Chromebooks for Kids: How Young is Too Young For Cloud Computing?
January 8, 2013
Grazed from Forbes. Author: Jordan Shapiro.
At just $199, the Acer C7 Chromebook seems like the perfect kids’ computer. When I was a kid, my whole family shared one Apple IIc. All the graphics were green. The software that taught me touch typing came on multiple floppy disks. Print Shop was my favorite way to make use of the dot matrix printer. The internet was not accessible.
My kids obviously live in a different time. Their world is saturated with personal computing. At five and seven years old, they are already familiar with “Google” as a verb. They are tablet savvy, navigating Minecraft in ways that are puzzling to me. And they have their own gmail accounts. When other parents hear me talking about emails that my son sent, their first reaction is a smile. It seems cute. However, they also express understandable worry that the internet is filled with predators and cyber-bullying…
Unlike many of the worry-wart fears that mom expressed during my childhood, these are not simply a product of urban legend. The real dangers are well-documented. And to make matters worse, a century of developmental child pop-psychology has established cultural norms that are not easily reconciled with the realities of networked society. Psychotherapeutic sessions have always been preoccupied with ambiguous ideas like smothering, weaning, isolation, and independence. Meanwhile, a connected world calls into question accepted notions about benefits of sheltering innocence and purity…
Read more from the source @ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2013/01/08/chromebooks-for-kids-how-young-is-too-young-for-cloud-computing/