Personal Dynamic Media
This article by Kay and Goldberg was envisioning, a “Dynabook”- essentially, the very aparatus I am currently typing on- a lap top computer. At first, I was honestly not that interested in the article, because it seemed like a reiteration of the ones we have already read: Such and such scientists think we should invent computers to interact with us and store information. Everyone should have access. It will change the world! “Here we go again,” I thought.
I mean, maybe it is my own ignorance of the subtleties of technology, but in large part that was what I gleaned from Kay and Goldberg. The only thing that surprised me was their focus on children as consumers. Previously, it seems that people such Engelbart wanted to use computers for more adult tasks, organizing numbers and files. But this article talked about kids drawing pictures, which was kind of cool. I feel like I remember having a simplified computer-esque toy when I was younger. There was this board you drew on with a plastic pencil, and your drawing showed up on the TV. I thought that was the coolest. How could I have forgotten? The fact that the kids featured in this article were so interested in programming and designing was very refreshing. Like we talked about last class, re the flaaws of education, one really does FORGET that learning is meant to be fun, that it is not ‘natural’ for humans to be bored. It is a promising idea that we could use computers to make children interested in shapes, music, math, etc.
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Are we using computers as ‘metamedia’? How many people need to be using them before we can say this?
February 19th, 2008 at 2:48 am
My reaction to the article was similar. I was intrigued by the focus on children as consumers. Your response points out the many positives of the authors’ goals. It is true that computers are wonderful tools to get children interested in learning and having fun! My reaction was more critical, I guess because I am worried that my own kids use the computer too much and reading the goal for children to the Dynabook to open the possibility of children spending “a lot of time” just hit too close to home.
February 19th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
There is no reason why fun kid things (I guess that’s a ‘toy’) shouldn’t be educational as well. In fact, the best toys/games I can remember were the mentally stimulating ones- Amazon Trail (oft forgotten, but definitely trumps the Oregon), LiteBrite, this National Geographic thing where you could switch out educational laminated sheets on an electronic board, etc. The best advice I have for making sure a kid’s computer time is filled with quality stuff, is to really stay on top of what is going on in the computing world and on the Internet. I was way more computer-literate than my parents, and definitely got away with stuff I shouldn’t have been getting away with. Maybe that’s just me, but it’s the best advice I have.