able to get away with a fully loaded Clamshell iBook for about $500. Yeah, you can also get a new Dell Inspiron lappie for a little more. But that Dell will be toast after a few weeks of being toted around in a kid's backpack. They are flimsy even for adults. Give one to a kid and it's dead meat.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
My dad gave me his old computer when I was around 12. That summer I learned about bbs's and discovered commander keen. Best experience of my life. I learned all about DOS comands and .bat files. A laprop might be better for a college student but I say get the kid weened on to computers by giving him an old one when s/he is around 12.
I was lucky to have access to computers from a relatively early age (5ish) because my dad worked for a University that gave him a Mac SE when he became a professor. Since then we had a series of Macs and then PCs in the house over the years (Mac SE -> Powerbook 160 -> Mac LC3 -> HP Pavillion 200MHz -> eMachine 500MHz) until I went off to college, at which point I built my own machine.
The way it always worked was it was the FAMILY computer, not mine (though I was the only one really using it). This meant it had to be in an accessable room (i.e. not my bedroom) and I couldn't lock away any files on it or bar anyone else from any part of the PC for any reason. I also had to turn over the computer whenever anyone had a real need for it. This was basically a zero-privacy deal where what I was doing on the computer could be checked at a moment's notice.
I was caught surfing porn once. I was told that if I was caught again, it would be the end of computer and net access for a LONG time to come. The rule basically was if they caught me doing something bad, that was my first and only warning. The PC was not mine, the connection was not mine, I had to share it and be open to inspection whenever they felt like it.
I was still able to strip the thing down, rebuild it and learn all the ins and outs of it. But I knew I there were risks and concequences to doing "bad" stuff. My parents were able to keep an eye on my activities without keeping me from learning. THey were also aware of all the violent video games I played, they knew because they had to take me out to buy it, and they'd come up and watch me play every now and then.
It was the correct balance (IMO) of parental responsibility and child freedom. I don't think it's a good idea to give a young kid their own laptop and send them off to their rooms. It's too easy for them to get lost in the bad stuff, and too hard for the average parent to monitor. If I someday have kids, there will be a family PC setup in the same room as my equipment. The kids will have largely free reign over it, but it won't be hidden from sight, they'll know what is and isn't allowed and the consequences will be clearly outlined.
Also, I know I took much better care of my computer equipment once I had to earn the money to buy and maintain it. When it was given to me by my parents, I just sort of took it for granted.
having a laptop in class never really helped me. sure, i could type up notes, but i don't take many to begin with anyhow. i found that in the majority of my classes, i ended up using pen and paper anyway, as a math/cs major. diagrams, flow charts and little visiual queues greatly out numbered raw code that was generated in my classes.
now, the one technological advance that would benefit EVERY STUDENT, 100%, no matter their computer literacy, typing speed, course load or distraction threshold, is a simple, affordable ebook reader. make the viewable screen 8x10 or 11, use e-paper so it can run for months on a set of watch batteries and pad the living shit out of it so it'll be more durable. distribute recquired school texts as PDF on CF cards and you've just solved one of the biggest problems in american schools: students who have to lug 50lbs of text with them throughout the day because they don't have time between periods to stop off at dormrooms/lockers for the next round.
this is where the inovation should be. add a simple input interface and you could have information cross referenced between documents and suppliments. figure out how to make ultra-low energy draw wifi cards and you could link them to a national database for easy inquiries on specific topics. hell, you could have two models, the Standard that displayed and cross-referenced the info on the CF card, and the deluxe that allowed the user to "take notes" and link it to a specific page of a text (to accommodate those of us who like to write in the margins). if you had one of these designed like a portfolio with one screen on either side of the fold you could make one side the "book" side and the other the "note" side..
we're really missing the boat on this one, folks. students in general don't need full fledged laptops. all they need is an easy and convenient way to read and reference text.
in this scenario, they students who would truly benefit from laptops could still have one. but i'm willing to bet that the percentage of stuents nowadays who could really use a laptop to broaden their education to be around 5-7%, no greater than 15%. the rest would either use it in the fashion i describe for the e-book or use it to dick around in class while the teacher isn't looking..
Rise up in the cafeteria and STAB them with your plastic forks!