How You Can Help Your Child Operate in the
Electronic Age When You Don't Own a Home Computer
As a young family with three children on a limited budget,
it was years before we could afford a home computer. Our
financial situation didn't stop our children from wanting
one either. As home computers proliferated and our children
entered school, we worried that they would fall educationally
behind other children. We worried that without a home computer
to reinforce their school based computer skills, those skills
would diminish. We needn't have worried, our children did
just fine. In fact, they taught us that there are many ways
that kids can bridge the digital divide even when they don't
have a personal computer at home.
 Our middle child, Emily, was, and is, totally computer obsessed.
Emily wanted a computer so bad that as a four year old she
made one for herself out of a shoe box lid and large cardboard
box. She had seen computers in her father's office and had
found a photograph of a computer there. Referencing the
photograph, she drew alphabet letters on top of the shoe
box lid, drawing circles around each letter, turning her
box lid into a "keyboard." Then she drew a large rectangle
on the front of the big cardboard box, drawing many knobs
beneath her "screen." She played with her pretend computer
continuously, playacting out all kinds of office and business
scenarios. Her game progressed to the point that she began
to change the images on her screen to meet her many imaginary
business needs by drawing new pictures and letters on separate
sheets of paper, then taping them to her pretend computer
screen.
Lessons I Learned from Emily:
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If
you don't have a home computer, take your child to your
place of work, or a friend's place of work, and show them
what computers are and what they can do.
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Make
your children aware of how often computers are used in
our daily lives. Bring your child with you when you run
errands. Point out the many ways people use computers
at the grocery store, restaurants, the doctor's office,
the post office, the bank, the dry cleaners, etc. Ask
your children how they think computers can be used in
different occupations, jobs, and work situations.
-
Encourage your preschooler to make their own "computer."
Help them if they ask you to, but after supplying paper,
crayons, scissors and a glue stick, leave them to their
work. Encourage them to play pretend games imagining themselves
in different occupational roles and to use their pretend
computer in their play.
-
Teach
your child to visually recognize the letters of the alphabet
and numbers 1-10. Get an old computer keyboard or an old
typewriter. Show your child the letters, the space bar,
and all the auxiliary keys on the keyboard, then explain
what the keys mean and what they do. Let them play and
pretend with the keyboard.
-
All
three of our children have played with old discarded keyboards
long before they used computers in school. Consequently,
typing and computer usage was considerably easier for
them once they began using real computers.
-
It
was Emily, of course, who made me aware that libraries
offered free access to the Internet. Libraries are a great
place for kids to learn and practice computer use. Librarians
can also be wonderfully helpful to your children. Kids
need to learn how to research and evaluate the information
they obtain from the Internet. School and public librarians
can often do a better job teaching our children how to
surf the Internet for the information they need than we
can do at home. Remember to ask your librarian which hours
have the least traffic at your library. Those are the
times to visit the library with your child if you have
computer use in mind.
Don't despair if you cannot afford a home computer. Essentially,
your child needs the same skills for computer use that he
or she needs to use one of the oldest forms of interactive
communication, a book. The best way to help your child prepare
to meet the needs of the new electronic age is to help them
to be great readers and writers. The rest will follow easily.
© 2001 Mary Brigid Barrett
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PTA 
