Slashdot Mirror
Exposing Children to Technology?
LabelThis asks: "While I'm not a huge fan of immersing children in technology, there is a certain point at which you must expose them to the tools that will help them be successful in the world. Looking back, I distinctly remember my parents making every effort to provide a computer for me and my sibling, early on (they bought an Atari 400 for us when I was 5). Either by accident or on purpose, that single decision (and the continued follow up of purchasing newer computers as needed) shaped my future and the future of my siblings. I now have a daughter, and my wife and I have a number of years to before we worry about equipping her with technology (right now spending time with her and helping her be a happy well adjusted toddler are our primary concerns). In the spirit of my parents choice, what type of tools should parents be equipping their children with, today?"
with or without tech, that away they wont be screwed if they dont have their favorite tech, but make sure they are plenty exposed to tech so they arent screwed in the job market later in life...
Preferably spongy, easily-swallowed objects
Or alternatively, sharp, pointy sticks
Whatever you do, don't coddle them into being overgrown kids at age 25.
A family computer, "duh."
Don't show them a calculator until they master the slide rule. A calculator can't tell you when you are a factor of magnitude or two off. A slide rule forces you to think about it.
in my opinion, definately not the internet. it's not long before they/their friends start getting into AIM and things like that. before you know it, when they're still really small, they'll probably end up loading the computer with spyware and they might even have a myspace or something...teach em how to use a computer, but don't give em the internet until they're older and seem somewhat more responsible.
I believe that "My First" toys are always a good choice, provided the parent spends time with the child to help them understand what is going on. If the child is old enough, help them to find books on subjects like computers, telephones, and cars: the basic tools that help us get things done in today's society. But most importantly, please teach them to be respectful of others' property and privacy, and to be responsible citizens using the technology to help others.
Homestarrunner.net -- It's Dot Com!
and "go play in the traffic" were my childhood memories.
My parents gave me plastic bags when I was very young. I expecially liked the full-body dry cleaning ones. For my 4th birthday they game me an old refrigerator with a locking door. I loved it.
Trolling is a art,
If you mean "computers" say so. "Technology" is not a synonym for "computers". Hint: cooking is technology.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
A Linux workstation. When they have experience on there what else will they need? People don't need PDAs, cameras, laptops, iPods, or any other "gadget" until they get old and need to do something during their midlife crisis. Until then a regular computer can keep me at 23 busy for hours and hours...if it can't keep a child entertained for a while then it's just not worth it (XBox, PS2/3, GameCube...all boring compared to a regular computer).
As the child gets older, and shows an aptitude for Technology, I would suggest some simple electronics project kits that are suitable for their age, and appeal to their interests.
There are a number of kit manufactures, such as Ramsey Electronics and Velleman which make kits of all types and skill levels. Some of my fondest memories are of having my Dad help me build something. As I got older, I spent my allowance on kits.
Today, I work in a radio station as a Broadcast Engineer. Computers and IT are important, naturally, but if a child shows interest in what's "under the hood", they will have an advantage over their peers who only see the computer as a "box" that runs programs.
Willie...
By the time she's 2, just make sure she's hooked on Quake4 and Half Life2 and you'll be good.
We triplets(!) that are 5 years old, and we have elected not to try to push them into technology just yet. I figure that they will become interested in it just by watching my wife and I and their 12 year old brother playing with our own tech toys. My boy (the triplets are 2 girls, 1 boy) has recently started showing an interest in games, so I have showed him the basics of using the mouse and keyboard and turned him loose on some of the educational games that are available for Linux. The games in the kdeedu package are some of his favorites, and are very age appropriate.
\/\/oobie
to the term "script kiddie!"
"Now your very own child can brag to his or her kindergarten classmates
because of the Micro$oft Playskool wannabe-a-hacker Vista Edition brought to
you by Spishak!"
I first witnessed computer programming when I was 6 - A half brother coded a drawing program for me while I watched. 2 years later, I started taking my old 321 Contacts (GREAT magazine) and programming the Qbasic programs and games, and then modifying them.
It just went up from there. If you can find a good magazine or something for kids that introduces them to programming, DO IT!
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
thanks for inventing the isight steve jobs
what type of tools should parents be equipping their children with, today?
Pencils, pens, paper. Printed books--good, old, classic books. They'll learn computers and all that--you can hardly do anything these days without using one. What they need are the basic skills they won't get through computers, and that is accomplished through reading good ol' books and writing.
Give them their own flying chair!
Perhaps a chainsaw and a nice table saw with sharp blades is great for kids to learn how to use tools
http://saveie6.com/
Bionic implants, if at all possible.
Google: "All your data are belong to us."
kids need more guns!
thats my responce to anyone who asks slashdot how to raise their kids.. jeez man.. give her what she wants and educate her at the same time.. bam.. provide that along with food and air and you should fall into that catagory of 'good parent'
And you are expecting slashdotters to have children.... why?
"I now have a daughter, and my wife and I have a number of years to before we worry about equipping her with technology (right now spending time with her and helping her be a happy well adjusted toddler are our primary concerns). In the spirit of my parents choice, what type of tools should parents be equipping their children with, today?"
Cellphone. Trust me.
When my generation was growing up, our parents did whatever the hell they felt like doing and the kids came along for the ride. Nowadays parents spend all weekend with their kids. School holidays are a "nightmare" because they feel the need to take their annual holidays from work at the same time and take the kids out or away on vacation. That Atari 400 you had, do you remember what time of year you got it? Christmas right? Or maybe your birthday? Or maybe a combined birthday/christmas present? That was because your parents didn't have much money right? Wrong. It's because our parents didn't spend 98% of the salary on buying shit for us kids. They had their own lives. When us kids asked if they could have a new bike, or some other toy, our parents openly laughed at us and told us to save up our pocket money or see if the neighbours wanted any chores done, or wait until our birthday/christmas. These days a kid just has to whine loud enough and parents cave in. So to answer your question, when's the best time to expose kids to technology? After they've begged you for a computer for at least six months or a year. Then buy em a cheap second hand one and tell em to make do. Cause if you don't they'll just get bored with it and next they'll be demanding an xbox and an ipod and a psp.
How we know is more important than what we know.
A PC, networked but no internet, virtual CD (no scratched disks around here), lots of world-building games (Age of Empires, Sims, etc). An LCD screen instead of CRT. Print-to-PDF instead of direct to printer, so we can cancel 99 full colour pages of Pikachu and just print one.
My kids spend time on their computers, but they spend a lot more time playing in the garden. They make their own dolls furniture (wood, nails, paint), miniature food (clay & paint), etc etc. The eldest taught herself to ride the unicycle. What I'm getting at is that they're not mindless blobs slaved to their PCs 24/7 - yes, they sometimes get heavily involved in a game and will play it in their spare time over 2 or 3 days, but then they'll avoid the computer for a week and do something else.
The youngest is now 8 years old and produces her own digital art and newsletters, the eldest (11 yo) types up stories and homework. Both use an mp3 player on their computers, and because the music available to them is all my own favourites (mostly 70's and 80's), it's very interesting to see their tastes via their playlists. They're not exposed to modern rubbish on the radio, so I'm probably warping their minds and putting them forever out of touch with their friends.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
See the thing is, at least from where I sit, technology is an extension of our bodies and minds. It is just like having another limb or organ. So when raising children who could be brought up with the advantage of having the extra limb and learning to use it early, when they'll learn the best, why would you want to cut if off? In a sense you might as well cut off one of their legs.
Granted, this is an _extreme_ analogy. People can live their lives without technology. They can live full lives and happy lives without it. And there are certainly extremes in the sense that one can be immersed in too much technology and lose their sense of self. I personally have many thoughts on the matter of sense of self and immersion into a larger unity that is today's emerging techno-society. But that's another topic.
In short, find a happy medium that works for you and your family. Moderation is the answer.
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Lego is great for showing kids how to be imaginative and patient. Be sure to supply your child (hopefully over 3 or 4) with a good variety of sizes of pieces and buy one of those big tubs of assorted lego pieces.
As expensive as lego is, it's good for getting kids to be creative and getting them to make new things.
Also, let them draw a lot and expose them to a few of your favorite movies. Get their imaginations working and most of all, let them express themselves.
you have 2 choices: Technology or no technology
1. No technology and be Amish. At least you'll be happy while you dig those potatoes
2. Teach them technology early and properly. How to use it safely how to make it assit your life, not rule it. The richest people in this world used tech to get there (or oil). So either find some oil, or teach your kids technology. And BTW, watching TiVo and playing Xbox does not teach kids anything. Builing a TiVo from an Xbox.. now that is something..
Get them a computer and a game that they really like every once in a while. Just don't install the game for them. I learned a whole lot trying to get Commander Keen, A10 Tank Killer, and Populous 2 working on my computer.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Get the kid a real hardcore synth -- the kind that uses envelopes, oscillators, and filters etc with MIDI ports to boot. Got one in middle school and it taught me more about my major (EE) than you could possibly imagine...
Now then, Dmitri, you know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the Bomb...
If you can find it
My two year old loves ktuberling, and tuxpaint! He also likes to help play supertux, tuxkart and ppracer(I forgot the old name). In the late 80's early 90's I had a friend who taught thier 3 old a "game" to swap floppies out for a full system backup.
Personally, I think it's far more important to make sure they get a good grounding in the basics. Encourage them to read, to learn a second language (and I don't mean Perl!), and to master math and science courses. Especially in the early stages, these are the things that will help them learn how to learn, and how to think critically. I don't expect those skills to go out of fashion any time soon.
If you don't feel comfortable with this line of action, then set her up with Vista, a screaming machine with no games, MS development tools, and entreprenuers who need business applications on a regular basis. That way she'll have many lucrative "play dates" with businesses and will begin building her revenue stream at the same time as her height and maturity.
Start with one of the 7.2V keyless-chuck Makitas, or maybe a DeWalt. Useful when laying network cable down. A good toolbelt would be helpful as well. Now, depending upon whether she'll be building her own equipment, or buying commercial crap like Dells or HP/Compaqs, she may need a good set of Torx drivers. Needlenose pliers, vise-grips, a good range of screwdrivers would be wise, as well as a cable test rig. Then ...
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
We already have a box of the new giant Legos for my 16 month son. Double the size of Duplos, they are called Quatro.
Yeah, I know some turdburger will complain "thay are not Legos, they are Lego bricks." Whatever.
The new mindstorms are awesome. Basic programming concepts and cool little robots. My son doesn't quite get it yet...
I don't know if it helps much, but we also have a lot of musical instruments he has taken an interest in, like a old Casio keyboard and a harmonica. Not pushing, just letting him play with them.
At this age I do not think she will need a computer or many other tech toy alone for herself. Have it available, let her explore her world, and offer alternatives. Let her get her friends involved. If they want to learn how to work with a computer, then let them do it together. I think it is a pity that so many kids just consume games instead of writing them with friends. But, make sure that part of the time is spent on creative tasks, and that the time is limited so that she also spends time on doing other things, like listening to music, taking pictures with a camera, swimming, horses, boys, or simply read a book.
Wow, there's alot of informative posts on here so far...
How about legos and erecter sets? If I'da had a lego mindstorms kit when I was ten I wouda freaked out.
One good way to teach critical thinking is to practise it with your child. Ask them questions about how media, especially advertising, makes them feel. Point out to them the tactics that media purveyors use to produce emotional responce.
As your child matures, involve them in your political, economic, and spiritual life. Take them to a political protest and explain why. Engage them in charity and volunteering, perhaps at a local food bank. They will learn humility and also see what it is like to be less prosperous.
It is important for a child to know how to properly express themselves. One great way to teach is to practise it yourself. Take your time when choosing words and sentences, and always be honest.
Morals help us to act rightly, even when no one is watching. The internet provides a great deal of annonymity, and a strong moral sense serves as compass and shield.
...a few suggestions from someone who doesn't have it all right, but gets closer every day...
could it be?
I picked up a used, "pretty" (one of the candy-coloured ones), antique iMac on ebay for about $150. Installed Panther on it from CD. Set it up on the wireless network. My son uses it for a few games and I am glad he has access. However -- you can't push it on them and necessarily expect them to be interested. I also got him some video games and while he likes the computer and the games, he's not as into it as I would have been if they had all this shit when I was a kid! Oh and while they're little, the Internet can be okay if (a) you are around to help and (b) you just make a few bookmark buttons in the toolbar for the usual kid sites (PBSkids, etc.). I'll get net-nanny-type software pretty soon.
As far as tech goes they'll be inundated from their earliest days although I'd work with them in bits :) and words to ensure they have a conceptual grasp of the how it is that computers work. Too often in education an assumption is made that everyone gets the basics then students are shunted up the ladder where often they can't grasp concepts because the basics learned by rote weren't fundamentaly understood.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
is you. Your time, your attention, and your approval. You appear to know all of that, but sometimes we get caught up in being good little consumers and buying "tools" when we should be focusing on the tool wielder.
With kids aged 18, 15, and 14 I have some experience in this. I can view with 20/20 hindsight the mistakes I made and the triumphs, such as they were. Without exception my failures have involved taking my eyes off of them for just a little while.
Play with them. Make them earn everything but love (and what you're required by law to give them). Don't be afraid to punish bad behavior. Don't reward tantrums, whining, or other manipulation, but do reward reasoned persistence.
Reward honesty, so much that if the has a "cherry tree" moment, give praise and forget the misdeed. Punish dishonesty in every form.
Punishment should fit the misdeed, and should be designed to benefit the family in the long run. Reserve corporal punishment for "you ain't the boss of me!". It will come. Whack 'em. They'll get over it.
If you give them a computer, make it known that you can lock them out of it at your slightest whim.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
I own the RI franchise and the program is great.
If you can build a fort out of Lincoln Logs, you can build anything. If you had enough Lincoln Logs, you could build a pretty solid skyscraper that makes an Erector Set look puny. Sometimes the best technology solution to learn is low-tech instead of high-tech.
I myslef am married with a 2.5 year old daughter. I must proudly say that she uses a laptop very well for her age. Just this past weekend my wife set up her laptop with the kid websites like Dora the explorer and a few others. My daughter navigated her fun and games sites like a champ. Yeppers, going to be another geek in the family. My wife is the one that keeps her grounded in everything else. Like social stuff and that sort of thing. I guess we teach our child what each knows best. I would have to answer your question with the obvious. When ever you think you want to buy/build your child's first computer. It's up to the parents and not anyone else.
Modular: This builds off the interest. The more modular a device is, the more ways it can be assembled and the more games the kid can make up as they go along. Later on, modular becomes good for developing experiments, trying to see what works, what doesn't, and what produces the Magic Blue Smoke.
Fun: Intellectual interest is great, but it'll need to hold a high level of emotional interest, too - kids aren't known for having vast reservoirs of intellectual interest. Too few adults do, either, but that's beside the point. Besides, they can always become Talk Radio hosts.
