Tablet Learning

A lot of people already know I'm a teacher. And I love tricking my students into learning. I love seeing the light bulb come on when they finally understand a concept, and I love knowing that I helped them make it to that step.

I'm the same way with James.

The other night, I was walking through Target getting necessities for my family, and saw a mom with three kids. Two of which were crammed into the shopping cart, one with an iPad, the other with her phone. The third walked alongside the cart.

I'm not one to judge, and I don't have three children. I could not imagine what it would be like with three children, considering we're done after two. I do know, however, what a pain in the ass it is to bring your kid shopping to the store with you when that's the last thing they want to do.

But watching her children as she walked alongside me down the main aisle got me to thinking. One was playing some car racing game, the other a game that was similar to SIMON, if you've every played. But it got me thinking...

We have a Nexus 7. We did a ton of research into tablets (I am a research guru... a couple weeks ago, I researched glow sticks for two hours on the internet - their toxicity, how long they glow after the liquid is exposed to air etc - all so we could have glow-in-the-dark drumming at the Variety Show). We didn't want an iPad because everyone had one, we wanted a tablet that would suit our needs. I didn't want something so big that I couldn't carry it in my purse, but something big enough where I could type and do work on it if I had to.

So there you have it - the Nexus 7 it was. We got it home, opened it up, and one of the first things I did was research Apps. Not for me, but for James.

I downloaded three - a coloring app, a counting app, and a shape/numbers app. And the second thing I did was find James and introduce him to these apps.

He got pretty far on the counting app. He touched whatever was being counted (one bus, for example) and the automated voice (who is British, I believe), says, "One bus!" Then we got to two cats, three forks, four pencils... and so on and so forth.

Then we tried the shapes/numbers app. He touched whatever number he needed to and dragged it to the appropriate spot on the screen. These apps were great!      

Until James got bored of them the next night. What?! How was that possible? They were the free versions, so not that great, but James was done with them.

Then I realized it was because they were stimulating him anymore. All he had to do was press something on the screen, for every single app. I started researching more apps, and more times than not, it was simply touching, or touching and dragging. James would rather put something other than a ball in his bouncing hippo/dinosaur toy and see how it bounces, than sit and stare at a screen where all he has to do is touch it over and over and get a similar result.

Which made me think of the value of these apps. And what we're doing to our children when we actually give them to our kids. All my kid learned from those apps, was simply that he had to touch the screen in the right spot and something would happen. But more importantly, after he got bored, he learned that if he put his cars on his racetrack that Eric attached to the railing leading into the basement, the cars would make it all the way to the end, hit the wall (which has left some interesting marks on our maple trim) and bounce somewhere. But he never knew where. And then he learned that if he wanted to do it again, he had to climb down the stairs, fetch his cars, and climb back up the stairs to try and position them just so.

Tablet learning, I'm sure for some parents, is the way to go. It's a good way to distract your child and it's nice to be able to get things done while they are distracted. It's not something Eric and I have never done. But we've never done it with a tablet.

After that, I deleted the apps. James still comes after my tablet every once in awhile, just to shift the screen back and forth, but quickly loses interest when he realizes that's the only thing it does.

Maybe I haven't found the right app yet, but for me, Tablet Learning is just that. Learning to touch a screen to make something happen. Is that really what I want my toddler to be learning?