What about plugging a mouse into the Chromebooks? I distinctly remember being in kindergarten and using a mouse as my pointer input. I played Treasure Mountain! and some other educational games.
Kids are pretty capable and adept at picking up new things. We should be pushing forward with tech literacy while they're still young and not afraid of breaking technology. Touch screens are great because they provided a very directed experience, but I believe that has more to do with the software itself being designed more intuitively when you're limiting the user to app-style software. I think software engineers should be focused on making accessible software for these target demographics. I think getting kids used to keyboard/mice/touchpads will get them more comfortable and prepare them for more complicated things down the line, like coding and word processing where keyboards are objectively a the best input.
Our kids' school supply list for the last couple of years has included: USB mouse and headphones for the Chromebooks.
Yes, kids can use a mouse far before Kindergarten. I remember my kids playing PBS Kids games with a mouse when they were probably 3 or 4.
That being said, I do understand the concern if a mouse isn't available as I'm 39 and I can't use track-pads either without grinding my teeth in frustration.
Great for normal users, awful for disabled users. A touchscreen is light-years ahead of mice for individuals who lack or are incapable of fine motor control skills.
I assume different school system has different rules, but here in Sweden there are laws that school must adapt based on the need of the child. A disabled child should get the right tools based on their needs, which will depend on the exact circumstances.
For someone with impaired motor control skills I would assume that default software and a touchscreen is far from usable. There is a reason why many touchscreen system has a stylus pen, which would obviously not work in kindergarten for children with impaired motor control skills. A large screen and software designed for it could be one way, but I have also seen massive trackballs that I recall is being used in those situations.
Certainly kids are good at picking things up! In fact, they do pick up Chromebooks - but it is a painful experience for the early education groups I'm talking about (K-2) because they often don't read well enough yet. (I'm in public school.) And knowing letters really helps keyboarding.
Part of what I'm trying to contest is this elitism of laptop over tablet. My kids can do group activities with a tablet - carry it with them to the carpet, draw things, pass them back and forth, create things with gestures, film each other. The form factor is amazing. And, yeah, then they can learn laptops in third or fourth grade - isn't that feasible?
I'm definitely glad you played Treasure Mountain! when you were a kid. Thankyou for the comment!
Dell and Lenovo are the leading suppliers of Chromebooks designed specifically for the education market. Both offer multiple 2 in 1 models which fold into a tablet form factor and have touch screens.
Perhaps the issue isn't Chromebooks but that your experience is with inappropriately chosen Chromebooks.
Mice—and to a lesser extent, Chromebooks—need to be sitting on a large, hard, flat surface. iPad minis have no such requirement. A kid can use it sitting in a chair, lying on their back, or any other position they feel like.
It's one more thing to lug around. No one is saying that a mouse is hard to use, the point is that touch screens are even more intuitive. I have heard anecdotal evidence of very young babies, like 9 months - 1 year, using ABC apps. They just "get it" and for them, "it just works".
[Chromebooks are the new fashion in elementary school. They are cheap; they are everywhere. And they are unusable by kids in kindergarten through, in some case, third grade.]
iPad's are consumer devices and will not prepare our kids to be producers. I am surprised every time I see iPad's being used in schools. Chromebooks at least put kids in path of being producers rather than mere consumers of content.
I am getting tired of hearing that the iPad is 'not for producers.'
I was way up there with you right up until I wrote the majority of my upcoming solo hip-hop record in Garageband with Audio Units on my iPad mini, with an AKAI MDP32 as my external MIDI device and an Apogee sound card for insane-quality audio.
Then, due to the amazing workflow, I was able to take those tracks into Logic Pro and refine the hell of out them. Nothing else even comes close to that workflow, as an audio producer of 14+ years.
I make skits, constantly, in iMovie, and even rough drafts of music video ideas on my Mini. Kids can do the same. It's so easy to use.
I wrote the 32-page business plan for my music label almost entirely on Pages with a bluetooth keyboard. Kids can do the same for schoolwork.
