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A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards
51–60 of 365 posts
Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
It depends on the age of the child. A toddler who is still exploring the world is one thing. A 14 year old who swipes at a book is a problem. (I don't know the age of the children from these anecdotes.) On the other hand, a toddler who explores the world as if it is a touch screen has been given way too much time on a touch screen. So there is definitely a problem there.
I highly doubt you'll find a 14 year old who swipes at a book... kids very quickly learn context and rules of physics. It's much harder when some screens are touch screens and some are not, however, but I see adults trying to swipe non-touch screens all the time (mall displays, ads, iMacs etc.)
Meanwhile we adults are still occasionally trying to Ctrl-Z real life.
Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards
#53I've seen this phenomenon while teaching a teenager programming (in america). He had no problem typing letters, but when it came to symbols like $ % [ ( etc, it took him forever to find them. It makes sense as modern computers don't require that you edit autoexec.bat files to get a game running and he is probably mostly on a phone or tablet anyway. But I was surprised!
Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards
#54Do your children a favor and get them a "real" computer with keyboard and mouse, instead of a tablet. I've found it helps with several things. For one, I've seen children accustomed to using touch interfaces blurring the line between physical and virtual, i.e swiping at physical objects like books, photos, even walls. I've not seen this behavior with those used to non touch interfaces. Also, learning to use a keyboar…
Kids should be weaned off tablets just like infants are weaned off milk and induced to use their teeth.
The thing that really bothers me is, as Alan Kay says: The ipad interface is designed for 2-year-olds and 82-year-olds and being forced upon everyone in between. See, eg: https://www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-ab...
It is a de-evolution of problem-solving culture in the sense that people are discouraged from using more sophisticated tools to step up their game! "There's an app for that" culture implies that you don't need to learn to compose tools to solve problems -- sit back and consume somebody else's hard work. While that does simplify computers so that more people can use it in the short-term, it also strips away the whole purpose of computing, which is to empower people with a more advanced tool. That's what human cultural/civilizational evolution has been about -- from stone tools, to metals, to the industrial revolution, to the information/computing revolution. Forcing people to interact by tapping on graphical interfaces is to step backwards to caveman levels of communication: point and grunt. We're giving up on human language, writing and tool use, just so that people can avoid learning a little!
Not knowing to use a keyboard is not bad as such, if one's typing speed on a touchscreen can be as effective. But that's hard---at least for someone who hasn't grown up with touchscreens all over the place---and I had to switch from my phone to my laptop to type this long-ish comment! And the amount of typing, editing, reorganizing and adding links that I had to do would have been extremely difficult to do on a phone interface. Giving in to that barrier can so easily stop one from creating/contributing, and going into a passive consumption mode!
Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards
#55I didn't introduce anything electronic to my son until he was about 7. I then told him, he wouldn't be allowed to use a computer until he learns to type first.
One year later, he was typing over 100 wpm. Now a teenager, he types about 130wpm.
He started with a basic online course to learn the proper technique. Then afterward, he started playing an online game called nitrotype. Which made learning to type fast enjoyable.
Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards
#56I still prefer pencil and paper.
I find it's the least limiting because you can draw anything, the easiest to use because you don't have to learn a GUI or a language, and the fastest -- yet software people will still wonder how they can GREP it. Another contra is legibility and possibly aesthetics.
Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
> On the other hand, a toddler who explores the world as if it is a touch screen has been given way too much time on a touch screen. So there is definitely a problem there. You are making quite an assumption here. People of many centuries ago would also say that we raise our kids in a wrong way, because we don't teach them how to survive in the wild or how to work a potato field.
A computer is a machine of profound alienation from the actual ability to create and the ability to use, unlike anything someone who survives in the wild or farms would do. Many people will die having used computers for 10 hours a day but not being able to really act with computers and create with computers. This is unacceptable.
> A computer is a machine of profound alienation from the actual ability to create and the ability to use
A funny thing to say, given that today a lot of content requires computers to produce, even abstract art.
> Many people will die having used computers for 10 hours a day but not being able to really act with computers and create with computers
How is that different from people who voraciously read countless books, or watch countless movies, yet never produce anything at all, in whatever domain.
Not everybody wants to be a producer. Some people are perfectly happy just consuming, or partying all day.
Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards
#58Having volunteered to teach kids coming from single-parent household with no computer at home, I've seen how the inability to type on a QWERTY keyboard with any modicum of speed (hunt-and-peck) actually limits them when we encourage them to 'iterate', 'try fast and fail', 'just code a line of something', or 'what will that do?'. If expressing your thoughts and intentions to the editor is painful and slow, it is a con…
Specifically I would suggest to let them learn to type themselves, rather than following some program. (I.e., don't teach home-row typing.) I taught myself to type when I was 5 or 6, and type with wrists straight (so, at an angle to each other), hands in no fixed location, and both hands sharing duty for several keys. I credit this with my freedom from keyboard-related RSI even after 28 years of typing.
(I have had mouse-related RSI. Mice cause grip issues.)
Better still is to give them a real keyboard, i.e. one with key travel, not a crappy laptop keyboard. I learned on an Apple II, plenty of key travel. Typing on a MacBook over the course of three recent years nearly destroyed my typing ability due to what I can only describe as something like the yips. Switching back to a real keyboard has helped.
Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards
#59I'm confused here. The article implies that kids aren't learning how to type because they don't have access to a PC at home. But for the majority of the history of computing, it was the case that most people wouldn't have had access to a PC at home as children. My parents learned to type on typewriters at college. I had a mandatory class entirely dedicated to typing in middle school. Have schools stopped offering computer classes, assuming that kids already know how to use them from their experience at home? If so, then that sounds like a problem all on its own given that poorer households might not have had a computer even during the PC golden age.
Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards
#60Do your children a favor and get them a "real" computer with keyboard and mouse, instead of a tablet. I've found it helps with several things. For one, I've seen children accustomed to using touch interfaces blurring the line between physical and virtual, i.e swiping at physical objects like books, photos, even walls. I've not seen this behavior with those used to non touch interfaces. Also, learning to use a keyboar…
I have mostly forgotten how to write with a pen. I am absolutely fine with that.