Age Appropriate Technology: What parents need to know!

 The first thing parents want to do when their child misbehaves is to ground them from electronics. Our culture has created an environment where electronics is all about entertainment. Real life computer usage isn’t like that, so we as parents must start helping our children make the adjustment.

Brain Nutrition

• When we feed our children, we do not feed them dessert only, we make them eat their vegetables.
• When we have our children read books, we find books and movies that might add to their moral or intellectual character and reflect our value system.
• When we allow our children to play with electronics, time must be spent on educational games as well as play. We prefer educational games that are fun.
• Do we eat our dessert first or do we eat our vegetables first?
• Have your children spend 10-15 minutes on something they are not as familiar with before you allow them to go onto what they want to play.

Egads! Coding? My child?!!!

Coding has the reputation of being “hard. When we hear of child coders, we think of prodigy’s usually from another country.  Not anymore. Coding concepts can be easy and fun. Parents can’t expose their children to this fun if they don’t know it exists! Think about your child’s sense of accomplishment when they “write a program.”

Take a look at these software apps:

Apple or Android:  Daisy the Dinosaur, Scratch, Alice, Light Bot, or Move the Turtle (Apple only).

Why?!

The learning is called Computational or Algebraic thinking. Children need to develop the brain muscles that will allow algebraic math fall into place logically when they get to high school. In the future over 400,000 jobs will require these thinking skills and our children are not prepared for this type of thinking. There are already hundreds of jobs our communities are not skilled to fill. Emphasis is being made to change this in school systems, but as parents, you are the best resource and mentor to your children, simply by playing these games with them. They are fun, they can be competitive, and the self-confidence of being able to program a robot, or make a computer do a trick is awesome.

What computer do you need? Anything that runs apps. Preferably sturdy and encased in an Otterbox.

What is age appropriate?

A kindergartner may not be able to program, but they might like moving the arrows and making the little light bulb light up for the first few levels of LightBot.  Think about how you teach them to do something. It is a series of steps. As they mature, the steps condense.  That is computational thinking, problem-solving, trying and failing, and not giving up.

Praise your child’s problem-solving skills and ability to keep trying until they get it. This in itself is a huge life lesson. Try to keep the games at their level.

Infants and Toddlers – Sensorimotor Stage

• Learn through 5 senses
• Code-a-pillar – a visual robot for $50-100 at Walmart
• Games using touch, movement, sound, and visuals.

Ages 2-7  – Preoperational Stage

• The process is all about play
• Bee-Bot  A visual learning robot. You can program it by pushing buttons or a more advanced level of skill. $119  (Hint, it moves in 6″ bursts and works well with grids that can be made of poster board. Make learning games, treasure hunts, map coordinates)
• Programs like Daisy the Dinosaur, Scratch, Alice, Light Bot, or Move the Turtle or Hopscotch.

Ages 7-8  –  Concrete Operational Stage

Begin to use algorithms and create complex solutions

• Bee-Bot and Sprk or Star Wars BB-8 (Hint, BB-8 is on my own birthday wish list!)
• Lego Mindstorm or Tetrix
• Scratch, Alice
• Sphero Edu I turned my kid lose with this website and he modifies the programs he finds and is learning by taking apart the programs and putting them back together again in his own style. I handed him the robot, the i-pad and showed him how to get into the website and browse the projects other kids have made and life got interesting!

Ages 12 and up – Formal

With the background, a child could have up to this age when they start getting into formal operations and theories the math and algebraic thinking will start falling into place naturally without as much effort because they have strengthened those brain muscles.

• Begin to use deductive reasoning. The world begins to make sense.

Go for it! Build some memories! Think of the fun you could have!

Originally posted July 11, 2017; https://lynnmillard.wordpress.com/2017/07/11/age-appropriate-technology-what-parents-need-to-know/