Some examples of what is good:
Some examples of what would work for SOME kids, especially if older:
Stuff that is useless:
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Disclaimer: I am not a parent. Hell, I'm still half a kid myself (23).
One of the most important things you can teach your kids is not to be just a consumer but a producer, too. Teach them that using a computer doesn't just mean to download software and watch flash animations, but that a computer - any computer - is a tool for self-expression.
A computer is one of the most important tools of today. While it is a tool for the advertising department of company XYZ, it is also a tool express your thoughts (and dare I say it) dreams.
The ultimative producer experience is, in my humble opinion, writing a good program. (Don Knuth is with me on that one.) Programming in the right language* is a delighful thing.
That is what you should teach your kids.
* LISP is a good candidate since it is extremely simple and powerful. These two things go hand in hand.
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
The service industry is the USA's sad future, so... a stripper pole.
A computer is a tool, teach your kids that.
The internet... is a distraction that young children don't need.
Or if you do decide to stick them on the internet, be there while they use it. Make it an experience that involves you, the parent. Don't let the internet turn into the TV babysitter that some parents use.
And for God's sake, don't let them log on as Administrator.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Blaming your parents for what you are now is a Rich Boys or Middle Classes wet dream.
My parents were poor as sin and I didnt have a computer until I bought one MYSELF. I am still to this day heavily involved in PCS and know more about the internal workings of PCS and the corporations that provide the tech to me that I would consider it unhealthy at worst and at best antisocial. (Which I am referred to as from time and time again)
I am a genius. My IQ is ridiculous. It doesnt help me in day to day life with anything other then salary. Salary my combined siblings and parents dont make to this day.
I deplore these conversations as the annoy me on principle. Wake up and take responsibility for your own choices and the path your carved out. If your just a weak minded person who will do whatever your parents did before you and never aspire to out do them them you have other issues not relavant to the question your asking.
There is protecting the innocent mind and guiding and there is sheltering to the point of abuse. Which path are you walking?
Most of the history's greatest people didn't have electronics. Think about it.
My brothers boy has had a computer in his room since six months old. By eight months he was matching what icon went with what cdrom. He's three now, his mouse control is perfect, he knows the keyboard words and numbers. Heh, he knows he has to type pbs.org into the address bar inorder to get what he wants.
.kids domain with an ability to lock a computer to a safe kid state. Not really sure what would be the best way to distribute it, windows upgrade, isp or other... (source code is for sale, it holds lots of possibilities)...
I've been introducing him to shortcuts, directories (pictures, mp3's, movies). No luck yet tricking him into addition and subtraction, but hey, he's three. It's not a grand experiment, just stuff we've come across.
Language development is normal or slightly above par.
Possible side effects.
He looks for structure and organization and is a little lost without it (been kinda thinking up a reward system in the real world that'd encourage him developing his own organizational skills).
No signs of typical attention dysfunction conditioned by commercials. He's in pre-school and stands out bit because of it. He likes to complete what he starts and has no problems concentrating on a task until it's complete. Learning is not really considered negative, just something he needs to get through.
Social skills are on par. He's having a bit of a problem with a bully in his class (girl of course, she'll likely be removed).
I'd really like to see a
What should you be doing to equip your daughter? Start reading to her. Get her coloring books, the picture books, and let her explore. Teach her that reading is fun.
The key word in "technological literacy" is literacy. In today's world, exposing your child to technology is easy. It's all around us. But being able to read is the key skill in understanding it.
I work at a computer camp (www.internaldrive.com). I've been an instructor for 2 years and will currently be working at our latest creation, the Gaming Academy. We have courses for kids aged 7-17 ranging from Digital Video classes to Game Modding. While it's a bit expensive (I wouldn't have been able to go as a kid), if you have the extra money I know the kids usually love it. I know this sounds like an advertisement, but I'm low enough in the company that it doesn't really benefit me to bring exposure. I just work there because I love it and would have loved it as a kid, so I'm just pointing it out for those who might not be aware that such a thing exists.
My dad introduced me to computers when I was 4. He hooked up an old TI-99/4A and we played Pole Position and Parsec and a few other less noteworthy games. Though I could not yet read and was not good at video games, I was fascinated by what was going on and how to get better at it. I was also intrigued at what all of those buttons on the keyboard could possibly be used for.
I learned to read the next year and quickly picked up and analyzed all of the written words around me. I noticed that before I could get into the game on the TI-99, I had to tell it from a list of options that I wanted to play a game instead of going to the command prompt. When I asked my dad what the command prompt was all about, he showed me some basic math it could do.
I quickly wanted to know what else it could do. He knows a lot about fixing cars and electronics and such, but knows very little about how computers work and how to use them. Because of that, he gave me the big thick operating and programming manuals that he had for it. I looked them over, but did not make much sense of most of it. Although I didn't get much from the operation of it as a serious computer, playing video games and seeing what else it could do got me really interested in computers.
Go forward in my life past an Apple IIe and an NES and see me at 8 years old using an Apple Performa 460. I learned how to type with some typing software on the Apple and even learned a little about using DOS. Come the Macintosh, it was a whole new computer using experience for me. Of course, my primary interest in the device was to play games on it (maybe it still is), but I gained many other things from it. I have really bad handwriting and no matter how hard I try, it never looks good. I used my computer to type my homework for school because my handwriting was too illegible. Pass a little more time and I've got my hands on an Apple related magazine that has a CD with it. I get from the CD some software that can pick apart the resource trees of software. Pretty soon I had taken the sound files out of every program I had and used a theming application to make the box make all kinds of obnoxious sounds. Also, I found some video files on my computer and witnessed for the first time that full motion video could be played on a computer. What a wonder that they were still selling movies on clunky tapes instead of data CD's!
I hope I've revealed to you something about how a young mind can become interested and realize the usefulness of computers. Now I'm 20 and I still love computers and I'm halfway through getting a BS in computer science. I suppose the youngsters will find computers at some time or another, but it's good to expose them to as many different things as you can so that they can find what they love and you can help them to cultivate their thirst for knowledge.
I was happy to expose my son to technology at a very early age. He's always watched me on my computer, whether playing games or doing work.
He was banging on the keyboard when he was nearly one, and using the mouse a few months after that. (I highly highly recommend the "JumpStart School Time" CD, which only comes in a 3-pack with a couple of other useless titles, for starting mouse and keyboard skills. Make a backup. It will get scratched.)
He was picking out "Bear in the Big Blue House" on the Tivo by the time he was 1-and-a-half. Really! I he picked it out because of the long name. Not long after that, he also started picking out Sesame Street, perhaps becuase of the shape of the S's.
He was installing his own software, including accepting license agreements, at two. He was also able to pick out the Mozilla Firefox icon on a crowded desktop, double-click, and pick out his favorite web sites (sesamestreet.com, playhousedisney.com, and the like) from bookmarks. He also installed so much spyware that I had to reformat my wife's computer.
Not long after he turned 3, I finally broke down and gave him his own computer. I picked up a 800MHz/512MB/20GB computer for $20 used from a corporate computer sale, and tossed a spare copy of Windows on it. It's connected to the internet. He has his list of favorite bookmarks (set up by parents, of course), and a handful of cheap $9 kids games from Target, WalMart, etc. He installs his own software. In fact, he's currently playing a Clifford (think Big Red Dog) game.
He doesn't know anything about spelling, so I'm not too worried about porn sites, illicit chats or the darker side of myspace.com. I will be installing monitors before that happens.
Is that all he does? Of course not. He plays with legos, trains, his parents, and his little sister. But the next generation will not know a world without computers, just as our generation doesn't know a world without electricity. I see no reason to make them wait.
Does this have to do with how I was raised? Probably. My parents bought an Apple II+ for $3000 when I was 5, and they never prevented me from using it. I had my favorite games, and by early elementary school I was typing out silly programs in BASIC from a book, eventually writing my own Adventure-type games. I can only hope I can provide my children with the same opportunities I had.
MySpace!
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Lasers. Eight o'clock, day one.
Have you checked Technorati's top search tags lately? That's what can happen when kids get to play with the coolest new things... =)
Seriously though, exposing your kids to technology's one thing, teaching them intelligent use is another.
It'll be hard (on you), but your first step is to step away from the TV. Set a hard and fast rule for how much video per day/week. Let's say, a half hour of video gaming per day, one hour of Sesame Street per day, one movie per week. MAX. Do these with her, do not fall into the trap of electronic babysitting. Better yet, no video gaming, period.
Read to your child, and give her lots of opportunities to learn to read, and later read on her own. Encourage her to express herself in writing, and when her hands are bigger, by typing. The typing can either be via her own log in on your system (w/ everything locked down, and no net clients), or a cheapie (less than US$100) laptop from eBay. Also from eBay are a boatload of used age-specific typing/reading/math/etc tutors to load onto the laptop. At some point, an electronics experiment set from the likes of Radio Shack would be cool (and low voltage!).
Your daughter will soon enough learn how to use your tv, video recorder, cell phone, iPod, in-dash nav system, etc, so forget about needing to buy her a bunch of crap until middle school.
Luke, help me take this mask off
We have 2 1/2 year old boy who has the usual amounts of cars, trains and typical boy-type toys - he likes to play with these physical things, but there's nothing he loves more than hacking away on a keyboard to make pretty pictures, or playing any one of the number of games we've purchased for him. We started him out on the Leapfrog system; with interchangable books and cartridges, it kept him amused for around 6 months. Then we moved him to the PC, with Jumpstart Baby - we used this for our previous child as well, and they've both mastered mouse and basic keyboarding skills, plus they love it! Now he's playing Thomas the Tank Engine, and all different sorts of edutainment titles. He loves every minute of it. He's also quite adept at playing racing car games on my Xbox - sometimes better than me, I might add (although this tends to be when I'm not paying attention, or thinking about beer (as in free))!
My wife and I were introduced to technology early as well, and we've excelled in our chosen IT-based careers from it, and hope that the early learning that we can provide to our children gives them the added abilities to excel as well.
Use technology where you can, they'll thank you for it just like you did to your parents.
Once you get them a nice high powered calculator, buy them the best math book you can find. Then tell them to practice every problem in the math book, when they complete the job, pay them an allowance or in video games, and repeat. Continue this process until they get to calculus, and then buy them a computer with open office so they can learn to write.
What you do NOT want to do, is try to teach using the old fashioned tools of the past. USE the technology as an advantage and not a crutch, its all in how you view it. Do not buy them a cellphone until they learn the calculus and can write a thesis on why they need a cellphone and the impact it will have on their life strategy. When you do get them a cellphone, hopefully they'll know to use it for business and pleasure, and not just use it to chat about stupid stuff.
Set the tone, show them the right way to use the technology, show them how technology = profits. Show them how technology = better grades. Show them technology = success.
This is like telling someone "Don't give them a pencil and paper until they can multiply in their heads!" I'm sure this is what our math teachers tried to tell us, and now that we grew up cheating with pen and paper, we want to tell our kids not to use calculators of their day?
I think if the calculator can get them to actually do the math, and the slide rule makes them hate math, go with the calculator. If they actually like calculating stuff in their head, then go with the slide rule or better yet, teach them to be a math savant who can figure out pi in their head and multiple 34340034*2343454 in their head without pen and paper.
Start with games, as they are simpler, but encourage your children to use computers for creative purposes. I was inspired to program through curiosity when I found QBASIC all those years ago, but I doubt my experience is typical.
On a more dire not I personally would avoid exposing a child to social networking/instant messanging/etc for a long time. My reasoning comes from comparing myself to my younger relative and friends. I am young enough that my highschool years coincided with the main-stream use of AIM and the like, which meant that livejournal and myspace only came into popularity around the time I was looking in to going to college. This situation meant that I wound up using IMing and social networking sites to augment my interations with real, living, tangible and local friends.
My younger peers though, use things like instant messanging and myspace to make friends almost exclusively, which has had a noticeable negative impact on their ability to interact with people in person. One of my cousins has been glued to her computer, to AIM, myspace and livejournal in particular, for the past two years.
Using only text to communicate means that two important secondary communication vectors are lost, body langauge and vocal inflections. If a child were to develop exclusively in entirely virtual social setting forming real relationships would be extraordinarily difficult. Not to mention the fact that text-only communcation encourages the use of slang and shorthand to make it easier to type. Alot of this typing turns in to muscle memory, which in turn makes it pretty hard to write an essay or anything intelligble. Just read an average myspace page and you should know what I mean.
Computers and the internet are obviously a great thing, but nowadays you don't have to be a geek to let your computer totally ruin your social life.
cracked out toys for toddlers:
EZ Bake PCB Oven (Suprisingly small hands don't help mount SMD components)
My logic probbie (His eyes light up with TTL/CMOS logic!)
Connect Ford (childs EDI primer, ok, sorry I didn't think I'd get 3)
oh and Monopoly
How about instead of you "planning your daughters life", you let her do what she wishs? Guide her away from bad stuff and try to keep her on the right path, but let her be her own person. Remember this is slashdot and a lot of us are quite happy being anti social and being on our own. Your little girl will emulate her situation to some degree, but if you go "okay we introduce ball at point A, drop penguin at B and Atari at C", you're artifically influencing her.
You're a geek so the toys are there to play with. If she shows an intrest then support her and be there to catch her if she falls. Other wise let her play around and explore, find the world for herself and become "a person", not Mini-me.
Remember when you first rode a bike, you needed someone to support you, then they stopped supporting and maybe had to catch you once or twice. Then you learn to ride and could zoom off into the distance (or so you thought). That's life, it's her journey and if you decide when to let go of her, she'll never be prepared for when you let go. Teach her right from wrong and let her learn on her own, she'll develope much better skills all round (by being her own person and not some books "perfect child").
Look at all the soccer mum's around. They're all "perfect mothers", but their kids are not prepared for life. They wrapped them up too tight so they never saw what was outside their bubble and can't handle it. Maybe a little nudge here and there might help her, but let her grow as she grows, not how a book says.
I like muppets.
The most important thing you can give a give a kid is a happy mom. Don't get so wrapped up in the kid that you stop treating your wife like a woman.
Don't get divorced, unless there's blood. Divorce sucks.
And if you do get divorced, don't remarry until the kids move out. Stepfamilies suck.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
I was 6 when my dad bought me a BBC model B in 1982 from the local Dixons for £399. I was 6. I played games for a while, and was subjected to Logo and the floor turtle at school, but then one day in 1984 I started thumbing through the BBC BASIC user guide and tried the double height text program. It gave me the programming bug and the rest is history.
While infinitely more powerful than the 6502 1Mhz Beeb, I don't think PCs give quite the same experience from a hands on learning point of view.
