tjt@kobold.UUCP (T.J.Teixeira) (11/29/83)
Our son (3-1/2) is able to type individual keys, and has been able to
since before he was two. We got him a speak-and-spell then and taught
him to spell his name and other simple words. He will also type on
computer keyboards, but also tends to lean on the keyboard with the
heel of his hand if you let him since he can type many more characters
that way (i.e. the screen or page fills up faster).
I would guess that the audio feedback of the speak-and-spell is more
important than visual feedback for motivating one to type single keys,
since the characters on the speak-and-spell are not *that* big.
Lastly, an amusing result of letting a child loose on a screen editor:
I used to let my son type into a screen editor when he wandered into my
office at home. After a few minutes, my wife took our son to
have breakfast, and I proceeded to spend some time jazzing up some of
my TECO macros (this was back in the "dark ages" (~1981) when the
11/70 I was using ran a screen editor built on top of TECO, but without
the full power of emacs). My wife came back in to ask me a question,
looked at the TECO program on the screen and asked "Did Jay type that?"
--
Tom Teixeira, Massachusetts Computer Corporation. Westford MA
...!{ihnp4,harpo,decvax,ucbcad,tektronix}!masscomp!tjt (617) 692-6200svr@wjh12.UUCP (Rosenthal) (11/29/83)
Tom Teixera might be amused to know that the high point of my 4 1/2
year old son's visits to my office is running some of the graphics
demos on our Masscomp.... I've even written some shell scripts so that
he can call them up by himself....
Simon Rosenthal
{genrad, ihnp4}!wjh12!svr