Not to buy iPads for my children?

[Kingsfold]

They are nearly 12 and nearly 10. Both would like them ("everyone else in the class" has them, obviously. Ahem). I think they should be doing something more interesting with their time, and that the last thing they need to do is loaf around on the internet. Nearly 12 yo would be likely to take root on one, so it would mean arguments about time limits (currently 1 hr per day max on my computer).

FWIW, DH and I have none of these devices (no iPad, no iPod, no smartphone etc), and rather feel that if anyone is going to have one, it should be us before the children.

But are we BU?

We have one family lap top and a family wii. Both DH and I have iPhone4's and the secondary school kids have basic pay as you go with no Internet link. From experience many children are vulnerable and struggle with Facebook etc.

Like you we put our money elsewhere (mortgage, good food, activities). We are not interested in having more even if we could afford it, call that smug if you will (??!). I think my boys get enough IT/screen time exposure via school and friends and so j have no concerns about keeping up with IT.

There is a huge range of fun/interesting/educational stuff available on iPads and Tablets.

Get one, don't get one, but don't dismiss their value when properly used.

Redfocus - what do your children do on their iPads?

I really can't see how OP's children who have a family lap top at home and who have exposure to iPads/computers at school can fall behind? They probably will be meeting national school IT expectations, why is it necessary to be an expert?

Redfocus - what do your children do on their iPads?

I really can't see how OP's children who have a family lap top at home and who have exposure to iPads/computers at school can fall behind? They probably will be meeting national school IT expectations, why is it necessary to be an expert?

I can tell you what my DD uses it for Barbara!

She's 2.5 and has lots of kids games on there. All with her favourite characters. Her favourite is a Disney princess pets one where you wash and dry them but there are so many educational apps.

She can operate it perfectly. Better than me I'd say and she knows which app is which.

She plays jigsaws, writes letters, recognises letters. One asks her to put the animals starting with t in the train carriages and a monkey drives them away. Memory games where cards are hidden and you find two the same. Colouring, matching dots, stories read out, learning the alphabet or numbers and shapes. That sort of thing.

Not to mention it keeps her occupied if we go for a meal and we can all sit and interact rather than chasing her round.

Ipad minis start at £200.

All you anti techs, you do realise that it's 2014 not 1974,and life had moved on. I sseriously believe that tech limited children are disadvantaged for the future, educationally and socially. Life is very different now than it was when we were children. The bullying stuff is a nonsensical reason, bullying happens whatever and children need to learn how to manage it.

My 2.3 yo is great on mine, they all are. In fact the toddler is scarily good! If they have access to the latest technology then they can't be left behind. They don't actually need their own if there's a family one. Ipads etc aren't hard to get to grips with anyway.

We have a LOT of tech in my house, but my kids spend more time doing other stuff.

Having had a child bullied on FB even though he isn't on it colours my judgement on that particular qrguement tbh. He chooses to stay away from it and to his knowledge has missed one party. He's lucky though that his social life revolves around the sport he plays, so he can usually be found either playing it or at the sports club playing snooker or watching footbqll with his mates. Who he generally phones or speaks to on xbox live.
Not being able to chat on whatsapp or whatever hasn't excluded him, he uses my ipad for homework and Minecraft so it is available to him. It's just up to him how he uses it. The same will apply to our other children.

All you anti techs, you do realise that it's 2014 not 1974,and life had moved on. I sseriously believe that tech limited children are disadvantaged for the future, educationally and socially. Life is very different now than it was when we were children.

What a ridiculous argument. Or are you teaching your kids coding and how to program apps? Everybody on this thread proclaiming the educational benefits of tablets have listed the games they play, all of which have a 'real-world' version. Those games take about 5 minutes to learn how to play them. In what way does that help with knowledge of technology?

You want your kids to be technologically aware? Teach them programming. There are systems aimed at 6 year olds. Spend £50 on a Raspberry Pi and get them building a system from scratch. That's the skills they'll need to succeed in the future (and there are already young kids earning real money from apps they've designed and programmed themselves).

I'm not anti-tech by any stretch of the imagination; DH and I are both gadget fiends and our kids play games and Skype on our smartphones, tablets and PCs. We were both delighted when our 5 year old came home from school and said he'd be doing 'electronics' in school. We were horrified to learn that 'electronics' meant 'play games on your tablet/games system'. There are plenty of programming systems designed for use in schools but we're meant to be happy that our kids are playing games? Games can be educational and will teach many things but most don't teach anything about the actual technology.

My 12 yr old DD is learning programming, she is top of her class, because she is very bright and very tech aware. She has no internet is programming though, being more sport mad and wants to be a marine biologist. The silly assumption that children with tech are closeted in their dark rooms being bullied on FB is just as daft as my assumption really isn't it. ......

interest in programmming, bloody predictive text.
Her main interest in tech is social.

ipads specifically are not necessary at any age but some kind of internet device such as laptop, tablet or desktop for longer than one hour a day is almost essential for teenagers imo. Saying no to this is the equivalent of parents denying TV for my generation- it marks children out as irrevocably different, cuts them off from the cultural references of other people their age and the impact will be lifelong. My parents did this with TV (we didn't have one) and my sister and I still resent it in middle age! But at least forbidding TV didn't affect our social lives so it was possible to spend time with friends (and watch TV at their houses). Forbidding internet would have a MASSIVE impact on a teen's social life, imo. My older children's social lives are exclusively organised via social media and mobile phone messenger apps, pretty much. Parents are out of the mix in this respect after about age 13, except for checking they are safe and picking them up from all over the place. You need them to have a phone at this stage so you can find them and demand that they immediately hand their phone to the responsible adult they claim to be supervising the situation to find out whether they are ok!

