01-28-2004, 09:00 PM
|
|
Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
|
|
The Case for Kids and PDAs: Facing the facts on PDAs
"Now let's talk about my favorite subject, PDAs. Prepare yourselves, I'm going to make an outrageous statement: kids need PDAs. You have an objection? All right, hit me with it. Is that the best you've got? Trust me, I've been called worse! Here are some of the general arguments against kids having PDAs:
1) They're too dog-gone expensive, especially for kids. I'm not spending $500 for Bobby to drop it in the toilet.
2) Too fragile.
3) Let's just buy him another Gameboy. You know he ain't gonna get no work done with that PDA thing.
4) They have no educational value.
5) The other parents are going to think were awfully pretentious (not that we worry about that). Okay, you have to read in black and white now, because I'm going to do my best Perry Mason impression. Ladies and gentleman of the jury, my esteemed colleague wants you to believe that PDAs are just too expensive, fragile, and impractical to put in the hands of babes. I'd like to show you why his arguments don't hold water."
This article discusses an interesting topic - kids and PDAs. Not having kids yet, I don't have much of an opinion on this. What about those of you who are parents - do your kids have PDAs? I have a feeling that when I have kids, I'll have to strap a fuel cell to their lunch kits in order to power all the geek toys I'll give them. :worried:
|
| |
|
|
|
01-29-2004, 06:10 AM
|
|
Neophyte
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 6
|
|
Been there... done that.
I have two kids. I let the eleven year old have my "old" pda which was a Casio E105. All she did with it was record herself singing into it and play it back. Made some kind of game out of it with her brother. She played a few games too. Kids, in my experience, don't have good enough hand writing skills to use the various input methods and it is too tedious for their attention span anyway. On top of that, they are still learning proper hand writing and intentionally writing letters a different way would definitely be counterproductive to school work. The kids are graded on writing all of the letters in a particular way until they are above 6th grade or so.
It winds up being an expensive game boy. I now pass along PDAs to adult family members who want them. My kids have GBAs and GBA SPs. I could buy her a microcassette recorder which she could get a lot better sound quality out of. Once the cool wears off of it (about a week), it sits in the cradle and never moves. She had a Casio E105 and an old Sony Clie at different times. Same story for both. She thought the SOny was a little cooler because it had 320X320 (she thought the screen was "prettier") and it had a lot more games on it b/c the OS wasn't deprecated yet. Kids want lots of stuff they'll never use... I put PDAs in that category.
|
| |
|
|
|
01-29-2004, 06:51 AM
|
|
Theorist
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 302
|
|
:rotfl: This is a joke. A PDA as a Gameboy replacement? If a kid has ever used a Gameboy, they will never be satisfied with the games available for PDAs�they'll want the games their friends have. And if the parent thinks, "Hey, I'll just install an emulator and they can play those games on their PDA!" then they'll be disappointed in the PDA again�no PDA (besides perhaps the Zodiac) has a button that's good for Gameboy games, and that monochrome screen won't cut it. Of course, it's a leap to assume that the parent would even able to get an emulator working (once they manage to find one). Finding the ROMs to games you own online is even harder�and if they can't find the ROMs for the games their kids have, they'll have to shell out for equipment to extract the files from the cartridges (or download illegal ROMs�great example, Dad!). It's cheaper to just get a Gameboy.
I won't even get into the problems that kids will have with loosing the thing.
And if parents think that the PDA will help their kids do homework, they should consider the input issues�no decent writing can be done with onscreen input by a ten year old. Heck, even I can't stand to input stuff.
Of course, when I inherited my father's Clio in middle school, it came in handy. H/PCs have keyboards, so they can be useful for writing.
The biggest hole in this guy's opinion, though, is that kid's will gain the tech skills they need from a PDA. That's simply not true. While those hours troubleshooting ActiveSync might help cultivate patience, the productivity apps on most PDAs are nothing like the desktop version in terms of interface, which pretty much kills any transfer of knowledge that a ten year old could accomplish.
That said, is there a free Spanish-English dictionary for Windows CE like the one in the article for PalmOS?