--- Commission free trading & free stock up to $500 - use http://share.robinhood.com/kelvinp6
Providing the needs for children at early stage in life in order to make them feel comfortable with computer is one thing, reshaping their interest and career choice for later in life is the other.
If you want your kids to spend their productive adulthood slashdotting is your thing, let me be the first one to say; teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess inside. Give them a sense of pride to make it easier. Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be. [pause] I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows. If I fail, if I succeed, at least I will live as I believe no matter what they take from me.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
I say there is no technology safer and more useful to a child than a graphing calculator. It promoted my interest in math and programming. Which led me into an interest in computers.
So, having a 7 year old addicted to Quake 3 Arena and Warcraft III is a bad thing? My kids can deathmatch with the best of them, and they know where to get all of the free game demos... Luckily, I have a good firewall, antivirus, and multiple spyware and rootkit removers that I run regularly on their computer (they have 2 of their own), not to mention a fairly decent firewall with blacklist and keyword blocking...
Logic is the beginning of reason, not the end of it.
I recommend getting her an SGI Tezro workstation, while SGI's still around. She'll be awed by the stylish enclosure and rocksolid IRIX operating system running on an XFS foundation. As her pre-school colleagues grapple with color precision and flawed volumetrics, she will be smooth sailing by the smooth CFD visualizations on her scientific-grade machine. As SGI folds during her later years, she'll appreciate your foresight in giving her a piece of computing history. Don't be late; start her off on a real computer.
I got both of my kids exposed to technology early at age. I think this has helped in many areas. For one their intuitiveness with other electronic devices are better than most kids, secondly they're also more educated and analytical than their peers.
Conversely, I haven't over exposed them to it, especially not TV. I think TV is one of the largest ills on this Earth. Fewer things exist that require less brain processing than watching TV. I try to limit they're time on both computer and TV though because it's also important that they're not addicted. They're just tools after all, albeit a passionate tool for me ;-).
-
Love
-
Your time
-
Laughing with them
-
Hugs
-
Honesty
-
Integrity
-
And don't forget more love
Live your life before them and with them with sincerity and determination. The best thing that you can leave behind in this earth is children that know what real love, dedication, and selflessness is.If you haven't noticed, geeky computer gadgets are not even on the list. If you take care of the real priorities first, you will equip them for life. Computers take their proper place during the course of a well lived life, not in place of one.
I have 3 kids. One is grown. I held them back from computers until they were firmly grounded people. They have not suffered a bit technologically (they are now quite adept at computers). They are incredibly well equiped for life, and technology had nothing to do with it.
I've got a 13-year-old who has some physical disabilities. We've worked hard to keep him involved in physical activties as much as possible, but he loves his Empire Earth and other strategy/world-building games. I'd like to introduce him to a good programming environment. Apologies to SD'rs but he's got a WinXP machine. Any recommendations? It would be great if he could get his feet wet building some simple games as he learns the fundamentals.
;-)
As for my own history -- I first learned to program on a teletype machine with a paper tape to record the program back in the late 70's.....
-pfs
Books!
Sheesh.
I've used Reader Rabbit & JumpStart with my kids and the've enjoyed both series. Does anybody have any favorite open source children games or educational software that they would recommend?
Now, stop and think about the logic of this. First, you're asking a bunch of geeks for parenting advice. Only a few of us have kids. Next, you're asking the kind of question which doesn't provoke the kind of thought that would lend a helpful answer; doubtless you'll toddle off and go do whatever you felt like doing anyway, as you should do anyway. Finally, you're asking what you can do for someone so that by 16+ years from now, they'll be prepared.
Now, if you were 18 today, what kind of insight would you have gained from your explorations of technology in 1990? Let's see, here: Cell phones would be lost on you. You'd probably have learned to type on an IBM Selectric. You'd have discovered Windows 3.0 running on a 386 PC or a Mac box. With the Windows box, you'd get as far as DOS and the QBasic language and hit the wall after that, and with the Mac you'd be drawing nifty black-and-white bitmaps and learning Hypercard. If you got to tour a workplace of the time on a school field trip, you'd get to learn about how computers are huge blue cabinets in special cold rooms with Halon dumps and running things like VMS. You'd get real handy at copying songs from the radio onto tape cassettes, or at least scoring on CDs if you were pink. Ipod's would never have entered your sphere...
You see where it's going, now? There's almost nothing you can show your kids today that won't be landfill fodder by the time they're getting a job. As a last ditch effort to say I recommended something, I'd say give them Linux to play with, so at least they'd get to see a system that's geared to enable learning from the guts outward. As opposed to proprietary systems which are designed to keep you in the dark and hence dependent on "The Man" like a junkie scoring their fix, endlessly chasing the delusion that you can pay somebody else to do your learning for you. But by now, I suppose you're just sneering in contempt at the audacity to suggest such a thing, even though my kids have had no problem doing everything they want to do on a Linux box, and I'm OK with that, and I'll be OK with your kids working for my kids, too!
At least some good has come of this exchange, this time. I've set the point in concrete once and for all so I can copy and save this reply in a file, the quicker to post the *NEXT* time we get this question.
Nothing will replace the basics. Take the time to be sure your kids have a solid, core background to build upon. Studying is a skill. I am looking at using Machinima for storytelling. Using UnrealEd to work on spatial skills and treasure hunting. We play with Lego Mindstorms. Subscribe to Make and build things! Measure comprehension and retention with Moodle. Both of my kids have hand-me-down laptops from work that I installed Knoppix on. They don't know who Microsoft is, but they recognize Tux. You'd be surprised how quickly they can pick up things. Kids today really don't have a clue about analog anything! They think the Internet and digital everything has always been here. BTW- I love both books from O'Reilly: Mind Hacks and now Mind Performance Hacks- great tips and tricks to show your kids. Be a great role model and push yourself to learn things you thought you already knew- there have been a lot of strides debunking stuff since we were in school. I am really getting a kick out of learning science all over again!
Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle lucid dreaming.
One of the most aggregiously missing skills in the tech community is a notable inability to type. It's amazing the number of WPM that a master hunt-and-pecker can achieve, but my ability to crank out 105wpm has been one of my greatest assets as a programmer. It's always a good idea to reduce the noise to signal ratio, and pulling down the biggest UI obstacle out there will speed up the adoption of any technology, especially those computer related.
Also, teach 'em to count to 31 on one hand. Get poker chips of the values 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128, and 256 and teach your kids to play poker where no bank is allowed to have more than one chip of any type in it. We're not used to using it, but binary math is extremely useful once you get up to speed.
And then teach them basic logic, which can be learned at about age 4. That's not just technology you'll be teaching them, but life skills.
Oh, and while your at it, teach them to tell the difference between information and that garbage they feed us in the news and commercials.
Ok, back in from the deep end. Typing...yea...typing.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
I have always grown up with videogames (I've been playing the NES since before I can even remember), and with that came the natural (natural for me, at least) interest in computers. This has definitely shaped my future for the better. I am probably more proficient in computers than 99.5% of the world (that translated to 20% of Slashdotters?). That doesn't mean that, like most people, I know all kinds of patterns to do things. That means that I am generally proficient with computers and technology. I can use a brand new program or machine, and already have the hang of it within minutes, whereas most people would have to take classes just to learn what I would have learnt in half an hour. I'm 16, now, and I've been taking college classes for three years (though this is currently my third fulltime (12+ credit hours) semester), and I can pretty-confidently say that technology has not affected me in any negative way (alright, maybe my eyes aren't perfect, but hey! I don't have to wear glasses.. yet.). That said, to answer your question, over the course of my years from and inbetween DOS, Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, AOL 3.0, broadband, etc, etc, etc..., I've used these programs a lot: Adobe Photoshop Anvil Studio (midi-making program) MS Sound Recorder (programs>accessories>multimedia) GAMES. I've always been a big fan of SimCity, Civilization, and Half-Life and Counter-Strike. ...And no, I've never gone on a blood-thirsty rampage because of Counter-Strike -- and I started playing at age ten! (My parents didn't really have much to do with my computer life, and I'm glad. It would have held me and my learning back. Online forum communities are what drove me to learn to use Photoshop, and I've always been a good 10 years more mature (mature-er? o_O) than anyone else my age, though that can also be contributed to my sister and brother, who are 6 and 8 years older than me, respectively.)
I would reccomend games. By games I don't mean the latest FPS or mindless drone game, nor those silly reader rabbit games. I would reccomend older games such as Graphic Adventures. Think Kings Quest, Space Quest, etc. Are they old now? Yup. BUt then, it really helps. Heck, extra points if you get them the ones which required you to TYPE actions. It'll teach them problem solving and grammar (To a degree on the latter). To be frank, most children won't be interested in using a computer without either games or internet, so games such as that will be needed. Then, gradually move them to web use later, preferably on 56k initially so that they don't do too much too fast. Eventually, sling 'em up on DSL, and they should be fine.
Really, if it worked for you, than does newer technology have anything more to offer a kid?
I've seen many POPULAR new toys: they're tacky, colourful, not particularly intellectually stimulating and just feature lots of things that will attract any kid (watch the Barney Show, if you don't already). In my opinion, lots of modern toys are patronising (technology is just as new to the parents as it is to the kids - in your day, you actually needed some skillz / dedication to setup a game/box - how many kids with psps do you see wanting to start programming some apps compared to people who used to play tron/whatever off a cartridge?). The poster above was right - don't spoil them, old hardware will do - you're not being a harsh parent, you're being responsible. Developements in modern computing will seem more exciting if they've stuck with it from basic to advanced (why does every computing course still keep hardware/assembly fundamentals?). You're evidently a tech. guy - you're knowlegeable enough to not have to rely on playskool to provide $50 handheld digital etchasketch with melody playing capabilities. Keep it old school. Older 2d games required dexterity and intellect to make them interesting : software based on pretty graphics just seems to sell itself for looking advanced.
+ As a bonus you'll have some enthusiasm for reliving the games of your past (will you get ever that chance again?), and you'll get to see the same joy in your kids which you can relate to (or maybe you won't - and then you'll know that computing isn't really for them - but at least you'll know, from the personal experiences of what got you going as a kid).
Upgrading may not just be unecessary, it maybe worse. But it's your call at end of the day - just use your judgement.
"You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
In capitalist west your child write report on new computer.
In Soviet Union child write new report on you.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
what type of tools should parents be equipping their children with, today?
The desire to learn. That's really it's all about. A lot of our generation fixates on computers because we grew up with them and learned everything we could about them. So which is more important, developmentaly? The computer, or the fact that we were so damned excited about it?
Practically speaking, I think it's a matter of exposing them to things that they can almost understand, and then letting them explore. That and never dismissing a question with "you wouldn't understand". Instead, give them the big picture first (or the small picture, whichever is easiest), use metaphors, and be more concerned with stimulating their mind than giving an accurate answer.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
i was introduced to computers when i was very young... before 5... and well, of course it shaped my life... im considered pretty intelligent and a good thinker... but whatever you do, dont just lead them to a computer and leave it at that... my parents divorced when i was 5, i had no father to take that role, and as it turns out, im not really one for sports and im incredibly shy... that might just be the nerd way, but it could be better... so i guess what im suggesting is to do is to do things with your children often, play sports and do activities that up their social skills... i mean, im not a lost cause, far from it... but i would like to have had that oppertunity (btw, im 16)
...don't corrupt their minds with imperative programming languages. bring them up on a pure functional language like Haskell from a young age, say 4 or 5 years. Don't let them even hear of side effects until they're 18 and make sure they never hear about non-constant global variables until they're 21. That way there's chance they won't write the kind of crap that passes for code nowadays. And they'll be smart - very smart.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
I am not sure if this has been already discussed, but the term technology is used loosely here. You're mainly talking about computers, but the word technology isn't defined as computers, or micro chips. Both of those are just a product of technological advancements.
But anyway, this is probably the only decent comment I'll ever make. To start off , I'll say a bit about myself.
I am 18, I lived in Europe (Balkans) for 12 years before moving here (Canada). I've been exposed to video games and overally computers (Read: NES / Atari / Later on Windows) as far back as my memory serves me.
Anyway, that's about it for my background. I do not rationalize why we should "expose" children to different computer technology in different timelines. For example, a game will always remain a game, no matter the standard of it (Read: graphic quality). Even though I had over 40 NES games, I still joined a chess club and played chess -- and that game is pretty old.
In other words, a few dozen years down the road, Super Mario Brothers 3 will become a "cult classic" game, and will be boasted (if it isn't right now, enough) as one of the best game ever made. On the contrary, I disagree with the term you're using, "expose." What is there to 'expose'? We live in a timephase that is manipulated almost solely by computers. Your microwave, a fridge even, is technology.
Ultimately I think it comes down to this: I wouldn't want to censor any child from playing any game or exploring their way into technology, simply because they need to know what it is and how it affects us, as manipulators and creators of that which they are about to explore.
I don't know, can someone answer this one for me: We all took basic math back in elementary (N.A.,S.A., Europe, etc). Did we have TI-83s back in the first grade when it came to basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division? I don't think so. I am pretty sure we all started at 1+1. And I think that's how a person should start when it comes to computers.
To the submitter: If there's one thing you should expose your daughter to, it's how we use that technology which the mankind has built (read: john carmack, bill gates and co, steve jobs, etc). That is to say, give a person a choice before you make decisions for them, especially when it comes to children.
Computers are a tool. They are meant to empower. Don't try to bring up your kids in the stone age. By all means make their early experience varied - take them into the great outdoors - teach them to paint and colour. But why not also teach them photography, and photo editing on a computer, and word processing and all the rest. Children are sponges. They'll pick it all up and won't spend their childhood telling you they're bored.
Computers are also great for simulating those things that are too dangerous to do for real, but that have educational value. (Would you let your kid pilot a Cessna? No. Would you let them fiddle with a flight sim? Well I would!)
Also, these days familiarity and exposure to computers are an important skill. If you hide the computers away till they're in their teens, you'll have kids that are less suited to the real world where computers are used every day. Since a child does a lot of learning in their earliest years, things learnt later in life are often less well absored. Thats' why teaching kids calculus and algebra and languages EARLY in life is a good idea. (Pressuring them is not, but in a low pressure environment witness how many children grasp 2 languages in a bilingual home without much effort).
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
From the infant stage teach them sign language. As they develop language skills teach them letters and their sounds. From there teach them how to read. Introduce music and music theory and start them on an instrument. Throw in a second language. By first grade they'll be pretty advanced.
'Same speed C but faster'
Do not confuse dexterity with Wizkiddery, I know a lot of wiz kids (by their own proclamation or their parents') that could not tell their ass from their elbow in terms of computers. Not until computers become truly interactive will they be a valuable asset for kids to have in early childhood, what is on offer these days is still very predictable and regimented, kids are going through exercises like a violin player in a straightjacket, there is no room for spontaneity which I think is a pre-requisite, especially with young kids.