And where did I make the assumption that "children with tech are closeted in their dark rooms being bullied on FB"?

I'm glad your daughter is being taught programming; my point is that most people using tablets know little about programming. Tablets are designed to be quick and easy to learn to use, by their very nature you will not learn how they actually work and hence understand the technology behind them.

Tablets and smartphones are designed for fun, to enable social activities. That is not a bad thing, but claiming that children will be educationally disadvantaged by not having access to them at home is a non-starter as an argument.

I didn't mention bullying in my last post: online bullying is a huge issue. Yes, children should be taught how to handle it, the problem is that they aren't because many adults don't recognise how big a problem it is and don't know how to handle it themselves. Appropriate online behaviour and internet use is something that, to be blunt, most adults don't know about; how can they teach their children about something they don't understand?

Bardolino, I was v interested in your mention of Raspberry Pi. I've never even heard of it, and their website leaves me very little the wiser (being a complete techno dud). What can they do with it? From the little I understood, it sounds as if it could be of interest to 12 yo (and is obviously far more reasonably priced!)

Dame - my DS is 13 so I am not making the comment having just got younger children. I had all the 'everybody has one' arguments and DS got his first mobile phone for Christmas when he went to Secondary school. He bought a playstation with his own savings and birthday/christmas money.

As I said earlier, he does have access to the family desk top but there is no way we would buy him an expensive ipad.

If he wants to save up and buy his own that is a different matter although not something I would encourage .

I tend to agree with Bardolino that unless you're learning programming, kids without these devices will not be left behind. Ipads and tablets aren't rocket science to operate, and they are changing all the time. I had a family member telling me I was disadvantaging DS (2.5) by not letting him play games on our tablet and he'll be left behind etc etc. But, he uses my Mum's when she visits - about once a month - and between that and me giving him mine to use two days in a row recently he's figured it out. As I said, it's not rocket science.

We continue to limit his use simply because I don't like him having too much screen time, and his current addiction to Peppa Pig sees him watching more than enough screens as it is!

What can they do with it? From the little I understood, it sounds as if it could be of interest to 12 yo

It's very much about getting people to actually write programs with languages like python or scratch.

There are plenty of online tutorials and guides etc, I'll put in some links at the bottom.

It's also really good for learning about electronics as well and actually trying things out in real life.

It's also a great way to cheaply learn how to get computers to control things. For example if your dc have any interest in photography/video or robotics then this is a cheap way to get them to start exploring those areas and how they can be controlled with a computer.

Obviously you will need to buy extra things, but again these are all pared down and quite cheap - at least compared to the price of lots of fancy equipment.

Here is a video tutorial of someone writing a game:-

www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgyU3jNA6VjS3ij6ZXbb2x4GdEP3bAWzO

Have a look at the video on this page of the raspberry pi website:-

www.raspberrypi.org/what-can-you-do-with-a-raspberry-pi/

For my dc, the interesting bits are what they show in the video from about 1:56.

There are plenty of online resources, for example here is one by a teenager that has done quite a lot:-

www.raspberrypitutorials.yolasite.com/

Here is a video tutorial of someone writing a game:-

www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgyU3jNA6VjS3ij6ZXbb2x4GdEP3bAWzO

These people also do some good tutorials:-

pibeginners.com/

This guy has a whole load of tutorials, this one is on how to use the pi to control a motor to turn the wheels on a model car:-

And a pi controlled remote control model car:-

These people also do a lot of tutorials as well:-

pibeginners.com/

and you can also get good ideas here as well:-

www.adafruit.com/blog/

Somehow, some videos have been attached to my post - is that something new on MN?

They appear to be the last two youtube links that I provided.

How strange. I never knew MN did this.

Nickymanchester - thanks very much indeed for all this. It is very kind of you. I will look properly once the children are not hanging over my shoulder!!

Raspberry pi's are amazing. We don't do much screen stuff at all but a raspberry pi is properly educational!!

Also wanted to just mention Scratch again. It's a really great little thing for children - and non-techy adults - to learn as a first step in programming.

You can use it on macs as well and it's free:-

scratch.mit.edu/about/

Sorry, real life got in the way!

The Pi is designed to get children programming, to teach the basics about how computers work. It's designed to be simple to use but it gets good, quick, results with just a little effort.

Those links that nickymanchester have got lots of good ideas. DH (who's the real programmer of the family) also recommends the Raspberry Pi foundation website - www.raspberrypi.org/resources/make/ and Magpi, an online magazine - www.themagpi.com

You do need to spend a little to really get the good of it, but it depends what you want to do with it. A full starter kit is less than £100.