I use Pixelmator almost every day to develop high-quality images. The full photoshop is on it's way. There are no such plans for Android.[1]
Kids can even learn rudimentary code with Playgrounds. Not to mention the litany of great educational apps available.
I mean, I could see claiming an Android tablet as a 'non-producer' device, as it certainly lacks software of a quality anywhere close to GarageBand or iMovie, but the iPad?
It's like you haven't even used it, or actually have no use case to use it for creation.
> It's like you haven't even used it, or actually have no use case to use it for creation.
FWIW iPads and android tablets tend to not work for most software development tasks.The "iPads aren't for producers" mentality might be more of a "iPads aren't for Software producers (and some types of engineers)"
> FWIW iPads and android tablets tend to not work for most software development tasks.
It's certainly not for local Windows application development, but it's great for 21st century architectures (infra as code), containerized apps, or any other CI/CD-able scenario.
With an iPad Pro, Apple's Smart Keyboard, and the lovely Working Copy + Textastic, and blink.sh Mosh/SSH client, together with a decent CI/CD (commit code, deploy to dev) pipeline in place, you're good.
See also Buffer, GoCodeEditor, Koder, etc. Several of these happen to be 50% off atm.
Don't forget you can remote desktop to GUI things too, from Citrix to RDP.
On a conventional laptop I can run the entire stack locally.
This can be anything from "run XAMPP" to "fire up a stack of virtual machines and containers allowing you to mock up an entire data centre all on one physical box."
In contrast, an iPad is little more than an editor and/or terminal that relies on a lot of outside infrastructure to do something meaningful with what you're typing.
I'm a producer. I produce short film and music, amongst others.
I'm also a developer. I use xCode, Dreamweaver, and Unity to develop applications and games.
Developing - that's what computers are still for. And devs know that.
Developing on-device will come, in time. I, for one, don't have a problem with needing an extra dev machine, specifically for the purpose. I understand this represents a financial burden for some, especially considering the cost of a new MacBook. I'm fortunate enough to have had a Mac by my side since I was 14, and I'm 29 now, which means more than half my life. So for me, already a Mac user, the iOS dev ecosystem was actually a blessing. I understand, however, I am obviously an outlier in that set of data.
We'll see what Moore and his progenitors think. Until software is the only bottleneck, there will definitely always be lower-tier, cheaper options for the N>50% of the population that doesn't need the compute/batter life/etc. that's necessary for a mobile dev machine. My WAG is that we're still a few generations (as in people generations, not tech generations) from getting there. If we ever get there at all.
The question isn't "can I produce stuff on an iPad" it's "is this the right tool for the job", human ingenuity being what it is. Take the average $1000 phone and for most producers it's a worse tool than a $100 laptop.
> I wrote the 32-page business plan for my music label almost entirely on Pages with a bluetooth keyboard. Kids can do the same for schoolwork.
I would argue that if you need a third party add-on that changes the primary input method you've essentially turned the device into a laptop/chromebook. It's not the right tool for the job, you've just turned it into one.
This is a mindset that assumes kids are using computers to learn how to use computers.
Kids in kindergarten can actually use tablets, to learn other stuff. Any stuff. They can indulge their own interests, in a way that's nearly impossible in any other medium without assistance of someone older than them.
A tablet is the first cut of the way children use the Holodeck in Star Trek. You can't (usually) just ask for what you want, and get it (kids don't have a mental model of computers that works well enough to cope with how bad computers still are at conversation)—but you sure can point at what you want, and get it.
1. Skill Building. I.e., the same reason we start teaching them to write letters in kindergarten even though they won't have a practical need for writing until late in elementary school. So that there's a foundation to build on later.
2. Feedback. E.g., there are some good fractions apps that help students understand what it means to "divide" a set of things into a set of groups of things. you can do that on pencil/paper or with other props, but there's no tight feedback loop.
It's unclear whether (2) is strictly a good thing; learning how to validate your own results is also an important skill...
