The following is from "circuits", a weekly email from the New York Times. IMO, the idea of children learning by computer is compelling. I thought about posting this in the algebra thread.

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1. From the Desk of David Pogue: TV, Computers and Children ===========================================================

The other day my wife and I were at a party where a fellow parent was delivering what has become a familiar sermon about the evils of TV and computer games. "One hour a week of TV, one hour of computer games and that's it," she said. "We don't want our kids just plunked passively in front of some kind of electronic babysitter."

I nodded politely, but inside, I was saying, "Hold on there, pardner." To me, there's a world of difference between TV and computer games. It's inaccurate to paint them with the same brush. Condemning "computer games and TV" is a little like condemning "potatoes and potato chips."

Of course, I'm no expert or child psychologist. This business of children, TV and computer games has been discussed and studied in much more august forums than this one, and using much more scientific methods than I can. My conclusions are based on only two studies, which my wife and I conducted personally. Our son, three and a half, and our daughter, 22 months old, were the primary subjects.

Our children started playing KeyWack when each was less than a year old. KeyWack, a Macintosh shareware game (available at www.kidsdomain.com, among other places), is very simple. When you press the keys, colors, shapes and sounds fill the screen. Babies love it. And it's nothing like TV; it's interactive, self-driven and joyous. As a bonus, KeyWack completely covers up the desktop, menus and other instruments of accidental mischief.

Now, we didn't start our kids on computer games as part of some master plan, some nerd-parent, stage-mother obsession to make our kids computer savvy. KeyWack just sort of happened, probably because the kids expressed a natural interest in the computers around the house. Nor, even today, are our kids addicts. They play a computer game maybe once a month.

But by the time he was two, our son was completely comfortable with the mouse. He astounded onlookers by dragging a CD to the Trash icon on his little first-generation iMac, causing the disc to pop out in readiness for the next one. We never had to limit TV time because he was always more interested in driving the action himself on his iMac. (Is he typical? Or has he just inherited my geek gene? I don't know.)

Educational CD's for kids are cheap. We often find them for $10 or $20 in computer stores or online. The bad news is that too many software companies have flocked to the market, seeing well-meaning parents as an easy target. Some of the educational games we bought were utter garbage, thrown together with jerky animation, stupid writing and a questionable understanding of children.

But some are outstanding. The Reader Rabbit series, for example, has won all kinds of accolades from parenting magazines. The discs -- designed for a range of age groups -- features smooth animation, professionally composed music and kid-friendly instruction. The production quality of the Sesame Street discs isn't up to Reader Rabbit quality, but they're much more educational. The Web is filled with free and useful resources that help you separate the wheat from the chaff. You'll find a tidy list of these review pages at: http://www.childrenssoftware.com/links.html

I have no doubt that our son's love for such games as Dr. Seuss's ABC helped launch his language skills. Now, at three-and-a-half years old, he sounds out three-letter words. Our son goes into his music classes at preschool already humming classics like the alphabet song. He can even add low single-digit numbers. Once again, we credit the educational games for toddlers with his familiarity with numbers.

In fact, my big worry now is that he'll be bored in school.

-- Anonymous, March 07, 2001

Answers

Question for anyone--can you recommend a S/W game or entertaining educational S/W for a 4 year old boy? He is a preschooler, an active but not hyperactive kid. Thanks.

-- Anonymous, March 07, 2001

Lars,

Dr. Seuss's ABCs is good. Also, there are a number of Sesame Street brand games out there. They're all OK. Take a look at the Reading Blaster and Math Blaster series, the Ready for School series, Arthur series too.

Just a start.

-- Anonymous, March 08, 2001

Thanks. I may benefit too!

-- Anonymous, March 08, 2001

Doom is about the best computer game for kids, provided you have Pantera blasting from the stereo at mind-roasting volumes. ;)

-- Anonymous, March 08, 2001

One wonders how Stephen knows this ;-)

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2001