Pluto is no longer a planet. It is now a dog. You know how they made it? They broke it in half, added a tail and a head, and made it yellow.
Children and Media
8
Apr 10
The iPad May be the Ultimate Family Computer
Let me be clear up front: I buy into this iPad thing hook, line, and sinker. In fact, I’m writing this blog post using Safari on the device’s full keyboard.
In the context of a family, this thing is killer. It’s a killer family app. Each night my kids and I read a chapter of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a free book from the iBook store. Next up is Winnie the Pooh. We fight (myself included) over who gets to turn the pages (turning the pages is very cool).
Then we fire up the Marvel app and read about Spiderman. Unbelievable artwork, if you haven’t seen a comic book in a while you won’t believe how beautiful they are.
Then we fire up Adobe Ideas or eChalkboard and draw pictures (which we can easily email to people). My daughter was at the office the other day and used the iPad to watch Monsters Inc from the streaming Netflix app.
Once this puppy has a video camera, and you can talk to the grandparents with a couple finger swipes, watch out – every family will have one.
8
Feb 10
So my three-year-old performed a Google search…
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.