26 years ago I wrote a BAT file ("kristen") for the household MS-DOS computer, which would play Christmas carols whenever my two-year-old daughter typed her name on the keyboard and pressed the return key. She learned quickly to switch the system on, wait for the boot sequence to complete, and play music All By Herself.
It was a revelation: kids as young as that don't have eye-hand coordination enough to scribble recognizable letters, so grownups tend to underestimate their cognitive abilities. But give 'em an opportunity to type, and their world expands explosively.
Kristen's own son just turned three last month, and you can't tear him away from his iPad.
Works for speech too, so I'd summarize it as "kids lacks interfaces". A neuroscientist said there's an adult/infant impedance mismatch, that caused wrong theories to develop. Kids would fail repetitive logic tests because asking the same question twice would be interpreted as being wrong so they tried another answer which made them look random. * sigh
Kids tend to take to tablets brilliantly in my experience. My son turned two a couple of months ago and he can unlock my iPad, swipe across to the next page, select his folder containing his apps (mostly educational, one or two fun apps) choose an app, play with it for a bit, close the app and open a new one. He recently learned how to work the camera which is pretty awesome.
Interesting side effect: He now thinks all smooth surfaces are interactive. We were on the train recently and he was swiping the window in order to close the train doors. Blew my mind at the time.
I remember playing video games with a younger family member before he could read. (I want to say the system in question was a Sega Saturn, but I'm not one hundred percent sure about this.) He didn't know what the menus said, but he knew exactly which options he wanted and how to move through several menu screens.
I was impressed.
Moral of the story: A halfway decent interactive interface can work wonders for a kid's ability to unleash his mind.
My son (and daughter) now walk up to the TV if I have paused the movie and press the big (||) button on screen. That blew me away too - its much better interface.
(Actually they both used to, now they grab the remote. Ollie can work it fine now.)
There are a huge number of educational and recreational apps for the iPad for kids, apart from just games. My plan for years was to get a netbook each for my kids and put something like Edubuntu on it, but now I just don't see the point. I have a netbook, but the battery only lasts a few hours, it's woefully underpowered compared to an iPad, takes several minutes to boot/wake as against instant start, is fiddly to use, with a poor screen. It's just a non-starter. If you're not used to the iPad ok, but if you are they're worlds apart.
I'm hoping for a relatively cheap mini-iPad to come out this autumn and I'll get one for each of my two girls, aged 7 and 8. That, or get their rich uncle and grandparents to sort them out. Then I can get my iPad back out of their little fingers. It'll be just me and the wife fighting over it, though actually there are quite a few puzzle games we play together.
My brother's two year old "hogs" their iPad. The amount of read along books in the iBooks store is amazing.
I think an iPad is better than a cheap laptop because kids like to touch things and the direct interaction is amazing. Some of the books I read as a child like "The Monster at the End of This Book" are amazing interactive on the iPad.
Well I'm sure the ipad has plenty of educational games like the app that teaches algebra without math but you could always look at a netbook and something like http://www.qimo4kids.com/
An ipad may be easier for a child to get started with as everything is just there on the screen.
The tablet interface is way more natural than the computer. If you're got the cash, go for the iPad. If not, I might even recommend one of the 7" Nexus tables Google puts out. I'm no Android guy, but that is a great product for its price.
As a kid, I never saw the point in learning handwriting because the computer could do it so much faster and better.
Today's kids are going to be so different compared to anyone who comes before, they'll be asking "why learn anything when we have Google, Bing, and Wolfram Alpha?"
Giving computers to young children is one thing. I would think twice about giving them unrestricted internet however. I kinda like the lego raspberry computer idea combined with the 'showing CLI first' idea someone had here (obviously not for children below the age of 7 or so).
It was a revelation: kids as young as that don't have eye-hand coordination enough to scribble recognizable letters, so grownups tend to underestimate their cognitive abilities. But give 'em an opportunity to type, and their world expands explosively.
Kristen's own son just turned three last month, and you can't tear him away from his iPad.