On 4/16/07, Stack Smasher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > My daughter is 3 and she has had a laptop of her own since she was 2. You > would be amazed at how much more she likes going to the 6-7 sites I have > bookmarked for her then watching TV. Sesame Street and Nick Jr. are her most > favorite. My parents where over a few weeks ago and where shocked when she > not only plugged in the laptop into the wall socket, but turned it on and > went to her favorite web page. Needless to say when she goes to school she > will probably know more than her instructor, I believe that there is a huge > "digital divide" in the world and I want to make sure my child is > comfortable with technology that is CRITICAL for her success in the future.
Actually, my opinion is that there is no advantage in giving a laptop to a 2 or 3 yo to let him/her browse two or three bookmarked site, over having a 6 yo appropriately starting grasping how a computer works. If the first has at any stage any minimum "manual" advantage in handling the instrument, it's just that (manual practice, for instance using the keyboard and the mouse), the latter will recover it very quickly. On the other side, studies demonstrate with abundant evidence that young kids (especially in your US) are becoming more and more fat and obese because of the sedentary lifestyle. Since every decent school has a computer program (and yourself of course, once your kid grows to 6 yo), when he/she is between 2 and 6 yo you should have your kids running more outside in the garden rather then having her browsing the Internet. If you want to give her a real advantage in the life, then let her learn several languages. In Netherlands and in many other EU contries which are not native English speaker, they start studying English from the age of 4 - in Netherlands they can then study up to 4 foreign languages, depending on the school and choices. Kids up to 12 are very very easy in picking up languages; instead of growing the usual obtuse mono-language ignorant script kiddie, offer her something better, like the deepness and the intelligence that brings seeing things from different points of view - this is what languages is about, it's about cultures. When you know several languages, you can do whatever you want in your life and do it successfull - being it computer related or not. Cheers -- Marco Ermini Dubium sapientiae initium. (Descartes) [EMAIL PROTECTED] # mount -t life -o ro /dev/dna /genetic/research http://www.markoer.org/ - https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcoermini _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/