You never catch me alive
What's with all the inquiring headlines? Anybody else notice the top three stories on the front page?
...uh, whatever.
Exposing Children to Technology?
I'm sitting here, fully clothed and with both hands on the keyboard, not exposing children to anything. What exactly are you accusing me of?
Switching a College from Desktops to Laptops?
Er, no. Why do you ask?
In-Car Navigation Systems Too Distracting?
I don't even own a Jim-Jim,
When I came to slashdot tonight I wasn't expecting the frickin' SPANISH INQUISITION!!!
While I'm not a huge fan of immersing children in technology...
I am. Dump 'em in a vat of PDAs and see what burbles up.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Get your daughter literate and get her reading good things with you and alone as soon as you can. Let her become an educated chooser if what is needed and what not. Participate in that process with her based on her experiences with her social circles such as the one in school. Rather than focus on gadgets, focus on the real lessons that no one taught you as a child or they tried and did in such an unreachable way you had to learn the hard way on your own. It never sticks when a parent just says, "Hey. This is important." It's much better to let your kids discover what is important on their own with some guidance...
That way you raise a thinker, rather than a sheep.
...and kick their butts outside.
In the spirit of my parents choice, what type of tools should parents be equipping their children with, today?
A ball. Legos. Musical instruments.
Anythin, except whatever it is your parents gave to you or did to you to cause you to seek out parenting advice from Ask Fucking Slashdot.
I honestly believe in letting kids dive right into simple computer games, from a very early age. That's what my Dad did with me -- he'd go on his old dialup, download simple shareware logic/action/strategy games, and let me have a blast with them. It gave me a solid foundation for actual applications in computers, later in life.
It all depends on what games you are giving them. For now, I suggest any safe logic/action/strategy games you can find on the Internet, maybe even try miniclip.com. When they get a bit older, introduce Age of Empires (any in the series, but AOE: AOK is recommended). After that, they'll probably have a solid foundation to build more skills.
When I was a kid in the 70s, my parents were very enthusiastic in impregnating me with the technology that would later make me successful in life. They have really inspired my life and made my calling very clear early on in my life.
However right now I'm out of a job. Anyone needs someone who's REALLY GOOD at punching COBOL programs on cards ?
>"While I'm not a huge fan of immersing children in technology, there is >a certain point at which you must expose them to the tools that will >help them be successful in the world"
I'm not sure I understand your reticence. Computers are not dangerous 'Krell' educating machines! They are vital part of a modern child's exposure to the world. By their very nature children are attracted to technology of all forms. The number that can fully operate the DVD player by age 2 is amazing and demonstrates an innate interest and attraction. This kinda thing should be encouraged!
When I look back to my own youth I can see a whole heap of time spent in front of the telly. Part of this amounts to nothing more than the usual, and I believe pretty harmless, squandering of time that all kids do (ie it's a *good* thing that they're not forced to run around the maze with a head full of tasks at such an age). However my own viewing also left me with an amazing amount of knowledge about the world. Tv is always lambasted for it's brain rotting properties but I tend to think that it has produced the most 'tuned in' human population ever.
The internet is going to be an amazing sink of time and energy for my own kid. He's going to spend unbelievable amounts of time and energy on there. I think that, in the end, his generation will be even more wired in than ours. I think that this will be a good thing.
The idea that there is any distinction between the world 'in there' and the world outside is kinda bizarre to me. 'Go out and play' is all very well if you're trying to teach your kid that their body requires use to remain healthy, but is kinda missing the point if it assumes that the backyard is going to provide 'better' stimulation than the tv or computer. Of course there's fun and learning to be had outside but it's no better or worse.
I guess this feeling that computers are brain rotting devices like tv stems from the current trend towards users as consumers rather than producers. I am convinced that this will quickly change as the older tv-fed generation simply dies off. Computers are a stunning tool for production, imagination and raw thought. Their fundamental position at the heart of modern communication places them at a world-changing level of importance.
I've got a touch monitor lying around the place. My kid can play 'Dora the Explorer' or paint on it even though he hasn't got the required mouse skills. In the future I hope he will use computers to express himself creatively and learn more about the world than I could hope to. If all this makes him more successful at work then great but it's not necessarily my priority. All I want him to have is access to the technology and to end up with a relaxed and natural usage of it.
Others have commented that their parents, by holding back the tech until the kids were are bursting point, ensured that they appreciated the gifts that much more. I don't know about this. While I find myself to be a soft touch with my own in regard to toys (this'll have to stop, sorry Bob!), computers are simply too important. I think we've past the point where they're a novelty or toy. Holding them back just seems to be taking the kids back in time 30 years for no very good reason. If they have value then the kid will find it.
I guess I think this way because of my own experience. Home micros arrived when I was about 8 and I just, ..I can't
express it. Let's just say we were soulmates! Lol. About 5 years later the ROM blew on my Sinclair Spectrum and my parents
didn't get it fixed. I was left writing programs on reams of paper. ("Paper?? You were lucky, we had to program on a
cardboard box in 't middle of the road.."). Hmmm. It's left me with the feeling that no kid of mine is going to be without
a computer! It's like taking away all their pencils and books!
Technology isn't going to take over their lives. They go out, they play u
My son got his first MP3 player at 11 months. It was a freebe from the cable company, and at 128meg, it wasn't worth it for me to carry it around. He was more than happy to listen to the same CD over and over. He loved it. At 20 months, he was wanting to play video games with me. Now at 23 months, when he asks to play video games, I get the unit down, and hand it to him to set up. He has no problem plugging everything into the tv, and turning the unit on.
It is importnant to make sure the video games you give are appropriate to the childs age. I don't mean content wise. After you've let your child watch Shrek 2, they have seen everything short of porn. (Lots of transvestite jokes, and a scene with a guy giveing himself a blow job in public) I am talking about difficulty. At 23 months my son loves games like RallyX. Yes, the old arcade game. It is available cheap in a joystick. It loads fast. (The boot time on modern game systems is just too long for such a small child) It has a stick and one button. To restart after dieing, he just presses the single button. And, even if he just watches, it still does stuff. Just because Spongebob is on the game box, does not mean the came can be successfully played by young children
I telecommute, so he sees me code on my PC all day. He wanted to take part, so he now has a child sized desk, and a linux PC sitting next to mine. He is getting very good at controlling his mouse based on childrens games. Again, appropriate gameplay is the key. The game he plays most right now simply has a picture covered with blocks. When he moves the mouse over the blocks, the blocks disappear to show the picture.
Kids like to immitate their parents, so just let them use what you are using. Don't let people convince you that just because they didn't have it when they were kids, that your kids shouldn't have it today. Do take the advice on not just giving them anything they ask for though.
And maybe a saw.
How can you go wrong?
Linux is what he or she should learn. Get a crappy old box, slap Linux and let the kid go to town on it.
binutils, gcc, glibc and the linux kernel headers (from a 2.6 kernel of course)...
At least, thats what my toddler plays with...
td
hard core geek-ware
Parental interaction with the child to help them ask the important questions and place the technology into their world in an appropriate manner strikes me as the important part of exposing children to technology.
As the father of a 5 year old and 7 year old I spend a lot of time pondering these questions. There is no silver bullet to the problem... kind of like all the other issues of growing up as a clever, tool using, monkey. :-)
I am a parent of two boys (8yr and 13yr respectively). My philosophy raising my kids has never been to hide things from them as a means to "protect them". I don't really buy into movie or video game ratings. Hiding things from your kids rather than teaching them to experiment, learn and think for themselves based on their personal experiences is doing them a disservice. It's the parenting equivalent of "security through obscurity" and in the long run is not security / parenting at all. Certainly, parents must not expose their kids to things they simply aren't ready to handle. I'm not handing the keys to my car to my 8yr old any time soon.
Parenting is about involvement; about giving your kids a safe space to learn, both from their successes as well as their mistakes. Hiding things from your kids is not involvement. Discussing topics with your kids is parenting. Allowing your kids the freedom to experience life and make their own choices and live with the consequences as a learning experience for future situations is what parenting is about. Simply safeguarding your kids from everything that might be potentially damaging is only setting the kids up for a future shock that will have far more dire outcomes than what they could have learned at home making small mistakes with the safety net of their parents.
My kids have been playing and using the computer since each were 5yrs old. My oldest learned his alphabet playing Quake because I refused to show him where the letters were on the keyboard nor would write down any of the commands but would simply spell them out and require him to figure it out. It was great motivation for him and a great learning experience. Yeah, the end result... shooting other people... wasn't exactly what I would have liked to see him doing with his time but I worked with him not against him.
Both of my sons have learned the value of being able to read and write while playing games such as DAoC, UO, WoW, Halo, Unreal despite not being that thrilled with such subjects in school. Both, I believe have learned the value and importance of communication. Spelling is not just that boring thing your teachers make you do at school. It's how you communicate with your fellow players online. Without the computer and the ability to play and interact online, I doubt either would have as much appreciation for reading and writing.
So, IMO, expose your kids to technology as soon as you can while your kids still listen to you and have the umbrella of the home to provide them a place to experiment with life. Stay involved with your kids, make them think on their own. I think the worst thing you could do is protect them by hiding things from them and pretend such things don't exist.
Runesabre
Enspira Online
start them early. give them root access. let them break things. but make them fix it. i had so much fun when i deleted windows 3.1 off the HDD to make room for a game. oh. and make them use windows 95 for a bit, just to experience how to fix it from BSODing every half second.
Cooking is a good introduction to experimentation and elementary chemistry etc. Lego for spatial & basic construction skills. Get a steam engine or a Stirling engine, some magnets,... Fix a bike, brew some ginger beer... Fly a kite, knit some socks... Just whatever you do, do something **real**, not virtual computer simulation crap.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
i was raised on a computer since i was nearly born... by being exposed to it early you will be computer literate enough to know what not to do by the time you're 8. Also it's good to have a crap computer to have the kids screw up on. And yes, they'll run into porn, but porn doesn't damage them, the way you deal with them witnessing porn does. They won't be interested in it anywho. Gee, I was all into videogames, programming etc... no nudity mattered to me when i was 4 or 5. Technology is your enemy when you arent familiar with it... when I mean familiar, I mean FAMILIAR like a family member, but not so familiar that you can't live without it or are stuck to it 24/7 ignoring society. Allowing kids to discover and learn, reading user manuals (good passtime I might say) etc... Technology is part of the culture and the technologically ignorant will be left behind. My mom has to struggle to go through a CD tutorial with various online links, but then again in that case I just find it to be extremely lazy on the employer's part.
Tech is good, tech is fun, tech is power, and when it comes to computers, making mistakes is the first step to learning. Remember to wash your hands before touching the keyboard!
You want to expose your kids to technology? Gasp...think of the children.
ASIDE from, you know, the normal things, that everyone else here (who probably neither have nor live with children) are assuming you aren't giving, here's what my house is like. Aside from a Tivo in the living room (which saves a LOT of "my show is on" fights), we put an old 300MHZ laptop on the end table which the children have limited access too. They are finding their own paths with nudging and monitoring; the eldest child is MySpacing and IMing, both children are surfing and emailing. The eldest child now also SMSes routinely.
Don't let kids NOT have access to tech, because they are at the age where not only will it be the norm for their future existence, but they also have the mental acuity to pick it up. Few technological matters are more than a few brief instructions with kids, once they have become used to it. Heck, the eldest kid had figured out 3-way calling -- and explained it to all the other kids -- years ago, and was routinely coordinating 8-person-large 3-way chains. I admit, I don't even know how to do that, and I've no excuse.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
At 6 months old, my dad put me in front of a computer program called bang, or something like that. More or less, I just banged my tiny hands on the keyboard and the computer made sounds and and flashed a few colors I think... Keep in mind this was 1987 though. Anyway, my dad having computers and me using them and watching them evolve sorta sparked my heavy passion for the like. Just my story.
Sometimes I comment just to hear myself typing.
http://www.realdoll.com/
There's nothing like "RealDoll" technology to help spark your child's interest in many different fields.
If you've got the dough, get the doll. It's technology your kids will come back to time and time again, and when they're not looking, you can tag it too. Oh yeah!
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
Here're some Chinese wisdom for you all the way from Hong Kong:
1. Indulging exclusively on anything is bad. Too much water can kill you; too much oxygen is toxic. While you're thinking of enabling them when they're young, don't forget that they still need love and arts.
2. Give them legos, or playdols. Or as others suggests, a bag of glass. Give them something that they can express their imagination upon. (i.e. p0rn). Seriously, if I were you, yes I would enable them in technology; but at the same time I would also teach them how to make music with the computer, how to draw with a nice wacom tablet and corel painter.
Don't just teach them how to write actionscripts and "slashdot" websites. Let them explore.
3. Once you give them Sam and Max, or Dune 2, or other highly addictive games, it's good to set a time limit. a. This gives them some time daily to feel that there's a family to attend to. b. It trains them to awp better, faster, and more accurate in CS when you have a deadline.
4. Definitely no battery operated love gadgets.
Computers are entering our lives at every level and sooner and sooner. Children are born nowadays in an age where they rather learn to type on a keyboard than learn how to breath.
... in there.
d =10318361)
Being a little geek myself I am the last to say that I'm not having fun fiddling with these damn nice machines, but still remembering the days without computers I do belive that children first need to be able to be children. Childhood only lasts for such a short time it is a shame that even this period of their live is invaded by these machines. Children should play, outside, with each other, In Real Life.
There was a time I believed that every child should have a computer in class as soon as possible is something I've left behind me for a couple of years now.
Let children be children first, they'll have time enough afterwards to discover the wonderfull virtual world
(reposted from : http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=122736&ci
An off button ?
- Deluxe Paint II
- Chuck Yaegar Flight sim, and
- Some music composition program
A few years later, he gave me a 486 and showed me anToday,
My point is this - whatever tech you show your kids - choose wisely. The particular things you choose may really make a big difference.
"I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me" -Jesus (John 14:6)
I'm not trying to be snide, but this seems like something that you should be able to answer as well as the rest of us. Since you're posting on Slashdot, I'm assuming that you have at least a passing familiarity with what technology is up to. So I recommend asking yourself what it is that you use every single day (excepting niche things that may only relate to your profession). Let your kids witness and join in with the tech related things that are important to your life, and you'll be giving them a good start. A complete intro to tech it might not be, but I think that if something is that important to basic life then you're probably involved with it in some way.
You have equipped Child (lv. 3) with Broken Keyboard of Earth Magic.
Defenestrate: Literally, "to throw out of a window".
Provide a Linux/FreeBsd/... Open Source computer. ...
Your children will be very irritated (what no msn wink !!!!), no pirated version of photoshop ?? NO itune
But they will have to learn to be selfreliant, and find out that they can:
Fix stuff (really fix them)
Be part of a community of doer instead of brainless consumers.
