musings on some statistics

November 1, 2003


A couple of days ago I read a news story about how 90% of kids use computers and the Internet nowadays. Something about it has been bugging me since then: "One out of four 5-year-olds uses the Internet. " I tracked down the story on Excite and reread it to make sure I read that right. Does this mean that one out of four 5-year-olds can read? That's fantastic if it's true.

Of course it goes on to say:

"At Waston Lane Elementary in Louisville, Ky., 5-year-olds spend 15 minutes a day on the computer, listening to stories and pronunciations of letters. They also practice computer skills by coloring the electronic way - clicking on colors to fill in shapes."

Maybe the teacher sets it up so they just click on an icon for the story site, the letter pronouncing site, and the coloring site so they don't have to read anything. And pointing and clicking are important computer skills that definitely needd to be mastered before the kids turn into bifocal wearing adults who can't find the cursor 'cause they've got the wrong glasses on. But remember when programming was a computer skill? It is kind of cool that you finally don't have to know how to program to use a computer. I'm not sure whether or not it's equally cool that you don't have to know how a computer works in order to program it anymore, but the 5-year-olds probably aren't doing too much of that yet. Maybe when they hit first grade next year.

My other favorite quote from that article is:

"Children are often the first adopters of a lot of technology," said John Bailey, who oversees educational technology for the department. "They grow up with it. They don't have to adapt to it."

Had I known that a year ago I would not have gone into such despair over the slow rollout of InfiniBand technology. All we'd have had to do at the starship would have been to get a bunch of kindergarteners to build some IB clusters in their data center/classroom. Who cares if the Colossus of Redmond backed off on it? Who cares if that big blue thing from the hinterlands of New York backed off on it? All InfiniBand needs is some kindergarteners in Kentucky!

Today's Reading
Notes and Sketches from the Wild Coasts of Nipon by Henry Craven St. John, End of the Earth by Peter Matthiessen, Two Roads to Dodge City by Adam and Nigel Nicolson

This Year's Reading
2003 Book List


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Copyright © 2003, Janet I. Egan