Child-proof Touchscreens

We are using a tablet computer for education for our 3 year old daughter.  Mostly right now, she is learning simple stuff, like numbers and names of objects.  One nice thing about touchscreen devices is that they have a much shallower learning curve for people with poor coordination than other computer devices.  This makes them ideal for children.  Our daughter's experience confirms this.


I just finished reading this article: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865580442/Touchscreens-and-toddlers-The-research-is-mostly-good-news.html  It discusses using touchscreen devices for children.  It also references some good studies on the subject of how touchscreen devices affect children.  One surprising thing I learned from the article is that many parents allow their children to play with their smart phones or tablets when they need to be free from distractions (while shopping for instance).  It talks briefly about a child who figured out how to unlock a smart phone at 8 months old.  Studies have shown that touchscreen time for young children, even this young, can have positive effects.  The article says that studies suggest that limited time with close supervision is best, and it can be especially effective if the parents are directly involved.  Evidently (and as I have suspected and observed) touchscreen devices are excellent learning tools for children that are too young to have enough coordination to use traditional computers.

This article got me thinking about more widespread use of touchscreen devices as learning tools.  Even the cheapest tablet computers available are powerful enough to run most learning applications.  The problem is that they are fragile.  Near the end of the article, one parent is quoted as saying that one reason they limit the time their child spends on the tablet or smart phone is that it tedious to have to clean the drool off of the expensive device.  (Note that limiting time is a good thing, but drool on the device is probably not.)  This is the same thing I am worried about with our daughter.  She does not drool on it, but the device cost several hundred dollars, and she does not understand that it is fragile and needs to be kept clean.  At this point, she is just too young to understand this, and it can be assumed that other children her age or younger will also not understand this.  So, do we just keep risking it, hoping that we get lucky, or do we deny our daughter the opportunity for very good early brain development to potentially save a few hundred dollars?

I would like to suggest that someone needs to start making small (somewhere between 4 and 7 inch) tablets designed with children in mind.  These would be water tight (not just water resistant; kids like to drop things in bathtubs and toilets), with impact resistant screens.  The shell would also need to be impact resistant, because children often drop things, or worse, I have a brother who had a fetish with stepping on things when he was very young (I am lucky he did not break my laptop screen).  I am not suggesting that they need to be military combat grade materials, but I think that current designs could be improved on a bit to make more child safe designs.  Given the potential benefits these devices have for learning, I think that a small, lower performance, cheap tablet that can handle common educational games would be a good seller.  These devices could even be marketed to schools (some of which are already spending over half a grand a pop on IPads).  If these could be produced cheaply enough, some schools might even consider buying every student one.  I am certain that many parents would buy at least one, if not one for each of their children.

Anyhow, these studies that show benefits for judicious use of touchscreen computers for educating young children make a very good marketing platform for these devices, but if they are not child safe, many people will shy away because of the risk of expensive damage.  I sincerely hope that someone with some influence reads this and makes it happen, because we are homeschooling our children, and having a few damage resistant devices like this would really help.

Lord Rybec

Consequences of Aliteracy

I currently have a professor who has mentioned the topic of aliteracy in the U.S. several times.  Aliteracy is when a person knows how to read, but chooses not to.  It turns out that aliteracy is a growing problem in the U.S.  Evidently, even a significant percentage of highly educated Americans are too apathetic to take time to read.  This includes those in high positions, like CEOs.  Obviously, this is related to the education problem we have in the U.S.  I have identified some less obvious problems that are very likely caused by this epidemic of aliteracy.

One problem I have noticed is that most small business owners in the U.S. do not seem to have any knowledge of labor law.  In addition, a vast majority of lower level retail managers (below store level) do not know labor law either.  The result is that small business owners won't ask your sexual orientation (which is only prohibited in a few states) in an interview, but they will ask if you are a student, if you have a family, and if you have transportation to work, even though all of these are prohibited by Federal law.  In addition, companies like WalMart (I have seen this myself) often have signs up stating that they will not hire anyone who will not work on Sundays, even though Federal law considers this to be religious discrimination, unless the business can prove that hiring the person would cause "undue hardship."  (Given their profit margins and size, WalMart would have an extremely hard time convincing a judge that having a few employees who will not work Sundays would cause undue hardship.)

Anyhow, I have had personal experience with these problems, and I always stand up for my legal rights, because if no one does, then they will never learn.  Also, I am protected by anti-retaliation laws that prohibit any kind of disciplinary action based on my assertion of my rights.  Thankfully, I have never been challenged on this (I have caused my managers some grief, but they know better than to doubt that I know what I am talking about).

So, the point of all of this is that aliteracy is, among other things, destroying many of our legal rights.  First, business owners and managers are too lazy to take the time to learn how they are supposed to treat employees.  Second, employees are too lazy to learn their legal rights.  So, in my experience, most workplaces for entry level jobs often treat their employees in ways that are illegal, and the employees, while they recognize the unfairness of the treatment, do not realize that they can do something about it.  The only times that anything is done about this is when someone like me overhears something clearly illegal going on and reports it (and, I have done this before, resulting in around $15,000 in fines to a company that was violating child labor laws designed to protect minors).  People in a truly literate civilization do not jump into legally complex arenas, like business ownership or management, without doing their research to make sure they are operating within their legal limitations.

I have argued in the past that reading is the single most important skill that students can learn in school.  I would like to add an addendum to that statement.  First, reading is the most important skill that schools can teach our children.  Second, however, if the methods they employ to teach reading discourage the actual use of that skill, then the skill has little value.  Thus, reading is the most important skill that schools can teach our children, but for this to be effective, it must be taught in a way that encourages liberal use of the skill.  There is no skill that has any value if it is rarely or never used, and reading is no exception.


Stay tuned.  I am not finished on this subject.  It turns out that New Zealand has the highest literacy rate and  lowest aliteracy rate in the world.  I am currently researching their program for teaching reading, and it looks very promising.  I will be posting an article on my findings in the near future.

Lord Rybec