Cheers
[ps]
My first PC was a Sinclare ZX Spectrum 48K+ (dead-flesh keyboard was later replaced with the nice keyboard) which I started programming on at about 4 years old, if I recall it was because I saw my dad attempting to program it and I asked him how he made it do stuff, he showed me the ZX Basic manual and I was away!
I also had a 25 in 1 (5 y/old), 50 in 1 (6 y/old) and 250 in 1 (7 y/old, build an AM transmiter with it!) electronics kits.
If I am ever cursed with a human parasite (kid) then I think I will start the exposure to technology from birth but also mix in a good quantity of sport/kung-fu as I don't want no kid of mineto be a weiner!
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
Asking how to teach children about technology is fine! But maybe a nerd news site is the wrong place.
I see tons of postings like the ones already appeared:
- teach them program object orientated programming, yeah!
- i suggest start with a simpler operating system, like MacOS and then gradually move on to more complex ones
- math! math is the highest level of thinking!
- introduce them to star trek!
bleh....
Whats up with kids today. So many of my friends only listen to stuff that their parents listened to in high-school. Yeah i apreciate the classics, but hell, even my parents listen to new music (not top 40 shit mind you), while if i go over to one of my friends houses i dont hear much from the last 15-20 years... There is good new music out there.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
One word: Heathkit.
I presume you mean computers / electronics?
Get one of these. Should be able to get the knight-rider LED thing going in a couple of days, and after that it's all plain sailing.
What? Why are you all looking at me like that?
/* This sig is disabled. Press CTRL-W to enable. Thankyou */
VIBRATORS!!!
If you want them to be techies I suggest you absolutely forbid them to use computers.
Course, if you want them to speak to you in twenty years time, I suggest you completely ignore any advice I might have to give.
/* This sig is disabled. Press CTRL-W to enable. Thankyou */
So whether or not children are "exposed" to computers at a young age does not by definition "shape their future" (well, in a sense it does of course, but not in some "oh no, the computer made us into what we are today" kind of way).
Donate free food here
Equip your child with a sense of humor.
(hell, while your at it, pick up an extra for yourself!!)
We are the Borg. We are huge fans of immersing children in technology.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
"Silicon Snake Oil" by Cliff Stoll http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~stoll/ : deeply ambivalent!
This is the silliest recurring post I see on slashdot and here's why: what's the demographic of the average slashdot reader? late-teens to late twenties, male, geeky (but perhaps not in keeping with the dorky sterotype of our predicessors)? So, as a parent, you're going to ask THIS group of guys when you should do something that has potentially long-lasting impact on your child... riiiight. Speaking as the father of three, I won't do it. My kids are too special and too important to risk horsing up on account of taking the advice of a bunch of guys who know as much about children as they do about grammar.
/. crew is the LAST group of people on earth I would turn to for advice on parenting.
No offense, but the
-C
"This above all, to thine own self be true"
Wouldn't it be possible to have a "whitelist" based internet access?
Instead of filtering out unwanted sites you could just supply a list of domains which _are_ allowed (i.e. educational sites, children-specific sites, search engine). If the kids wanted to visit websites outside this range, they could just ask. I'm not talking about doing this for a 15-year old, but it'd be a good way to get a 6-year old acquinted with the 'net.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
There seems to be scientific proof that
Normal Person + Annonymity in the web + Audience = Total Fuckwad. Always keep that in mind.
Parent post correctly points out the importance of morality. Lack of it will lead a kid to become a bully in school. Too much morality, and he/she will end up being bullied.
Buy them a bike. They'll learn basic mechanics and actually get some exercise.
Strong, Light, Cheap - pick two.
Just thought I'd throw in my 2 cents. My son just had his 5th birthday, for the last few years he has shown a lot of interest in computer games, etc. Whether its on my phone, interactive games via satelite or on the PC. He is still too young to operate a normal PC on his own. So, I got him an old PC (PIII) and put the educational dist. of Ubuntu on it (edubuntu, I think.) I put some educational suites on it, childs play and GCompris (spelling?) and some other educational games like tux math and tux type. The only non educational things I put on it were super tux and xjig, I setup xjig so that it would pick a random yu-gi-oh image and he loves it. Then I put all those as icons on a panel at the top of the screen, got rid of all the other panels, and locked down everything. So now there is a list of icons at the top of the screen, one for each game, that he cant delete and there is nothing that he can break/remove/edit. I know a childproof setup like this isnt exactly going to make him a proficient PC user but its his first PC so in a couple of years I'll gradually expose him to more advanced stuff.
When I have kids, I'm gonna set up a linux box, with internet, and limit it to educational sites, and things like wikipedia and programming tutorials and how stuff works. And tell them they can use the compuer nd the internet when ever. Then i know that they're only absorbing info from it, not going on my space or similar sites. I'll check the history, and see if anything like myspace has popped up, and block it, or spoof it to look like a 404, 'cos then they'll have to look up what that means, and learn even more :-) I am 15, and i simply find myspace, msn and that lot just boring crap, I prefer to browse things that let me learn, and if my kids are anything like me, they'll do the same.
My daughter (almost 2) loves computers, remote controls, cell phones and anything with buttons. It's hard not to read into her explorations an affinity for technology. I really want her to be a programmer, but obviously the ability to manipulate a mouse and make accidental phone calls on a mobile don't mean anything. More importantly, I can steer her toward areas that I think she enjoys and excels at (watching Teletubbies seems to be an early strong suit) but I shouldn't push the issue. I told wife I don't care if she becomes a programmer, but I want her to be a Handy Girl. She has to be able to swap RAM on a computer or fix a broken light fixture. If she wants to be a Marketing major in college and join a sorority, that's OK if it makes her happy and she can still TCB in the technological world.
My step-daughter (10) has her own computer (a G3 tower) and does NeoPets, iChat and email on it. She's learning how to type, how to find information on the web. She's totally a girly girl, but right now the battle is to keep her from being a princess.
Children under the age of two should play with Penguine toys. Children from two years and above should play with Linux.
If you go with the standard Desktop PC with Windows etc, they'll pretty soon end up on MSN or AIM or worse Myspace as it has been said before. My chance was that - when I was 9 - my first encounter with a PC was with a n old old DOS with only one "funny" program, Gwbasic. Now a good thing to do might be introduce them to a linux distro, how to install programs etc... ubuntu might be a good choice for that.
\u262D = \u5350
The ability to learn, an inquisitive mind and tolerance for those who disagree with them. The rest just happens automatically.
Will you PLEASE F off with the Fing beta now?
My dad was a programmer, but my mom pulled away computers from me when i was young, around 5, before that my life was filled with computers, instead I went to ballet and learned to play the violin (neither i regret, it was my choice to do that). I discovered computers myself, when i got my own computer at age 15, it appeared it wasn't a problem at all. :D). But don't give them fake kiddo computers, those are worthless. Its very degrading to get something to 'suit your age'. Young kids are brilliant at learning things, they could easily learn to write english, chinese and basic at the same time.
I am a self-educated webdeveloper now. If your kids have brains, show (not teach) them logic, so they can work with new input. A computer for kids to fiddle on, is great, its a great oppertunity for them to learn logic, let them figure out a simple programming language, let them make a simpe textgame (i did that
The younger you are the more feel you can develop for how things work and how to learn new things, computers are great for that. Stupid, press this now, programs don't. And internet is too dangerous, so stay away from that. If I'm ready for kids, I will provide them with a computer for themselves, that's not on the internet. And I would limit the time, you don't want children with RSI.
Getting a two year old to hold a pen correctly and start drawing more or less inside the lines of a colouring book means their working on their hand/eye coordination and fingertip fine control. I'd argue you won't get the same from a mouse, and it's a pretty valuable basic building block of physical competence.
He's three and a half years old now. I started in the winter when he was about one and a half. Mostly Nintendo 64 and SNES under emulation. His favorite game is "Super Mario 64" and he always says "Wanna play mario in the castle". He's starting to understand something about the games. One day we were playing Zelda and there was a room with a crack in the wall he said, "Use a bomb here!" I've felt guilty about this, but I had a talk about this with the janitor in my building (who is as insightful about games as anyone) and his take was: "Didn't your parents play cards with you when you were a kid? Is this any different?"
25 or so years later I'm the most financially successful person our family has produced, and one of the few who have avoided any serious jail time to boot. Yay technology :) I plan on introducing my children to the technology they'll be using as early on as they show interest in it, which with most children as as early on as you'll let them do what the grown ups are doing. I have two nephews who were proficient in windows before they were in kindergarten because they had as much fun on the computer as on the playsatation.
My real question is how they will use it. When I was being engrossed in computers I was programming in BASIC and some LOGO, I was tinkering and building thigns with the computer (including a bubble memory module for instance). The technology we have now isn't so friendly to tinkering anymore, and how many people when learning how to use a computer now are learning how to program one as opposed to how to use applications? Will my kids need a subscription to Make magazine at the age of 6?
(Rambling mode.. disengage...)
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
I say buy an old 70's era car... Something like a Mustang or Corvette. They fix it with your kid. A lot of the techniques you use to get a car running well are just like the techniques you use to get a computer running well... Diagnosis, debugging, measuring, modifying, checking, etc.
Plus your kid will have a useful knowledge of how cars work. And when they turn 16, give it to them. They'll be a lot less likely to wreck something they've spent years to create.
At two and a half years old I felt that my son was ready to start using a computer for simple educational games.
I simply took a refurbished computer (kids games/sofware don't require much hardware in general), found a keyboard that didn't have a Windows key on it, and put 2 mice on the machine.
Most kids games are on Windows, so that's what I installed. The box is just his and it was cheap so if it gets screwed up, there's no big deal.
Lack of a windows key helps to prevent accidentally getting task-bar and start menus popping up mid game; leading to confusion.
One mouse I modified so that the left and right mouse button were joined to reduce confusion as well.
(Had a spare cheap mouse, and it was easy to modify instead of finding a single button mouse).
The other mouse was my mouse so that I could help control his movements without interupting him as he worked things out. I didn't have to do this for long though. Only a month or so.
He's 3 now, has a collection of about 10 games that he playes on average 1 hour a week, and goes through them on his own without any major problems. We just make sure that we start up the games for him still to make sure the CDs won't get wrecked.
It's commendable (and necessary) to take such an interest in your child's development. However, on the issue of technology, I don't think you need to worry about how to expose them to technology, at least in general. I think this is like our parents thinking about how they should expose us to writing instruments or TV. (Sure, you should buy a toddler the fat crayons and probably not sharp pencils!) Your kid(s) will be surrounded by technology so it will just happen.
What you will need to focus on, though, are details like which toys and games to let them have, which video games, which TV shows to watch, etc. I think that's where your focus should be.
You may be surprised at how soon your child will have a cell-phone-communicator and GPS tracker. Unlike those of us with older kids, you may have to deal with choices like whether the above are things they wear or are actual implants.
Reading to your children, and them seeing you and your wife read for pleasure is the most important thing you can do for your child.
Ross Winn "not just another ugly face..."
My daughter get's what was good for me and gets spared what wasn't benefitial for me.
:-) ) - and her first basics in CLI/Bash and scripting with Python. I'll slowly introduce her to some nice powerfull GUI (KDE, in some screeching pink theme it will be I guess :-) ) + apps and show her that using them in the right manner requires training, precision and foresight. By that time she'll also have learned to search up information and help on her own on what interests her (read: how to use and recognize a good manual/book, what an index and a glossary is/what google is and does).
... and all the rest thats needed. She'll probably have the little bonus of a solid Aikido training. I got her to come along with her classmate - if she keeps up (keep your fingers crossed!) till she's grown up I'll feel sorry for any poor sob that get's pissy with her.
Meaning: When she's old enough (14-15) she'll get a programable computer (probably my old Sharp PC 1403) and I'll teach her some basic or teach her to use the manual the right way.
She (we) won't get a TV. She's not getting a mindless video console with unlimited access.
She'll get my GameBoy Advance when she's old enough (around about 12) but no games that are mindless and rely on randomness. Instead she'll get some good intelligent ones that rely and train on strategy, tactics and foresight (remember Qix?) and her access to them will be limited (2 hrs/week, no more than half an hour a day). She'll get that as a bonus on top of the fairy tales and stories me and my wife read to her. Not as a sorry excuse for me to have my peace.
She'll not get Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon 1,2,3,4 and 5 plus special editions.
When she's old enough (15-16) she'll get an Inet capable computer, her own password protected chatserver for her and her classmates and friends - we'll set it up together and she'll learn some basics about setting up a Jabber Server (so will I
She'll not get a mindless course in MS Office, and she will not be one of those poor sobs that mistake "Spreadsheet Tool" with "Excel" or "Wordprocessor" with "MS Word" or "Presentation Programm" with "PowerPoint". She'll also have learned by then that the point about computers is getting them to do stuff themselves (programming)- and not sitting in front of them doing mindless repetetive tasks (nice typewriter + video console + creative tool + film studio is a bonus, not the only thing; it's a computer darling, that's what's special about it - it automates simple mind tasks that normally only humans can do)
In other words: When my daughter is released into the world on her own she will have experienced love, parents who talk to and respect one another, a father that is authoritive but loving and 3 square meals a day. She'll know how to cook, bake, knit, build a shelf, hold a drill, sew (I'm teaching her that, not mom), what clothes go good together, what electicity is, what 230 Volts and 50Hz mean (that's in germany, folks) and the names of the flowers and birds that are around, how to behave at the dinner table, how to play guitar
But on top of all that she'll have her head in the right place when it comes to technology due to a father who's profession is in the field and helped her along the right way. And she'll be aware of the fact that she's priviliged (compared to 50 million indian untouchables for instance) and be gratefull for it.
Bottom line: Turn your brains on. You know the drill, your children don't. Love, true tlc, the basics plus some good cultural extras and then a desire to do it right when introducing your children into tech is all they can ever have whished for later on. Everything else will fall in place. And you are right in being rather more slow and moderate than the rest of the meek when introducing them to tech.
Just don't forget: It's not that OSS tool you're working on that is your favourite pet project anymore - it's your siblings. If it's not "dad needs to make money" stuff your doing at your home computer learn to turn your attention to them imediately whenever they need it - especially when sitting in front of your favourite box.
These are the 2 cents from a father (Software Developer) of an 8 year old girl
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
My philosophy with my kids is to include them in things that I do... not necessarily computer related. I fix my own cars... so I include them. They come out to the garage and help me work on them... hand me tools... ask questions. I'm also starting to build a plane (Van's RV-7A), and I'm including them both on that.
May not be "technology" so to speak, but I am a technologist for a living. My feeling is that giving them a broader base of experience allows them to be more well-rounded individuals. My parents did the same thing with me, and though I work in computers for a living I have the skills at-hand to pretty much do whatever I want for a living. I've been an EMT, a bartender, and now in technology I've worked consulting and corporate jobs both. I've been a technical writer, administrator and engineer... and now I'm going into technical management.