A good example of a game that lets kindergartners play with concepts that even kids much older often struggle with is Dragonbox: https://dragonbox.com/
This kind of self-directed, exploratory learning can be very effective.
Chromebooke are more consumer than iPads. Can you run iMovie on a Chromebook? GarageBand or similar? How about all of the adobe design software for iPad? Or Concepts for drawing? How about Pages, Numbers Keynote? (Sure there are Google equivalents, but the argument is that iPad is for consumption and not creation.)
It’s 2013 thinking to suggest iPads are for content consumption and it’s ridiculous to assert that a Chromebook has any advantage for creation.
A Chromebook has a great advantage for creation when used for things like Google Docs. Many kids become prolific writers, especially since they are teaching typing in 3rd grade. It's amazing to see your kid bang out a story for fun.
Personally, I have privacy issues with Google as well. With Apple, I don’t have a fear that their 3d grade story will end up used to target them for advertising later. I don’t feel comfortable having my kids’ academic life stored on Google servers.
My kids make movies, animations, record themselves telling stories, build 3-D models, script things (using Scratch Jr. - which is totally underwhelming to a programmer, but is fantastic for this age group).
No, they don't produce documents or write code or answer e-mails. But they can't read yet, so I think that's okay for now.
I wrote a number of essays in high school on my iPad (the first one) using the touchscreen keyboard. I also did digital painting using the Brushes app and my finger (later with a touchscreen stylus), and made some simple music tracks using piano and looper apps. On the original iPad, with software that was basically available since launch.
Nowadays I do computer graphics for fun, and I want to be able to create full applications, so I lug around my MacBook, but I have no doubt if I upgraded from my venerable iPad 1 I could find apps that let me play with shaders, or web-apps that let me do quite a bit more.
I agree with the mentality that touch = consume and type = produce. The efficiency and imtimacy of user interaction of keyboards is simply unmatched with other competing input devices. Open-ness of platforms is secondary.
I have quite a few lawyer and doctor friends who use tablets first (usually with a BT keyboard) and only break out the computer when they need it for some very particular reason.
If you don't need root on a beefy machine and/or Windows-specific software, then a modern tablet with a bluetooth keyboard gives you more than enough compute and all the applications you need to be productive. Often with a better UX.
It's an every-field-centric viewpoint. Every field that creates something is more efficient with a keyboard. You even just supported this point yourself.
I'm not totally certain that K-2 spending less time in front of a screen while at school would be a bad thing. I'm sure they get plenty of touchscreen time at home.
It depends on the training of the teacher. You can do some amazing things with iPad in the classroom — assuming teachers use it for more than a YouTube player.
I'm not sure if you already have a blog post about it, but would you mind describing some of those uses? It's probably obvious to you, but I've never taught young children, so it's unclear to me what kind of techniques you are using.
I taught English as a foreign language for 5 years at high school level and since I'm a computer programmer by training, my colleagues were very keen for me to introduce technology to the class. I started from that perspective, but gradually reduced the technology until at 5 years I was using a blackboard, paper and pencils only.
For me, (and especially for teaching language, I suspect) it was much more important to keep students engaged and keep their comprehension levels high. I spent a lot of time testing those comprehension levels, modelling responses and encouraging interaction amongst the students. I found that technology moved the focus of the students from the subject to the technology. Instead engaging in the subject, they would become passive and be focused on the device, or presentation. We even had a big wall of dictionaries in the classroom and I asked the students to use it as a resource of last resort. Instead, I wanted them to find people in the room who knew the answer to their question -- teaching language is about communication after all ;-)
From that perspective, it's interesting to hear from someone who seems to take a different approach. I'd love to know what kinds of things you are aiming towards and how the use of technology provides it.
What kind of incredible uses? I'm genuinely curious as I've delayed introducing tablets and computers to my kids until they can do something creative with them.
I mentioned this example elsewhere in this thread, so I'll just repeat it here:
> Just today we did an activity where all the kids 'drew' a visualization of a certain math problem and then we passed the tablets around and added on top off them and then I showed the results on the projector. There was laughter, story-telling, kids helping each other, moving around the classroom, you name it.