__________________
�Sometimes I think the surest sign of intelligent life out there is that none of it has tried to contact us.�
�Calvin & Hobbes
|
| |
|
|
|
01-29-2004, 10:22 AM
|
|
Sage
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 734
|
|
I practically grew up with PDA's. I got my first organiser/demi-PDA when I was 12, and my first real PDA [Psion Siena] when I was only 14 years old. I would like to point out up front that *I* bought them, my parents had *NOTHING* at all to do with it. To this day they still don't know what I can really do with my PDA.. they still see it as a sort of gameboy plus organiser instead of a little PC.
Anyway, As such, I know what a PDA can do for a high school age kid. It's hard enough to manage everything when you're 14, 15 years old and a PDA can definitely help you out, if you're mature and tech savvy enough to do more with it then use it as a calender and alarm clock  I did everything with it.
Right now, I study journalism at the university, and I use my PDA's every day. I read books on the way to school. I take notes when I need to [not in class though, I still prefer pen and paper] and I have all my stuff with me in one small and easy to use package.
Kids and PDA's.. well, not with the current crop of PDA's - they're too expensive, and the cheap ones don't offer what kids want: hi-res, color, cool games, easy to use etc. $200 or so for an Ipaq 1915 or Tungsten E is still a lot of money for most parents. If they made a T|E for something like $100, I really see these taking off on schools and universitys.
|
| |
|
|
|
01-29-2004, 12:31 PM
|
|
Intellectual
Join Date: Dec 2003
Posts: 217
|
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Tom W.M.
The biggest hole in this guy's opinion, though, is that kid's will gain the tech skills they need from a PDA. That's simply not true. While those hours troubleshooting ActiveSync might help cultivate patience, the productivity apps on most PDAs are nothing like the desktop version in terms of interface, which pretty much kills any transfer of knowledge that a ten year old could accomplish.
|
Quite true, he also makes the point that children can learn to program on a PDA. 8O Personally, I don't think that it's the easiest platform to develop for without investing in expensive development tools. :?
|
| |
|
|
|
01-29-2004, 01:46 PM
|
|
Pontificator
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 1,051
|
|
I think it depend's on the kids age. Anything that takes kids away from developing writing and arithmatic skills is a bad thing. As an adult, if I need to multiply 26x73, I do it on my PPC. I don't want my 12 year old relying on a calculator to do math. Same with writing. I don't want my young child typing everything at a keyboard. I want them using a pen and paper. Once these skills are developed, then they can have their PDA. Heck, we all need our toys :mrgreen: .
|
| |
|
|
|
01-29-2004, 02:29 PM
|
|
Pupil
Join Date: Jun 2002
Posts: 23
|
|
Hey Jason,
Don't be too hard on the kids- I've dropped my PDA in the toilet as an adult
|
| |
|
|
|
01-29-2004, 02:46 PM
|
|
Intellectual
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 135
|
|
For Christmas we got my girlfriend's son a digital camera because he would take mine all the time. Well he never uses it! It is in his secret hiding place or strapped to his toy gun (which I hate but didn't get for him) in case he shoots a trophy buck. Giving him a PDA would be totally worthless - and I have thought about it. All he would do wouild be to play games for a few days and then it would disappear down into the secret hiding place and eventually hard reset when the battery went dead.
Let kids grow and explore in their own ways. So often we program their lives around our needs rather than to let them program their own lives. Let them be kids, they'll grow up soon enough.
|
| |
|
|
|
01-29-2004, 02:47 PM
|
|
Intellectual
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 135
|
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by batsai
Don't be too hard on the kids- I've dropped my PDA in the toilet as an adult |
Didn't Marloff do that ages ago?
|
| |
|
|
|
01-29-2004, 02:59 PM
|
|
Ponderer
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 80
|
|
My 11 year old bought his OWN Dell X5 (last year, when he was 10).
If a kid has the right kind of brain to actually WANT a PDA, it's probably a good idea for them to have one. But giving one to a kid isn't going to somehow turn him into someone who can figure out how to use it.
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Linear Mode
