techNOcool

I'm the among the most experienced parents on the blog, but my kids grew up in a different time - practically the dark ages of computing. We got our first computer when Tom was 4 and Louise was 6. But there was no internet as we know it today at that time (1988).

That said, we did not specifically limit the kid's time on the computer. But there were some implicit limitations in the fact that we had only one computer until 1997, and it wasn't located in a child's bedroom.

By the time Tom was 14 we had 4 computers in the house, each kid had one in their bedroom, and we had (dial-up) internet access. Dial-up imposed another natural limitation since we did occasionally want to use the telephone to talk to people, and others in the household wanted to get online to check their email.

Two years later, when Louise was 18 and had already spent a year at college and Tom was 16, we got DSL. By that time they'd both been schooled in using the internet and they both had enough other interests that too much time online was never a problem.

All that's a long way of saying my advice probably isn't worth much. But I'll be watching with interest as you young parents struggle with raising children in our brave new world.

I have a real issue with the computer in their room though. We've turned our computer room into sort of a family room. Tiff sits at her computer, I sit at mine. The dog and cat come in and play together in between us. There's a couch, and a third computer set up to just play DVD's that you can see from the couch. (Thanks Susan!) I think there is a real difference between a kid who is on the computer all the time in his room, and one who is on all the time with his parents... Or maybe I'm trying to talk myself into believing that!

Jason, I totally agree with you about this difference. And Michael and I both use laptops in our family room these days - we have computers in the bedrooms still, but they never get used. I have no interest in sitting upstairs in front of a computer by myself.

But I do think that kids will want private time with a computer - for writing school papers, for instance. Given the popularity of laptops now, it may just be a matter of letting the kids take the laptop to a quiet room when they need it for schoolwork.

We tried that in 1997 - our second computer was a laptop intended to be used around the house where needed - but it didn't work very well since no one but me liked working on the laptop. A year later - Louise's senior year in high school - we bought a desktop for her room so that she could do her schoolwork on it.

But that was then, and this is now.

I know that Keri and I also struggle with balance in our kids lives. And have had the conversation about tv's and computers in the kid's bedroom. At this point we are looking to keep computers and tv's in common spaces much to Sydney's disappointment as a way to model and monitor behavior.

That being said. What I am amazed with is Sydney's savvy with computers. She knows how to manipulate a traditional mouse, a tablet pen, and a touchpad with enough skill to seamlessly switch between the computers available to her.

She also knows:
* when to single click or double click
* that the ecs key will get you out of menus you don't want
* that sometimes you need to be patient and let the computer work

Not to sound like a My-Kid-is-So-Smart parent (which I can easily be as my kid is so smart ;) ) I checked out how some of her friends were using the computer at her preschool and most had a similar amount of savvy/skill. It will be interesting to watch how ingrained technology becomes in this generation's life. And what that will mean for us as parents and professionals in academia.

If you have not started to pay attention to the Project Tomorrow ( http://www.tomorrow.org/index.html ) it is worth a look. There is the podcast from Julie Evans the project's executive director. It is from Educause 2007 - http://connect.educause.edu/blog/gbayne/e07podcasttomorrowss/45344