Generation 'iPad'

Mobile
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I remember many years ago when I taught computing for beginners and an elderly lady picked up the mouse and started waving it in the air. This caused amusement amongst the group, but I wondered why this made any less sense than moving it around on a flat surface. The paradigms and analogies we invented to make computer interfaces make sense have always been somewhat forced and false.

It has struck me on many occasions how naturally we have taken to touch screen devices. It seems that most people from 6 months to 60+ can pick up a touchscreen device and start understanding and using it with ease.

This thought struck me again after reading a recent article about 'Generation iPad'. There are an increasing amount of children so used to a touchscreen world, they know no different and expect everything to have a touchscreen. It reminded me of one of my more positive experiences from recently attending Mobile World Congress. Nestled amongst aisle after aisle of sales and marketing bumpf was a stand dedicated to initiatives funded by Mobile World Capital, the organizers of the event. Amongst them was mSchools, which featured several projects that not only exposed Children to new interactive ways of learning but also helped them learn basic programming, language and project management skills.

There are concerns that this new focus in education is changing development in ways we are yet to understand but right now, the outcomes seem positive.

What are your thoughts?

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Kids can produce amazing things at school now, using all the new technologies—from devices like the iPad to the web. However, you get quite a shock when you see what they do away from those tools. They can’t handwrite, can’t spell, struggle to write in grammatical sentences etc. The technology is cool and all, but the core skills are being neglected because machines can do it all for us.

I don’t have kids, but a bunch of little nieces and nephews, and it’s scary how attached they are to devices, and how antisocial they are—especially when torn away from those devices.

OK, so there are lots of downsides to immersing kids in technology. But heck, it shuts them up, so who cares!

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Yes, this is true…

We also have no idea what is happening to our kids brains in the long term, be it negative or positive.

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