I've been able to do well in any challenge I have been handed (or given myself) because I have a wide ranging base of experience and abilities, mostly thanks to my parents (and uncles, and aunts) who included me into whatever it was they were working on. They never forced me into a particular career path, or limited me when I showed curiosity about anything. As a result, I'm a pretty well adjusted and adaptable person who can work in computers during the week, go fly at the weekend, and raise my kids to be well rounded individuals.
Oh, and I also cook...
YMMV, but don't sell your kids short by forcing them down a technology path. The technology you have at home (I presume, given your questions) will give them the experience they'll need to use a computer in the modern world... pushing other technology onto them will just start leading them down a narrow path. Let them explore their own creativity and curiosity... and include them wherever you can in what you're working on. You'll be surprised how quickly they learn this stuff.
Seriously, I'd start them out with primitive technology, for a few reasons:
1. computers are gradually becoming just slightly more interactive versions of televisions for many people
2. it doesn't cost and arm and a leg to provide them simpler tech
3. yesterday's greatest toy is often every bit as good as today's greatest toy, minus a few pixels
As far as computer use goes, I let my two boys start with simple educational kid games. Then they got to play a few arcade games - like NetHack (which taught them the keyboard). Now they like simulators and flashier games like tuxracer. But now (ages 8-12) they're also playing around in wikipedia, using gimp, open office, etc.
I wouldn't mind a timer though, that would limit how long they can use the computer every day. It hasn't become a problem yet, but we're headed towards conflict on that subject.
I have read about halfway down the first page of comments (threaded view) and the ones rated 4 or 5 are predominantly saying, "Kids should not be influenced by/distracted by/allowed to use/etc. computers/the Internet." I am 13 now, and when I was, say, 5, my parents got a Mac Performa 6400 with AOL. When I was 9, I used the Web to learn some HTML. Is that bad? Computers are now my hobby, Linux especially. Is all this bad?
The important parts, in my 13-year-old opinion, are watching them when they are young, and controlling sites they go to. Let me tell you, AOL isn't really that good for kids. As I note when I [now rarely] sign on to the teenage version, the welcome screen is filled with garbage about actresses and actors and movies and "music" and is written at a kindergarten reading level. Although now I am not influenced by this, I probably would have been when I was younger. Lesson: don't hand off supervision to the computer. Lesson is not: The Internet is all a bad place, stay away. Just instruct them never to click ads and monitor their use. Would you stay away from the "big bad Internet"? I guess not, because you're reading Slashdot!
Furthermore, if you take the Internet out of it, I really see no reason to disallow computer use. Yeah, sure, don't log them in as Administrator. They really can't accidentally do much harm to the computer. I don't see why it is "bad".
I have a 3 yr old who is just learning to use the mouse. She has been watching my wife and I play with Noggin and PBS kids ever since she was 1yr old. There are alot of great computer games out there that teach letters, numbers, music, hand eye coordination, and how to follow directions. I agree that parents should always watch and mentor their children; but, with the Internet as a tool it is only preparing children to experience the rich media content that their education will be filled with in the future. I have read a number of articles saying that this rich content makes it difficult for a child to maintain focus and has potentially been linked to all the cases of ADD we have in the world. But for now, I am training my child to be ready for the next world and doing the best to pull her away from the NET after an hour of supervised play. >
I'm a parent of 2 boys. I keep them away from the computer. I try to learn low tech stuff all the time and I try to have the boys learn this as well. Things like brewing and engine repair, home repairs, carpentry. My oldest wants a telescope (he's 7). So we've been studying the constellations at night. Whatever you do just be there with your kids so they can learn and enjoy the processes. Kids needs to learn critical thinking and self-determination. Technology will always advance quicker than you can teach but no matter how fast it goes people always seem to pick it up even without a technology background.
my $.03 (adjusted for inflation)
how about a Digi-Comp
http://www.mindsontoys.com/kits.htm?dc1_main.htm
teaching the basics.
for books that didn't make it:
The first one: The Magical World Inside the Abandoned Refigerator
Others I liked:
Eggs, Toilet Paper, and Your School
Hammers, Screwdrivers And Scissors: An I Can Do It All Book
Strangers Have The Best Candy
You're Different, and That's Bad!
Daddy Drinks Because You Cry
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
My 18 mo. daughter sees both of her parents on their laptops all the time (a graphic designer and a technology educator). I put Tux Paint on both machines (powerbook g4 and linux/windows ibm r52) she loves it and waves at tux...she's learned to say "blue" and "golgeegabajeeshish". The mice are too big for her so she holds down laptop button with one hand and moves mouse with other. I plan on being ACTIVE and ENGAGED. Also I plan on providing balance and contextualizing her experience
It my experience there is no "hiding" technology away. Buttons of all kinds are begged to be pushed for a reaction (Especially the emotional ones!). I think it is amazing that a toddler can quickly suss out that a remote control makes the tv do things. Not only is technology a helping hand for our kids' inquisitive nature, but it can also helps out us parents to better understand our childrens' abilities from a much younger age.
From a non-computer software standpoint, it becomes more of an issue like many of the other posters have expressed; Not to simply leave your children to their devices. They still need to be guided. Share with your kids technology, don't just simply give it to them. When the day comes for my children to have a mobile phone, portable media player, etc. I will be responsible to make sure they don't use it to harrass/bully other kids, or take video of one of their friends (insert immoral activity) just for the fun of it. I hope I'll be able to get them interested in more productive things as they grow (ie home automation, making their own music/videos, organizing their makeup or savings account) that will keep them from using tech in a negative way.
Techie Father
Truth is realized, not told...
The world is becoming more and more competitive. Starting a kid on technology as early as possible is an important factor in later life. Think of the current generation gap. Those of us in our 30s now had a mixed exposure. I had an engineer for a father, so he was encouraging his son from an early age to get involved with computers. Some other people I know became "users" of the technology later on simply because they weren't fully exposed to it as kids and had to learn it later on. A generation before us is almost entirely users, and they have to be trained via the "memorize these commands to do your job" method because user interfaces aren't just _intuitive_ to them like they are to some.
These days, it's safe to say that most people are at least capable of reading their e-mail and using a web browaer. But who knows what the future holds? The key is to produce a kid who is capable of wrapping their head around "new" things throughout their life. When you think about it, life in general has changed a lot in the past 30-40 years. Back in the day, you got a job out of school and stayed with the same company for 30 years doing the same class of things. Now the employment landscape has changed, people swirch jobs almost as often as they buy new cars, and you're under a lot of pressure to be an expert at everything at once.
Give the kid every advantage it can get. There are people in the third world who would kill for access to advanced technology.
We have two kids. When our oldest was 2-ish, we set up an old non-networked machine with a Sesame Street game. At first, she'd pull us over to the computer when she wanted to play. We'd put the CD in and start the game up for her.
Then we started to notice that she was playing the game, but neither of us had started it up. She'd figured out that she could click on the desktop icon and hit enter to start it up.
We got a couple more games. She learned how to swap CDs, and which CD went with which game.
When she was 3 and half, I gave her an old Logitech ClickSmart digital camera. It's great for kids. I configured the software to automatically download and delete the pictures from the camera, and showed her how to plug the cable in, and how to launch the photo album software. For two weeks, every time I turned around, it was "Surprise Daddy!" CLICK! FLASH! I had spots in my eyes constantly.
She's now 4 and a half. She's been upgraded to a 700 Mhz Athlon. She goes to the Noggin website to play games, and has half a dozen or so games she likes to play. There's a link to Noggin on her desktop, and she knows which CD goes with which games, and can start them herself.
The computer is just another toy to her. She still draws with her crayons and plays games and does all the usual kid stuff. But she will never be able to remember not knowing how to use a mouse. She's also getting good at framing stuff in the camera.
Her old machine was inherited by her 2 year old little sister. We found a game that lets kids just pound on the keys. She seems to like it.
In an earlier post, John Hasler wrote, "If you mean "computers" say so. "Technology" is not a synonym for "computers". Hint: cooking is technology."
... is an addition to 'purely mental' intelligence. We can achieve it in the presence of appropriate materials, such as pen and paper, print, or computers. This image is natural if we think of the mind as a remarkable and complex machine, but one that can be enhanced by allowing appropriate external extensions to the mechanism, extensions that wind up improving our abilities to represent the world, to remember and reason about it. ... it is an intelligence achieved cooperatively with external materials." (p. 5)
This is a very insightful comment, because your question goes quite a lot deeper than most people realize. Essentially, the term "technology" is usually taken to mean computers these days, but shouldn't be. We have all kinds of technologies, and no human over the age of about a year functions daily without them. The psychologist Vygotsky divided our technologies into two classes: tools (for external physical tools,) and signs (for psychological tools such as language) see (Wertsch, 1991 for a fuller discussion of this area.) I would presume that you are teaching your toddler language and social skills, so your question devolves onto physical tools.
As regards physical tools, many psychologists working in this area hold to the "distributed cognition" view. In this view, our intelligence does not reside merely in our heads, but is distributed over the available tools. Another term for this is "material intelligence". diSessa (2000) notes, "Material intelligence
Therefore, the short answer to your question is yes, you should expose your child to technology, but do be careful to choose those that extend his/her cognition. Pick useful tools rather than junk.
References: diSessa, A. (2000).Changing minds. Computers, learning, and literacy. Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press.
Wertsch, J. (1991). Voices of the mind: A sociocultural approach to mediated action. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard Univeristy Press.
Another option from Radioshack is one of their Electronics "Snap-Kits".
It's for kids 8 and up. Still, my 5 year old has learned to wire and trouble-shoot a simple circuit. He's now able to identify capcitors and resistors on a computer motherboard and tell his grandmother, (essentially), what it does. He understands, (again essentially), that a computers and other electronics are just a whole bunch of simple parts assembled into really long chains.
Attempting to shape your child's future based on your past has is silly. The future will have little resemblance in the areas of education, technology and work environment to what you are use to. Make sure they are morally responsible and have a very strong work ethic. If you can do that little else will matter.
I say this in light of current trends in educational drug use and the shift in work to automation. The people left working will be the ones who really want to, and few others, but almost everyone will have the ability to perform well beyond our mental capacity.
One point I would stress very strongly is not to overcommit or overexpect. While I think that all kids should be exposed to tech at an early age I think they should all see mountains, the ocean, music, art, poetry, theatre, the surise, etc. My point is many parents that I have seen have overemphasized something like tech on the assumption that a) it is most important and b) the kids are guaranteed to love it. Neither one is guaranteed to be the case. She may find that she has more affinity to literature than circuits in which case, take her to the library. I often think that parenting is also a lot about finding good interests and maximizing them rather than instilling them a-priori.
Good luck with your lifelong project.
A large trend in parenting now-a-days is to immerse your child in sign language at an early age because the child will be able to comunicate concepts through sign language before they would be able to speak. My wife and I decided not to do this because we never signed and we got along fine. But we do let him type in Notepad or Word and teach him the letters he types. We type out words for him like "DADDY" and "CAT". It seems to me that a child will be able to understand the concept of letters and words long before his or her little hands can handle grasping a pencil and writing. But it doesn't take much motor skill at all to press a key on the keyboard. So we are trying to use a keyboard and notepad as a way of introducing letters and phonics to our son before he is able to write. Just my 2 cents.
You're trying to stimulate a self-wiring neural net. Any form of interactive technology will tend to supply that stimulation automatically as the child plays with it.
I'd stay away from children targeted stuff like "My First Whatever". There's no real advantage to it over a real item, and it's not likely to provide them any signficant amount of learning opportunity - unless you're trying to teach them the user interface patterns of children's toys.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
And for God's sake, don't let them log on as Administrator.
I would do it like a tribal coming of age when he turns 13. I'd hand my son a Linux CD and an a laptop with a formatted hard drive and say "Son, if you can get this installed and get the wireless working. You can browse the internet all you want without supervison."
"And no...You may not use my computer to read google groups on how to do it."
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
When my boy was just crawling, I took a keyboard and painted it many colors. It was one of his favorite 'toys', he'd sit next to daddy on the laptop and press the buttons on his keyboard.
Now that he's two, he knows how to turn on the laptop, and knows how to hit Enter at the Lilo prompt to get an OS to load. He knows that you have to type something at the login prompt for either Windows or Linux, just hasn't figured out what to type for the login prompt. But at this point he thinks it's great fun just to type away at the login prompt. Once I log him into Linux, he favorite thing is KStars - it does something different with just about every button pushed or every mouse click.
So, immerse them early. They'll figure things out insanely fast.
My boy (2.5 years) knows... If you push the reset button Daddy gets angry. If you push the button under the slot a dvd comes out, the movie stops, and Daddy gets angry. If you poke randomly at the keyboard and mouse things happen on the screen and Daddy gets angry. If you turn nobs on the sound card interface loud popping noises happen and Daddy gets angry. Poor kid'll probably be traumatized. Doesn't stop him from trying. He also knows that if you put Thomas Choochoo (or 'tar Wars, Potter, Nemo, Woody-Buzz) DVD in the right slot you get to watch a movie. He knows that in general turning nobs and pushing buttons make things happen and frequently Daddy says, "No that's hot." He learned lots about hot last week when he touched the waffle iron at his Mom's house. He knows that when things stop working or get really slow they need new babas (batteries.) Over a year ago I was desperately searching for a DVD that was due back. I asked him, "Where's the DVD?" He went to the PC and pointed at the DVD drive. I pushed the button and it wasn't in there. I searched for a long time and then asked him again. Again he pointed at the computer, but his finger was pointing at the bottom edge of the DVD player. He had shoved the disk into the slight gap between the DVD and the CD Burner. I had to disassemble the PC to get it out but sure enough, there it was.
-- QED
If they have any sense, they will catch on fast.
As I watched, my nephew (5) had the genius idea to search Google for "boobies".
That's right. Five years old. Boobies.
I know it sounds crazy in hindsight, but my exposure to pr0n as a kid was more or less "naturally" limited to whatever I could find run-over on the side of the road when I was biking around the neighborhood.
As I made a mad dash for the computer from across the room as he hit the Return key in order to try to hide the images that are, well, not just boobies, let's just put it that way, my nephew got all excited. (At both my reaction, and at whatever he could make out on-screen.)
Pandora was unleashed. I bought my sister a NetNanny from Staples...
My parents bought their first computer (zx spectrum, 48k, rubber keyboard) when I was 18 months old, not long after I'd learned to talk. It taught me to read, write, basic maths & started me off with computer programming. by the time i'd started school, i had a huge head start on the other kids, and i've been able to benefit from that for the rest of my life too. you'd be suprised by how quickly even a very young child can learn to use a computer.
