Young kids have more fun playing CD-ROMs using a touchscreen.
As anyone raising a toddler knows, baby minds tick, it would be downright hypocritical of me are hungry sponges for information. As a parent, to stop my children from breaking all my digital I try never to pass up a learning opportunity. I’m a devices for the noble cause of their education. big technology enthusiast, and so naturally I want my kids to know everything about the hardware Toddler Kiosk and software that runs our world. As our daughter grew older, she wanted to imi-
Photograph by Damien Stolarz
Many parents are (understandably) over- tate what her parents did. She liked to sit in front protective of their devices at the expense of their of our PCs, bang on the keyboard, and inform us children’s education. They worry that kids will put that she was “working.” sandwiches in the VCR or even shock themselves. We bought her a brightly colored PS2 keyboard What they fail to realize is that only through that has a picture next to every letter (apple for working with objects and technology — by making A, snake for S, dog for D, and so on). For a while, mistakes and learning from them — will their we would just pull out her keyboard and let her children ever gain the necessary knowledge and type on it when she wanted to work along with us. competence. And in my own case, as a maker and After a while, we knew she needed her own tinkerer who has broken more than my fair share computer — heck, she was already 2. So I dusted of gadgets in the process of learning how they off an old G3 Macintosh and bought a handful of
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