(no subject)

[ricevermicelli]

We went to a Christmas party tonight, at which someone else's child hauled out Lego Mindstorms. Danger Lad!'s Christmas wish list underwent drastic and instantaneous revision.

All I can say is, gosh, I'm lucky he already had that chat with Santa. Not that it's not totally awesome that, with the appropriate auxiliary equipment, kids today can build themselves IR-controlled, voice-activated machines for losing marbles down the heat register. Because that is totally awesome. I'm not buying a five year-old his own computer. I'm making a note for when he's ten.

Comments

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

before he's ten, he'll build his own computer from sand, paperclips, and string :)

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[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

That would be the point where I declare parenting victory.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

for Science!

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[naomikritzer]

I have an iPod Touch, a Kindle, and a cell phone, but the thing that REALLY makes me feel like I'm living in the future is that kids can build robots out of Legos.

Molly does Lego League, which involves building robots out of Legos competitively. That didn't start until 4th grade, though, so DL has a few years to wait.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

kids (young and esp old) can hack arduino! it's SO EFFING COOL in concept...

when i was a kid, they had "microprocessor" kits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COSMAC_ELF and i hearted it and wanted one sooooo bad.

these days? OMG. you can BUILD machines. custom anything. programming! arrrrrr!

actually, i need to get some 'duinos soon.

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[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

hah, i was this kid:



except without the cool computer kit. i had to buy a TRS-80 when i was 13ish :D

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[tisiphone.livejournal.com]

Liv got a set of Mindstorms when she was 10 and she was still a bit too young. They're complicated.

[zathrus.livejournal.com]

I am so conflicted about Lego Mindstorms. On the one hand, they are amazing, and you can do amazing things with them, and kids can learn stuff from them, and just wow! On the other hand, my child who would be most amazed by them..... would never put them away, and certainly wouldn't be as careful with them as he should. There's a limit to how much money I want to spend to make things that go crunch -- painfully -- on my son's bedroom floor.

Newt

[drwex]

I distinctly remember the time (preceded by many long conversations and several incidents) when my children became cognizant enough to repond to "clean up all the things on your floor that will hurt if someone steps on them".

Not that they DO it, mind you, but at least now they recognize that class of objects.

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

Looking at it (and golly it's expensive) my feeling is: not until you demonstrate some programming skills and the ability to take care of your toys. Otherwise, it's a painfully breakable thing that you need a lot of help to play with.

[beth_leonard]

We've considered it, because Jon has some mindstorms he bought for himself over a decade ago. Peter just isn't ready yet to do it on his own, and we never did much with them besides make a train that played Christmas carols and reversed direction every song, so our learning curve before we could teach him how to do cool stuff with them is a bit too steep for our existing energy level. The on-line documentation and UI for the decade old product is also not the easiest to follow.

We have tons of friends involved in First Lego League however, and I've seen it do great things for 4th graders. I think we'll be doing that once we hit 4th grade. There is a First Jr. Fll program for K-3rd graders, but we have not been involved with that. It doesn't look like quite as much fun to me.

--Beth