I do group activities that involve creating things together that explore the topic. (I look at technology not as a 'subject' but as a 'language' or 'medium'.) So, at home, rather than finding an educational app for them, I would recommend giving them a tablet so they can film the things they experience. Things they see in the backyard or things they make. They can record themselves explaining a topic they learned about. Have them make music (the byte.co Music Maker app is a good one for a child who has no experience with it) and have them mess with vector-drawing or 3-D modeling apps. Then talk to them about what they made and help them get to the next level. The tablet is the 'medium' and you are the 'scaffold'. They need you to find out where to go next.
And, yeah, put the tablets away half the time so they can experience things directly. (Sounds like this is perhaps where your concern lies.)
I've also had great success with Twine once they can read.
Thanks for the great question! I hope this helps. It's really cool that you asked.
> Just today we did an activity where all the kids 'drew' a visualization of a certain math problem and then we passed the tablets around and added on top off them and then I showed the results on the projector. There was laughter, story-telling, kids helping each other, moving around the classroom, you name it.
I fail to see how this is something that couldn't be accomplished with paper And using the tablets half the time seems like wayy too much imo.
Don't know if you're familiar with the Dragonbox apps (original for algebra and Dragonbox Elements for geometry). Those are incredible learning experiences that would not be possible on paper. Even a desktop w/mouse for those apps wouldn't be ideal, whereas a tablet or mobile phone is perfect.
Are iPads really so unique that losing them is some sort of tragedy to education?
I thought the reason Apple was getting out of the entry-level tablet market, was that it was being commoditized by dirt-cheap Android tablets that—at least for the particular things people want a tablet for—do all the same things an iPad does. (They don't have the same third-party app ecosystem, but if you're just using an iPad to consume content using the web browser/book reader/etc., there's no difference.)
In other words: presuming the educational software isn't already there either way, and still needs to be built—wouldn't Kindergarteners be served just as well by the iPad dying, the development of such software moving to Android, and the kids ending up with a stack of $50 tablets from AliExpress rather than $299 iPads? (Easier for low-income-area schools to get ahold of, too!)
Have you ever used a $50 Android tablet?
Those sorts of tablets are almost completely unusable.
And I don't mean that in a snobby tech-elitist kind of way.
I mean they are literally broken, at least every one I've used or seen reviewed.
I couldn't convince the school to buy other tablets - and I started to wonder why I was pressing it. I entered teaching from the programming world (avid Linux user here) and I guess I saw Android as synonymous with Linux. Now I just see it as synonymous with Google - and Chromebook quality and software hasn't won me over.
There is a stigma among edtechs (the IT of education) in my area that Android doesn't have the management tools they need - for provisioning software, propagating device settings and such. Presumably that's wrong - (?) - but I also don't know which tablets to recommend, there are too many to try and a teacher can't deal with a flaky device. You have too many students.
Rather than trying to solve that stigma, I am trying to work through the (level 1) discussion of: should we be giving laptops to kindergarteners? (Not talking about anyone here's kindergartener - but those with backgrounds like I see at public school.)
The iPad may not be better - but it works and has less friction to adoption. I'll try to win the battles that I can win. Thanks for the question! I appreciate it.
Oh good point about management tools - Apple has invested in it, Google has too, but their efforts were centered around Chromebooks not Android tablets.
Also good point about too much choice sometimes being a bad thing.
How good is augmented reality on generic tablets? ..just as one example.
Many people criticizing iPads haven’t used them for education recently or haven’t been trained on how to fully leverage the tech effectively. The curriculum assistance, available (quality) apps and overall device versatily are unmatched by competing devices.
For a media consumption device, iPad could be overkill, but for everything else, it’s almost perfect.
> Many people criticizing iPads haven’t used them for education recently or haven’t been trained on how to fully leverage the tech effectively. The curriculum assistance, available (quality) apps and overall device versatily are unmatched by competing devices.
