20 de novembro de 2011

Techno-toddlers: A is for Apple

Um artigo de Thomas Jones no The Guardian (18 de Novembro, 2011) sobre a interacção de crianças em idade pré-escolar e a tecnologia digital (como Ipads ou smartphones). Vale a pena ler algumas das vantagens e desvantagens da utilização precoce deste tipo de aparelho.

Deixo-vos alguns parágrafos retirados desse artigo só para vos aguçar o apetite, mas, uma vez desperta a curiosidade, leiam-no por inteiro.

«Earlier this year, AVG Technologies, a firm that makes antivirus computer software, conducted a survey of mothers of children aged between two and five with internet access at home. They found that more of the children knew how to play a computer game than swim or ride a bike, and that more pre-schoolers knew how to use a smartphone than tie their shoelaces. Research by Plymouth council, meanwhile, found that 72% of children under five spend on average half an hour a day online. AVG's conclusions, unsurprisingly, boiled down to the message that it's never too early to protect your children from the dangers lurking on the internet. Those of us without a commercial interest at stake will probably have a more confused complex of reactions: surprise, anxiety, recognition, wonder, resignation. Small children and digital technology, in their very different ways, have a tendency to knock us slower-witted adults off our feet with amazement. Watch the viral YouTube film of a gurgling baby happily navigating an iPad and then trying to "swipe" a magazine and you may start to feel a little obsolete yourself.» (…)

«Huggins says that young children are "100% more awed" by the way a "paper castle builds out of nowhere" in a pop-up book than by anything they see, hear or touch on a computer screen.» (…)

«There's no doubt that small children love pressing buttons, looking at bright flashing lights and listening to funny noises, partly for the same reasons that adults do – like rats, we can't help responding to sensory stimuli – but also precisely because adults do.» (…)

«When my parents and their granddaughter see each other on Skype, she seems more present to them than they do to her. This is partly because she's still working out how to make sense of seeing things on a screen, but it's also because, again, they're impressed by the technology and she isn't. Freeman makes a comparison with the movies: "An adult is more likely to be blown away by the magic of Avatar in 3D than a kid for whom it would be almost their baseline of what cinema is." Once upon a time, hearing someone's voice on the telephone probably gave as immediate a sense of their presence as seeing their face on Skype does now. Our expectations shift as the technology changes: like the Red Queen in Alice Through The Looking Glass, we're running to stand still.»

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