I am not bragging about this, let me be perfectly clear. My children, both under the age of five, can perform Google searches. It’s not happening again, not for a long while at least. And not on Bing either.
The other day, my five-year-old typed “I’m a gummy bear” into Google so she could find this little video of a dancing gummi bear which, I have to be honest, is a total crack up. Apparently, she’s seen us do enough Google searches and her spelling is to the point where she took the leap. A day later, my son, who knows only how to spell one thing, independently did a search for his name. Thank god his name isn’t Dick.
How did this come to pass? As parents, my wife and I firmly believe that our kids’ intellects are stimulated through television and computer usage. The American Academy of Pediatrics, with its two year restriction on TV, is living on Mars as far as I’m concerned. You listen to those people and you put your kids at a huge disadvantage.
Because of Little Einsteins, our kids know music by Tchaikovsky, art by Van Gogh, and where the Eiffel Tower is located. We credit the website Startfall as providing our daughter a major head start in reading. Take a look at the site and you’ll see why.
We show them YouTube videos of Les Miserable and other shows. We downloaded Google Earth, which allows them to see where the sunlight hits the Earth and explains why it’s night in Japan when it’s daytime in Florida. They can take tours of the wonders of the world and explore Mars and the Moon as well.
So it’s both good and bad, but IMHO if controlled, mostly good,
What measures did we take? We already monitor their activity very closely: the computer they use is in a common area, and it will stay that way until they go to college. But we’re increasing monitoring and changed their setup. Google as a home page is a thing of the past. I configured Safari, the browser on the computer they use, to not have an address bar or a search field. They now just have bookmark buttons for Starfall, PBS Kids, and Playhouse Disney.
Totally agree! TV and the Internet get such a bad rap, but when used effectively it can be an incredible learning tool. But, Larry, now that you’ve gotten rid of Google as a home page, I have no idea how to access it!
Use a different browser that they don’t know about. Right now they launch Safari from the Dock at the bottom of the screen. Open up the HD, the thing on the desktop I renamed “DON’T TOUCH”, go to Applications, and launch Firefox. Or you can hit the magnifying glass in the upper right and just type Firefox and it will launch.
That should buy us a year or two. Then I’ll think of something else.