There is nothing on that marketing page that seems to especially improve learning vs. physical materials for anyone under about 10 years old. And frankly most stuff for 10–15 year olds can still (a) probably be done as well if not better using physical materials, and (b) isn’t significantly different between an iPad and a laptop or desktop machine, and often could be done on a machine shared by several students working together or taking turns.
I can well imagine that someone trying to learn how to program might want to use some kind of computer, but even then why an iPad instead of a little turtle robot that responds to Logo, or whatever?
Someone trying to learn how to make electronic music or edit video might get a lot of mileage out of computers (iPad or otherwise) but I can’t imagine this has become a core part of the school pedagogy.
I can also imagine that for anyone in middle school and up there might be a big benefit to carrying an iPad around instead of a giant backpack stuffed with 5 separate overweight textbooks. Though there are some advantages to the physical books too.
* * *
Instead of telling a bunch of skeptical non-teacher techies that we “haven’t been trained on how to fully leverage the tech”, maybe you can explain what that training would entail?
What in your experience has the iPad been so powerful for that couldn’t be done without computers? What age kids are you working with, and what are they working on?
Say I'm sceptical about this but willing to be convinced. Are there good resources about the apps etc I should be looking at, or descriptions of how to use the iPad effectively for education that I could check out? The Apple page you linked to has some amazing looking things but is basically marketing blurb, as you point out.
Those in this thread recommending Chromebooks are missing a big part of the equation. You don't need to be able to read to use an iOS device. Chromebooks are much more reliant on the user knowing the written word to interact with the device (unless their is some elementary school mode that I am unaware of). As long as you can recognize icons, you can interact with an iOS device and switch between apps.
I’m curious how you’re applying that to kindergartners.
I started using computers around age 4. I couldn’t read for shit. My parents didn’t withhold technology because I couldn’t read the manual. I’m thankful for that, as now I’m a software engineer and love it.
Tablets aren't going away? Just one product is getting end of lifed and you liked that product and are miffy about it? ok, fine.... but the aritcle seems to try to paint a picture that it was the one and only true device and now kindergarenters are doomed :)
This iPad hasn't seen an update since 2015. The standard iPad is now being marketed to schools at the $299 price. No, it's not gone - which is why I thought to write this article, as an attempt to see the usefulness of this specific model and size.
I agree that I'm being a bit hyperbolic - but it's not just that I like the product. It works _very_ well for a specific audience - K-2. Thought it was worth mentioning.
My kids started with the ipod touches and then on to the ipad when it came out. They got the mini a few years ago. They had touch screens since they were infants. I am a bit jaded with the technology. The experience is too removed from the real world and they miss out on interactions with both other humans and the surrounding environment to their detriment. We won't be updating their devices and I would make different choices a second time around. I think chromebooks and PCs are even more useless at that age but being less seductive I would hope kids get bored quickly and instead engage in social play or interacting with physical objects.
Why the hell does anyone in kindergarten need a computer? They should be out in the playground getting muddy and having fun, riding trikes and soapboxes, climbing trees and building forts.
I agree-- partly. There are skills kids can start learning in kindergarten that they can use later. Counting, basic arithmetic, the alphabet, simple reading, general conventions that are followed in school. But there is no reason for kindergarteners to be using computers. And I say this as someone who started using the computer at 5 -- I wasn't doing anything remotely interesting on it until at least 9.
This post doesn’t really explain what is so great about iPads for small children, and as far as I can tell doesn’t link to much external explanation about it. Maybe the author had some previous posts explaining this that regular blog readers know about as context?
Is there some report [anecdotal, peer-reviewed, whatever] comparing kids’ trying to learn using an iPad vs. physical materials? What specific ideas or subjects are effectively learned on the iPad?
Is the iPad being used as a substitute for television? As a way to scale teacher time better when there are many students per teacher? As a tool which a teacher and student will use together? ...
My personal bias would be to generally occupy small children with something tangible (sand toys, climbing equipment, blocks, balls, toy cars, marbles, chalk, scissors and paper, pattern blocks, dice, index cards, yarn, popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, gears, pulleys, springs, ..., and lots of paper books) until they are a bit older.