Web Design
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Some kids are going to like that, and some aren't. I never did. Had no interest whatsoever. I also knew from a fairly young age that I wanted to be a scientist, NOT an engineer. Before I really had a good idea what an engineer did, I had the vague idea that it wasn't for me, even though it's kind of the "cool" thing for a nerdy science/math-oriented kid to want to be when they grow up. Once I found out what they did, I KNEW it was not for me. (And then I went to MIT, and had to endure years of "Oh, so you're gonna be an engineer?" every time I told someone where I was attending college...)
Out of the things listed here, I would have been interested in approximately zero of them, even though I was very into science, math, and computers.
Not that I have many better suggestions off the top of my head, but just a note that not all kids who are destined to be techies are going to want to build things, so don't put all your eggs in that basket.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
(oops, really long anecdote to try to impress my point, which is in the last paragraph)
This past Christmas I put together some random parts I had to build a PC for a friend of mine who doesn't have a lot of money but does have six children. The oldest one of his children is 13 and the youngest isn't 1, and they'd never had a computer before (and neither had the parents) so I figured I'd have to do some prep work to ensure that it'd be usable and also enticing (so they'd actually use it).
My first concern was that they have a gamecube and they like it a lot, and since I wanted this computer to be a fun way to self-educate I figured I'd need to make it a lot cooler than a grey box with a word processor. So to make it a lot more kid friendly I took the case all apart (including buttons and stuff), masked things off, and spray painted it bright red and yellow. I even did the monitor.
The computer was fairly low powered, and I'm a college student so I'm on a budget; so I went with Linux and choose Edubuntu (although I installed Ubuntu and installed Edubuntu on top of that). I set it up with as many educational games as I could find, knowing that it'd be competing with Mario Party.
Not being a parent I thought passwords would be hard for them to handle, but I thought user management would be useful for their parents so I installed turned on the face browser login and put pictures of all the kids on and gave them simple passwords like "dad" and "jr" (the name of their dog).
Anyways, this is getting really long, but the point is I went through all this extra work because I thought it'd be hard to convince them to use the thing, but I was played the fool! Not only had I underestimated their interest, I had no idea that even their kindergardner had computer experience from school! I thought I'd be starting on a blank slate and that I'd have to teach the kids everything abou the computer but as each one sat down for the first time to test their user account they immediately broke in to the menus and started clicking on things just to see what they did while their parents were freaking out, sure that they'd break something. With no instruction even on this part, it only took about a half hour the 5 year-old figure out how to completely fill his Gnome panels with googely Geyes (His interest was high enough that I gave him some simple games I'd written and explained to him that if he worked with computers he could learn to make his own games, and he thought that was just abou the coolest thing he's ever heard in his life).
The best part? They'd never used anything but Windows at school and, while the older kids said they noticed a difference, they absolutely did not care that it wasn't the interface they were already somewhat used to.
I think even if parents choose not to expose their kids to technology at a young age they are going to encounter it. Take the example of my friends who thought their kids had ZERO computer experience, but their 5 year old was all over it!
It's just like sex or drugs: if the parent's are quiet or uninvolved the kids will learn at school or from their friends, and those aren't always the best sources of information.
earning an MBA in no way ensures, gaurentees, motivates, or delivers money or power.
Have them start a business. Learn to run it like a business. If they are successful, they won't even need college to be 'da man'.
Hell a moderatly succefull owner of a plumbing company makes more money then most MBAs.
Point in fact, you should start your own business, and teach him/het the lesson you learn.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Even though I did maths and physics at school and university, I was not remotely interested in computers. It took hours to make them do stupid things in Basic. The day I saw Photoshop in 24bit colour on a Powermac (1994) was an epiphany. An endless supply of blank canvases, and every colour and brush imaginable.
Photoshop was the bait, but Mac OS 7.x made sense after Basic, DOS, Windows and Unix. Files, even system files were called appropriate names. You could make a folder on a disc and call it 'System Folder', drag in the 'System' file and 'Finder', and you had a working boot disc. Without needing to learn programming, I could see the structure of the system in the GUI, and when rarely something didn't work, I could find out why. That gave me the determination to return to the arcane inconsistency of Unix and the frustrating unreliabilty of Windows and persevere until the job is done.
If you want to teach your child that she can enjoy and benefit from using computers, give her an old System 7 Mac and Photoshop 3. It's the shallowest learning curve.
my 2 cents
.-.-.
Do things in balence. My daughters do some computer, some tv, lots of books, lots of puzzles, lots of Barbie etc...
The programs I prefer for my daughters on the computer are those with purpose. At 5 and 2 I find the best value is the Reader Rabbit software. A bit trailing edge, but that means it works on the no-internet computer. We also have some other software that is more advanced, that they like (various Barbie stuff), but my opinion is it is less valuable. For my toddler she also likes the Winnie the Pooh Toddler (and pre-school) product, but she has a crush on Winnie the Pooh so your results may differ
Cheers
kj
FIrst off, computer will still be around and ubiquitous. Unlike like 1990. I mean, go back on step further. If you were 18 in 1980, what kinds of things could you be taught in 1964? well typing was still relevent, the phone was primarily unchanged. Meaning it operated be selecting numbers.
So what you learn today is: Don't fear technology changes, learn to use technology for your needs.
In 16 yers computers will still need an interface, still need to be used in a way that is usefull, and they will be surrounded by co-workers who have always used them.
The first 50 years of any new tachnology is like wild fire, but it always starts to flatten. Cars are a lot different now then thay werer in 1930, but I bet someone from 1930 could drive one will little or no training. Mostly training on what they don't need to do anymore.
Of course, if you were in 1930 and went back 75 years, nobody would no what to do with an automobile.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I have a two year old daughter to whom I gave an old ViewSonic Tablet PC. It's a low-end model with only a sylus input (no keyboard), and I found it to be completely useless for any serious purpose.
Being two, she doesn't yet take advantage of all the features the tablet has to offer, but she is a huge fan of the Journal application. After helping her out with it for a week or two, she now knows how to power up the tablet, press the button that starts Journal, and select the different virtual pens and highlighters. She'll spend about half an hour at a time drawing and scribbling on the thing. It is actually pretty cute to watch.
I always know when she's been using it because there will be 20 - 30 instances of Journal running. Maybe by the time she turns three she'll know how to close the windows after she's done with them.
Everybody is saying "teach your baby this way, not that way, expose the baby to this/ not that". Ah!
Truth is, babies are not waiting on us to learn their way around.
Keep this rule in mind: the child is learning even when you are not teaching. (Think for example at how they magically learn language, starting from a no-language situation.)
We walk around lost in thought, and hardly notice outside world; babies are like sponges, they hear everything, learn everything. Even when a 3 year old seems concentrated in a game, s/he hears people talking, (also from TV), and learns; and memorizes; and a week later expresses a thought that shows that s/he has made a new connection and thought on the subject.
If you use VCRs in your house, by the age of 4 s/he will master the VCRs; and if you use a computer, s/he will start using computers no matter what you decide. And forget about keeping control of the TV remote.
Kimber makes a nice .22 conversion slide that fits their .45 1911. With such a heavy pistol, the recoil is almost nothing. Only trouble is, you might have to wait until daughter is 5 or 6, for her hands to be large enough. Perfect for learning on.
Oh, what kind of tech were you interested in?
I drank what? -- Socrates
"Any single-function electronic toy"
no such thing to a child.
"Any single-function computer project or kit"
same as above.
"Anything where practical experimentation would be too hard (home-made sugar-based rockets might be a great occasional bit of fun, but I can think of no practical way they can do more than entertain until they're large enough to require special licenses - and even then, research would be extremely limited, for safety reasons)"
nope, if they are interestde, then they will be able to do it. My 8 and 5 year old continue to amaze me with what they think of.
For example, my son got a solar power car kit. Solar panelm moter chasis. Preet much just need to assemble tires, attach wires. Not much use for learning, right? wrong. He wanted to see what else would work with a solar panel, and why they wouldn't. This led into a conversation about size, which led into math. All in All a grat after noon.
a month later he was explaining it to someone else. No he was not reciting math formulas, but he was repeating the basic concepts.
This weekend we will be building a volcano. I can't wait to see where that goes!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Do we really want to have 'geeks' 'exposing' children to technology?
"hey timmy come take a peek at my Hard Drive"
"hey susie, get a load of this new PHP that's going around!"
oh the humanity the humanity...
My kids absolutely adored their Leap Pads. Sure it is a childs toy, but it is also an introduction to the "Input-Process-Output" that is going to be found in all technology. Once they had mastered using the stylus on the leap pad, the move to a mouse on a computer was a simple transition.
The interesting thing about kids is that they are sponges, they will figure it out either way.
I am a bad parent. I spend too much time on the computer and the baby has also picked up the habit. He was bugging me to use the computer so often I gave him his own PC, except being only 1 1/2 yrs old, he was not very good at using the mouse. So a few months ago, I bought one of those touch screen panels and set him loose on the internet. He running a Windows box, so I set VNC to run as a service. Whenever the browser crashes, I can log in to fix it remotely. Now, at almost 2 yrs old, the baby is teaching grandmother english and how to surf the web. Here is a short video shot on the day I received the touchscreen.
http://www.youtube.com/?v=DdheUid0E-M
If you teach kids how to absorb infomation, processes it, and generate thoughtful output, you're 99% of the way there and you don't need tech to make that happen.
Tech changes so focusing on 'learning technology' is a waste of time.
I'm all for using the latest and greatest techno-wonder stuff but I'd love to see kids able to put together a coherent thought and communicate the thought without, umm, ya know, it's like, ummm, totally, well - ya know?
If you want to do the kid a favor, make sure they see YOU learning new stuff and enjoying the process. Take them to see, hear, do new things. Expose them to different points of view. Challenge yourself to know more. It pays off. The world is about change - teach them to expect change and embrace it with joy.
I'd sign in but can't.
Doug aka Dogugotw
He's 3 1/2. Following suit I took an old P3 installed and installed Tux Typing...He loves it, plus he's beginning to learn typing skills to boot. Any other good OSS that people have used or could recommend?
Carolina glow-in-the-dark DNA transformation kit to show how genetically engineered DNA can be inserted into plasmids and then into the DNA of E. Coli.
Forget technology; teach your kids to read a lot, and give them legal books to read when they're ready, so that you can prepare them for a career in law. If you want your kids to be well-employed and happy adults, this is a much better choice than any tech career.
Don't worry about teaching them how to use computers, either. They'll learn what little they need of that later, and their underpaid and poorly treated secretaries and paralegals will be doing most of the computer-based work anyway.
Take them to the golf course and make sure they're good golf players, because this will be an important asset in the legal world when they play golf with judges and other lawyers and do secret deals.
Note: this advice doesn't apply if you're planning on moving to a country that appreciates technologists while your kids are still in school.
Seriously ( although the above is true ), your kid should be doing lots of work with crayons and more traditional, tactile stuff... as well as spending some very heavily supervised time exploring a very basic MacPaint-style program on the computer... or a website or two. I cannot heap enough praise on some of the Flash apps ( god, I never thought I'd say it ) on Noggin or Sesame street. The animated coloring book apps ( with Oobi, the greatest googly-eyed hand ever ) are really fun and exciting, and a lot of the other games really focus on counting, letters, and memory skills... and they're just fun, too.
Really, you want your kid to get a head start reading ? Read them books every ( every ) night.
You want them to be artistic ? Sit down with them for a couple of hours every ( every ) day and do some coloring, painting, banging on drums.
You want your kid to be physically fit ? Spend some time with them every day throwing a ball, playing tag, playing with animals, riding a trike/bike, going for a nature walk.
You want your kid to be familiar with technology ? Well... just try to stop them, really, they're going to figure out how to work just about any electronic device around if they have any normal amount of curiosity, but if you want to give them a head start or a push in that direction, the same basic advice follows. Spend time with them in front of the computer... after you find some stuff you think is age-appropriate that they might enjoy, like a paint program ( hint: pattern fill tools and shading tools give kids a charge ) or a Flash game with their favorite Muppet or whatever... later you can introduce them to model rockets, electronics kits, 'food science' kits, science kits, and much later, simple programming tools.
Eventually, you may find that your biggest challenge is unplugging your kid and getting them to run around outside like people used to do back before cable and Tivo and Playstations. So programming your kid to like and do physical stuff might be your first goal... but there's nothing ( IMHO ) wrong with showing your kid how to use a computer. Personally, I'd recommend a Mac with a one-button mouse and a seriously locked-down user account ( with only the apps they might use enabled, and a carefully-picked set of bookmarked websites ) and you sitting there next to them, and limiting the duration, and not pushing it at all if they're disinterested or frustrated... there's plenty of time later for them to spend behind a screen. They should be playing with other kids as much as possible, really... balance is always good.
And yea. You should see a four-year-old kid's reaction to a model rocket shooting 600 feet in the air. BIG eyes.
A blank PC, Printed Intel Opt-Codes specs for the PC Processor, A boot disk with Linux brings you to a Hex Editor and a Web Browser filterd only for Programming sites.
Start em at 4 years old. and is only allowed to run programs he makes, w. excption of the Web Browser for refernece and the Hex Editor.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
To me, it doesn't seem like a question of "at what age should I introduce my child to computers?" Rather, it's more of a "what should I encourage my child to do with computers?"
Granted, IANAParent (yet), but I have many friends with young children. It seems to me that the children who help daddy or mommy assemble old computers gain a great deal of knowledge about how a computer works and not just how to make it do pretty things. (A friend of mine was very proud when his six-year-old successfully replaced a video card.) Also, there is a great deal of difference between simple point-and-click or steer-the-character-through-the-map games and programs that allow the child to be creative. Use of text programs, programming, video and image editing programs are a great outlet for creativity, just as much as a box of crayons and some construction paper can be. The Internet, too, is a valuable tool for research and discovering the world, so long as the parent supervises.
I'll give an example. I was raised in the TV-as-parent generation. While I did watch some TV, my parents also gave me access to the family video camera from a very young age. Using that video camera, one or two VCRs, and my parents' stereo system, I spent a lot of my creative time putting together basic videos for my family to watch. Now, as an adult, I have retained my love for video production, and I work in the TV industry.
So, to me, it's not so much when to introduce technology into the lives of children, as so may previous posters have stated. It's what the children are encouraged to do with the technology. It's the difference between consuming whatever is on the screen and creating things for the screen, in whatever form.
The internet itself is probably not be the best place to start this learning, but being able to evaluate information sources of all types will help them a lot when they do try to find useful information online. In retrospect, my parents prepared me well for the internet by teaching me to think about what I hear/read/see before the internet was important to normal people.
For a toddler, I would go with building blocks, pots and pans with wooden spoons, books, games (some of which for you play with them), and cardboard boxes.
