A Classmate for Fun and Learning

posted by Ken Kaplan on February 24, 2009

In my Google Alerts the other day, I found one of those serendipitous gems that made the geek dad in me smile.

G4TV did a fun and funny segment on the Intel Classmate PC, the nifty little netbook-like computer designed for young students.

I got a good laugh, but it also hit home. For the holidays, I bought each of my two kids — age 5 and 6.5 — a clamshell-style Classmates with an Intel Atom processor and beefed up memory. I took a risk, but it something I calculated well before buying them.

I started really thinking about getting one after we showed the new Convertible Classmate PC to Adrian Covert of Gizmodo. He asked some good techie questions that helped me learn about the engineering and social science that went into making these little netbooks with 9-inch LCD screens.

After two months, my kids still treat them as a prized possessions. The Classmates have been dropped, stepped on and stuck with stickers…but they still take better care of their Classmates than just about anything else they own.

Maybe it’s because they personalized it with a skin. Not with Hannah Montana as in this photo I shot at this year the Consumer Electronics Show, but with an image we chose together.

My boy picked a vibrant blue water frame filled with swimming Japanese Koi. My daughter chose the white unicorns prancing in a dreamy meadow.

Or maybe because they now have their own computer, something they see their mom and dad use for serious work and fun around the house.

I have restrained myself from “training” them how to use the computer. Intuitively, they knew how to turn it on and move the mouse around using the touch pad. However blindly it may seemed at first, they gingerly clicked their way to learning programs that are teaching them math and spelling skills. And to think, it’s all running on the same operating system my wife and I have in our laptops: Windows XP.

I don’t let my kids connect to the Internet yet. I turned off the integrated Wi-Fi, but each Classmate is set up to connect to our home wireless G network.

Even in kindergarten and first grade, my kids take a weekly trip to their school’s computer lab. It’s crazy to think that I took my first typing class just before graduating high school. Today, my kids are using all of their fingers, “keyboarding” as they call it.

Did I make the right decision getting my kids a real computer…all their own?

I’m not sure, but I do think I’m helping them get comfortable with technology. I’m allowing them to explore and learn from what a computer can do.

It is a tool, like a book or library card, that will become party of their education. I will be encouraging them to use the computer to grow their natural learning skills, and expand upon what they learn each weekday inside their classroom.

Some rules I have for myself:

• Don’t let my kids spend more than 30-minutes with the computer on at one time, and don’t let them be on the computer more than twice a day. So far, they’re on about four times a week.
• Don’t let the kids get on the Internet without being by their side. This rule will be revisited as they get older, but for now the Internet is unnecessary because the Classmate has some fun and engaging learning software
• Let them “play” with the Classmate, but inform them why it is not a toy. This way they may take care of their computer and see it as something fun that inspires them.

What keeps running through my mind is I see the world changing faster, and the Internet is becoming more important to our lives. Maybe it’s the impact of Moore’s Law on family life. Seeing this, I’d like to help my children to feel comfortable with technology and learn at their own pace while they’re young.

Before I know it, they’ll soon leapfrog me — in everything! — so at least now I can show them what I believe in, what inspires me and how I use technology responsibly.

 

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tagged: classmate, education, g4tv, intel, netbooks