If there are many students per teacher and the teacher’s attention is limited, students can often entertain themselves while learning a great deal by working/playing in groups using physical materials.
In kindergarten (many decades ago) sometimes we were given individual assignments, such as sticking figures in the right place, coloring things, basic counting... But other times we were forced to interact with our peers and "play together."
As someone who has always struggled to interact with other people, and who had not met any other kids before/except in kindergarten, I think those times were very formative. Hard, but formative.
I still struggle with people as an adult, but I think I would be worse off had I spent that time in front of a screen, whether touch or not, instead of interacting with other kids, including hard times like being excluded from the group with they best toys and stuff like that.
Also, I was using a keyboard (Model M!) as young as 3 years old, and the Microsoft Mouse not much older. I remember watching my dad add the mouse ISA card inside the computer, and learning to use three 5" floppies in the right order: first the DOS one, then the mouse driver one, type MOUSE.COM or something similar, then the Windows 1.0 floppy, and finally I could use Paint or Othello :-)
I think early computers increased my ability for concentration. That's interesting, considering modern devices are said to decrease it.
> I still struggle with people as an adult, but I think I would be worse off had I spent that time in front of a screen.
I will say that one of the things that makes a tablet so great is the potential for group activities. I do a ton of whole-class activities with lots of interaction - and it is possible on a tablet because it is small enough to be easy to look past. This is an issue with desktops (esp. in a lab) and, to some degree, with laptops.
Just today we did an activity where all the kids 'drew' a visualization of a certain math problem and then we passed the tablets around and added on top off them and then I showed the results on the projector. There was laughter, story-telling, kids helping each other, moving around the classroom, you name it.
The fact that you can get up and walk around with a tablet is a point I hadn't mentioned. Thank you for the stimulus!
For me this gets at the crux of the question of the place of technology in the classroom, it almost always seems to replace regular paper and textbooks, without actually adding anything. I had teachers who would handout "transparencies" and we'd draw/right and them and then hand them back and the activity was exactly the same... only with $0.00001 pieces of disposable plastic. I really struggle to understand the benefits of a "smartboard" and any computer in the classroom, it really feels like we're just doing this because we can, without asking, "why?"
I'm currently learning a foreign language in school. Apart from the occasional use of a TV screen to show pictures, everything is taught by voice, whiteboard, and paper handouts.
I personally use spiral-bound notebooks and erasable pens (friction) as my medium of choice. Yes, with some sort of technological device I could maybe type faster, sort things into lists, make indices, search and replace, have a builtin dictionary, and so on. But would I really be learning more? Or would I just be more distracted in class?
I use technology all the time, including "spaced repetition" apps on my phone, to exercise my memory as much as possible. But I strongly feel the classroom is not the right place for fiddling with that.
> I will say that one of the things that makes a tablet so great is the potential for group activities
If your interactions with other people are done through a screen, then they're very heavily structured and so you don't learn how to actually interact with people in the improvised, real-time way you often have to.
I agree in that I worry about how technology may impact our ability to concentrate deeply. I get this view from the book by Nicholas Carr called "the shallows"
I did however talk to an elementary teacher, she said the kids do the reading assignment on a tablet and she has a monitor where she can see at her desk what each individual is struggling with. I'm not sure more about how this works. Lots of enthusiasm from a long time teacher though.
Okay. I guess the quotation wasn’t that exciting to me.
> Children as young as 24 months can complete items requiring cognitive engagement on a touch screen device, with no verbal instruction and minimal child–administrator interaction. This paves the way for using touch screen technology for language and administrator independent developmental assessment in toddlers.
This sounds like a way of handing a child off to a device so that adults can otherwise ignore them. (Which, to be fair, will unfortunately happen a lot anyway in schools.) And the focus is on “assessment” rather than teaching/learning.
Did you find that there were ideas or subjects that could be taught better on an iPad than using alternative materials (with a teacher standing by to explain in either case)?