Give them the tech when its lack is holding them back.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Check out "Scratch" from MIT:m l
http://weblogs.media.mit.edu/llk/scratch/index.ht
which is based off of:
http://www.squeakland.org/
The squeak smalltalk VM can run on the more machine archs than any thing else, puts Java to shame.
In this way, not only will you produce competent human beings who have every legitimate reason to love and trust you, you will also contribute to raising the human race a little further from the tide of ignorance much of the population still wallows in.
Technology... is essentially a set of tools. The best tool users are, IMHO, critical thinkers. When the time comes, bright, incisive and curious children will have the best chance to make the best possible use of the tools available to them. Whatever those might be... all I am certain of is that they'll be different from those available today. The one technological constant is change.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Yes, it's good for kids to learn how to use computers. BUT, the problem is that computers make things too easy and what happens is that the basics like simple mathematics and penman ship start to suffer. I remember, walking into a Boston Chicken restaurant and the electronic cash register had failed, so the young girl behind the counter had to figure out my change in her brain. She felt embarrassed and asked the manager to help her. This is growing a problem in our society. Computers are great tools, but instead of augmenting people's abilities, they are giving people a false sence of knowledge. I call this the "Value Menu Syndrome", because all these kids have to do is press 1 for a Big Mac and 2 for a double cheese burger. The math has been eradicated.
This is part of the reason (I feel) that people in poorer countries are starting to beat out America's kids in math and science simply because the lack of constant access to computers allows kids to be more creative by forcing them to exercise their brains more.
As a computer engineer myself, I feel it would be more beneficial if kids studied computers a little later in their youth (ie. 16+) and learn the basics early. The Internet is a great and convenient way to find information, but not all information found on it is true. It's easy for any shmuck to post a web page and claim his/her material is true or reliable when it fact it may not be. It's also very easy for kids to find hate and other forms of racist and highly opinionated material that can alter their sence of the "real" world. It's best for kids to remain somewhat innocent and use their brains to solve problems, then when the time comes show them the computer which will help them solve problems faster and easier.
My main goal (I have a 27 month old now) will be exposure and not to distract (it's a simliar theme to a few people on here). Myspace technology and is a fine distraction but even that will be a teaching tool by talking about what type of information is good to share and what isn't.
By default, especially with alot of blinking lights and cool looking things, your kid is going to be into what you're into. You have to make some intentional teachable moments throughout your time with him/her and expose him/her to things that are important to you.
I'm torn on the whole idea of keeping with new gear for them or old hand me down stuff. I think both would be good, but if he ends up being a gear head, maybe an evening could be spent installing a distro on the box and watching it go (or even just opening the machine and explaining what each of the parts do). I've heard arguments that bad, old gear makes kids afraid of technology because it doesn't work but I really jive with what someone else said regarding new computers making it too easy.
I also wonder how you could integrate technology into stuff they already think is cool. For me, what really got me jazzed about computers was a programming 'class' in 6th grade where we got to color a picture and write a program to make the picture appear on the screen. Mine was of the Tardis and I figured out that I could recolor the picture with black dots and make the tardis dissappear after a few minutes; boy was that an epiphany for me...but if I was into Dr. Who in 6th grade my fate as a geek was pretty well sealed by that point...
--pete
As somebody who's actually had to deal with this, exposing my sister technology from the time she was 4 years old on was one of the best things I ever did for her. I gave her a really old labtop, no internet connection (no ethernet ports and I removed the modem), no usb ports. Just Windows 95, a word processor, and paint. The important thing is getting kids used to the technology mindset so that they'll be equipped to fully take advantage of it when they're older. When I was younger, just using the File Manager on Windows 3.1 served me amazingly well later on in life.
I've always pictured the color of OS zealotry as a sort of bright flamingo pinkish hue
Show them how to use technology for themselves - the form itself isn't really relevant now. My first computer was a ZX81/SinclairTimex1000, it's a far cry from the 3.6GHz PC I'm using now - no doubt whatever your kids end up using at work it won't be exactly identical to todays models either ;)
Teach them how to explore the features and functions of a machine. Don't just teach them how to use Open Office - teach them general concepts behind it rather than the specifics of it.
Teach them to be flexible. Show them different OSes, and how to use them. Give them the tools to discover life for themselves - they'll learn a lot more for it!
Let them learn to ask questions, and how to find the answers - be it by experiment, asking an adult or using the internet. Show them how to determine good answers from bad.
Above all show them how to think for themselves! Once they know that...
>>> "We found a game that lets kids just pound on the keys. She seems to like it."
... but he specially likes sitting like his Dad and (literally) hacking away.
FOSS game? Please share. Our 8 month old loves pounding on his keyboard. Actually he's just learnt to clap/slap so anything will do
Yes, of course. And I meant ahead of themselves. Sorry for not being clear there. My daughter's more advanced academically than she is socially, and that imbalance is challenging for her. But the gap between where she is socially and where her classmates are socially is smaller and less concerning than her own internal gap between social skills and academic skills.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
My thoughts on this subject are that you should give them whatever technology that may come in handy for just about any field. I figure give them a powerful computer that can do anything, but also give them some non-computer technology to play with. Let them take your old appliances apart (just not your old CRT monitors and TVs) to get a better understanding of how things work, rather than just telling them that they work. Give them an old PC and let them take that apart and put it back together, this way they understand that the power button doesn't just turn the computer on, it actually latches a relay inside the PSU which powers up a transformer supplying 5 and 12vdc to the motherboard which then loads the bios, and so on. Make sure they have a grasp on what makes things tick, not just why they tick. One great way to do it is with those electronics kits they sell at radioshack, my grandmother bought me one of those for my 8th birthday, and when I got into 4th grade science class, they were teaching how to make a light bulb work with a battery and a wire, while I could already read schematics and build radios.
When immersing your kids in technology, make sure they at least get a grasp on how vast technology tuly is, a car mechanic may not make as much money or have as much education as an IT guy, but that doesn't mean he's any less smart, skillful, or works any less. There's so much to that word "technology" that goes far beyond your computer. Personally, I'm an IMAX theater projectionist part time, in an IMAX projection booth, everything is computer controlled, but the projector is still mainly just a big box with a bunch of gears, motors, relays, my experience as a weekend hacker as well as my experience as a mechanic come into play almost constantly at this job.
Rather than just throwing knowledge or expensive computers at them, just encourage them to learn all they can, some will naturally have a strong interest, and some won't, just encourage technical learning at least to the level they'll need to function in a world where something as simple as a toaster is microprocessor controlled.
Letting them grow up using a computer that dual boots windows and linux wouldn't be a bad idea either.
Why lie when you can just make up stuff and claim it to be true?
Vacuum cleaner
Washer-dryer
Manual typewriter
Garage hand tools
Oh, I bet you meant high tech...
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
A pointy wooden stick is technology.
My other body is also not wearing any.
"We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys." -- Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983)
A Child's play is roleplaying for adulthood.
Tomorrow's news yesterday -- the bleeding, visionary edge.
We started to learn touch typing when I was in second grade on old IBMs (think blue and white screen). Even then, it was anything but intense. I would not recommend any earlier than age 7 years. Let kids be kids - they should be outside getting exercise and fresh air, not inside playing video games. Look at our "American Obesity Epidemic." Even at age 7, our hands were not really big enough to comfortably handle the keyboards correctly. I specifically remember finding it easier to type the 'C' key with my index finger and my teacher correcting me, saying that as I got bigger, it would be more comfortable typing with the correct, middle finger. Jonny and Janie aren't getting an advantage by learning how to use C++ at age 6, if anything you're damaging them at an age when they need to build key social skills.
I got my first computer (a c-64) with many other 8-bit machines following it when I was 8 years old. Being exposed to computers of that era is much different than computers now with kids now. Back then, we didn't have to worry about virii as much as we do now. Depending on what computer you owned, you had to worry about power blackouts after typing in hundreds of lines of code. If you did have a problem, you hit the power switch and it would come back up in less than 3 seconds to where you started (san the program you wanted).
:)
:)
However, 20 some years later, as I look at the two pre-teen boys that live in my household I wonder, "What is the difference?" If you asked them what they want to be when they grow up, they want to be a rocket scientist and a cop respectively of their ages. I think any child psychologist would say that their interests reflect the adults interests in the household. A kid sees me typing in front of a computer 8+ hours a day will think, "Hmm, computers are really interesting." but will not go as far as "Hmm, I bet that code he's writing will be a really cool program." because now a days software isn't like that. It's prepackaged that you get out of a kiosk at the local drug/convenience store or a strip mall somewhere. Oh, and the internet too.
Back some 20 years ago, software was distributed on magnetic media sure. But people who were learning and got bang for their buck were coding from ABC's Publications of 'Compute' and maybe 'Compute Gazette' for commodore users. Local businesses could specialize in one computer brand because there was enough to go around. And game systems didn't have endless sagas like FF37.
So, when I look at these kids and ask the question, "How much technology is too much for a kid?". I say any is too much depending on what values you want to instill into them. Back in our day, parents would gripe about how much TV we'd watch. Now, I hardly watch 10 hours a week. But the computer addiction still lives tho I make sure to take a step back from it even and experience the real world. There's more to life than watching my characters appear on the screen.
Kids now, from what I've seen, are hardcore into electronics whether you like it or not. If it lights up and makes a noise (sometimes) then they're into it. Remember tamaguchi's? Those devices where you had to waste time with it otherwise it would die? Makes me wonder what would happen if the big EMP would wipe out electronics. Living without electricity sucks bad enough for a short time but for a kid who thinks it'll be forever for them to grow up, it's like fish in the blender. They're just going nuts till they find out what the person outside the glass container is going to do.
My advice: Teach them the same values you're accustom to. For any kid under the age of 13, do not buy them a game system. Make them go outside and play. If they need to be inside, get a old commodore or atari or apple 2 and some old copies of compute and teach them how to program. Sure the reward was the game, but the sense of accomplishment came from typing it all in by hand and catching every mistake. Computers show kids there's no room for minor slips unlike them doing the dishes.
It sure beats "I got my MORPG character to level 57!". Because kid, there's always that one person that's a higher level than you. See Boy Scouts Merit Badges as reference.
boom goes the dynamite....
I've four children ages 7-15 with varying degrees of interest in tech as a career. Our focus with tech has been to use it as an enabler. We love learning, discovery and adventure, so we have spent countless hours sharing good stories, news of cultures around the world, and explorations in nature and science at all levels. I use the Web as a reference tool, with several emailed newsletters that provide links to interesting stories. The computers are always in a shared space, and computer time is limited (typically 30min a day for play, another 30min for "something that meets Mom & Dad's criteria of educational"). On the topic of play, we have found great success with the simulation-based games. SimCity (in almost all of its incarnations), SimSafari, SimPark and so forth have been very much enjoyed. Likewise some of the RTS games like Civilization, Age of Empires and related have provided a lot of fun. At the same time, our children have learned much about cities, cultures, economics, politics, and yes, military history. Their play has been quite social (often 2-4 are gathered to share the play) and I happier to see them using what they've learned from these experiences rather than imitating first-person shooters. Additionally, our entire family enjoys spending time together exploring the world's of Myst and its imitators. The adventure games have continued to mature in plot-lines, beauty of presentation, and sense of wonder. To wrap up a long comment... keep the focus on what you care about, use the tech selectively to share your interests, your excitement and share their discovery of the world. Many basic skills are better taught personally rather than in weakly-done computer-based programs, while some skills are nicely re-inforce through carefully selected software tools. Also, some basic familiarity with tech skills is worth investment. All of our children have periodic assignments with Mavis Beacon for keyboard skills, and all learn to use the basic word-processing functions for their writing assignments. Finally, congratulations on your family. Thank you for taking the time and investing of yourselves into the lives of your children. The world is better for the intentional love you give your children. Cheers.
How does 35 kid-simple lines of code sound, to fly your 3D starfighter model through an interstellar skyscape? :D How does freeware, community-translated educational software already available in 16 languages sound? Watch for it at SIGGRAPH 2006, and all over the Web. The URL is, of course, http://www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com/.
Make them DM.
No really!
The kind of planning, campaign development, timelines, keeping groups of people focused on a task for long hours, delivering bad news to people about the quality of their contributions, pen and paper RPGs are the ultimate microcosm of the business world.
Screw the business sports analogies, AD&D is the best analogy!
Particularly dealing with problem players, people who don't like to contribute, or work against the grain of the project... I mean campaign.
To keep kids out of pure geekdom and able to socialize with the rest of the world, ensuring that they have a respect for competitive sports is very important too.
I will say that no matter what though, success should be measured in happiness. This kind of stuff will just give them more options. They have to choose to do what they love.
While voice input will eventually become the de facto method for interfacing with 'puter, for now folks still use the keyboard.
Thus, the best thing you can do for your kids is teach them the Dvorak layout.
If you're not familiar with it, the standard "QWERTY" (named for the first six letters on the top row of a keyboard) layout was created in the 1870's by Christopher Sholes, inventor of the modern typewriter.
Mr. Sholes had a problem, in that the keys in his machine jammed if a person tried to type faster than a few words a minute. His solution was to re-arrange the letters on the keyboard to SLOW DOWN THE USER.
In the 1930's, August Dvorak, an efficiency expert, decided to see if he could improve on the design. The result was the Dvorak Simplified Layout.
We'll never know for sure, but odds are Dvorak did stand a chance to replace QWERTY. However, the outbreak of WWII - where many of the typewriter manufacturers of the time switched production to weapons - hindered its acceptance. By the time the war was over, none of the manufacturers wanted to re-tool their product, so Dvorak lapsed into obscurity.
Tests show that the average QWERTY typist's fingers move around 16 miles a day. With the Dvorak layout, it's down to around one mile a day. (Another way to say that is using the QWERTY layout requires sixteen times the effort as does Dvorak)
There are all sorts of claims that Dvorak is or is not faster than QWERTY , but speed is not the issue, it's effort. Dvorak is designed to reduce the amount of effort one must make to produce typed text (for example, all the vowels are under the left hand on the home row, with the most-used consonants under the right hand).
This reduced effort does help mitigate the effects of RSI, and for that reason alone it's good to teach it to your kids. Why help promote arthritis?
When first released over a century and a quarter ago, one ad campaign showed you could type the word "typewriter" using only the buttons on the top row. Well, that's great, but how many times do you type the word 'typewriter'? And look at the home row; one vowel, "A". With Dvorak, you can type hundreds and hundreds of words without leaving the home row.
For a time, the very popular typing program "Mavis Beacon" had a module for learning Dvorak. Not sure why, but they removed that module after version 5. Repeated attempts to contact them for an answer have been unsuccessful. Oddly enough, their latest version now teaches Spanish, but still won't teach Dvorak! Go figure.
For more information on the Dvorak layout, see: http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/
In our society, which is extremely focused on appearance, I'm not sure being a computer tech really IS better than being a barber...
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?