Snapdragon 660, 6000mAH battery, 3GB RAM, 32GB storage. The display is so-so 1920x1200, not the best but still good. And that was $180 from Aliexpress (The iPad Mini is $399)
Ditto. I bought the Mipad 3 from gearbest, and haven't looked back. Awesome little device for plane rides and keeping our little fella occupied during long car trips.
Android is a deal breaker though for many people. For example, I don't want to worry about whether I have Ice Cream Cookie, Yogurtland, Lolly Pop, etc. I don't want to have to run Norton Antivirus on it. In fact, I don't want to be forced to think about security at all. I want an app store with trusted apps, not hackers.
While all the points you mention do bear some credence, I think the biggest argument for iOS tablets over Android is the lack of first party tablet app support on Android. I;m not saying there are no tablet apps, just they're a lot less common vs iPad apps, which often are a lot more than just scaled up iphone apps.
Where is the exact problem there?
I never came upon an app that would cause a problem on my Android tablet because it's not a "first party tablet app".
Especially nothing that would justify the immense cost of an iPad.
I guess it's a question of convenience, if all you're getting is a big phone app, it's not always gonna work very well, I'm not sure what you mean by "would cause a problem" but I've often come upon apps that simply aren't nearly as easy to use on a tablet compared to a phone.
For me, it's not a convenience problem, it's a trust problem. After all the bad press I've read, I can never trust my family's data to Android. The premium I pay for Apple products lets me sleep at night.
This is a real shame. Our family has really enjoyed our iPad Minis. They have lasted so long that it makes more sense for the kids to get MacBooks next ( in addition to needing iPhones anyway ). But otherwise I would have happily refreshed them by purchasing the latest model. The form factor is ideal for kids.
Sure, by now children can do some rudimentary typing and mouse flicking. But if you think trackpads are awful for adults, you should observe children using them. Tears, people.
Two days ago a mathematician was explaining a concept to me that involved math I’ve long forgotten combined with math I’ve never learned. When I told him I didn’t completely follow, he said “It’s super easy,” and repeated what he had already said - but more slowly.
Now, there were no tears involved, but anyone who is trying to explain or teach something they’re an expert in/at to someone (of any age) who is very much not would do well to remember the three sentences I’ve quoted above. Tears or no, at any age, it’s incredibly frustrating.
The iPad Mini isn't the only touchscreen tablet in its rough size class; there are plenty that aren't discontinued; Apple isn't the whole tablet world.
Plus, to the extent that touch is a desirable interaction for the target age group, many current Chromebooks are touch devices. (Even the tablet-convertible ones, though are not a convenient size for handheld use by a kindergartner, to be sure.)
i find it fascinating someone it's not ashamed to admit they are extremely lazy and just hand out toddlers tablets to get rid of them, that's like laziest thing you can do - give child a tablet or let them sit in front of TV
the kindergarten for my child doesn't even have TV and nobody has problem, the other branch has one TV which they don't really switch on, can't imagine having tablet in kindergarten, that's just pure laziness
i let my child watch TV like max. one hour a week as reward after trimming nails, of course pretty much zero time with mobile/tablet, it would be minutes per week when watching over my shoulder at some of our photos/videos or rarely gifs i watch
i don't see a reason why should child in kindergarten spend any time in front of screen anywhere, i ruined my eyes by staring at screen, that can't be healthy for children eyes and for many other reasons
i would be curious if they use tablets in other European countries or it's just another example of "superior" american education system
Kids are pretty capable and adept at picking up new things. We should be pushing forward with tech literacy while they're still young and not afraid of breaking technology. Touch screens are great because they provided a very directed experience, but I believe that has more to do with the software itself being designed more intuitively when you're limiting the user to app-style software. I think software engineers should be focused on making accessible software for these target demographics. I think getting kids used to keyboard/mice/touchpads will get them more comfortable and prepare them for more complicated things down the line, like coding and word processing where keyboards are objectively a the best input.