The opposite of Prensky

Marc Prensky talks about us as adults realising we are immigrants to the digital native's land and not trying to keep up with the technology. The kids are way ahead of us. Looking at these photos the obvious conclusion is that Jonathan (7) is showing his Grandad (70) something on the computer.

In fact what is actually happening is his Grandad is teaching Jonathan how to distort/edit pictures in Adobe Photoshop Elements. I dont think
my Dad will ever stop looking for something new to learn and at the moment he is doing a University of the Third Age online PS CS2 course through Cambridge University. This story started with him first working out which of the tools were available in Elements and then showing me how to improve some old photos I had scanned which where begining to discolour.

Next thing he distorts my mother's nose in one photo! Jonathan thought that was very funny and wanted to know how to do it. So they went to work on a photo of him. He actually got quite tense about the distortion of his face - on reflection we think it is because he is at that age where the line between pretend and real is still pretty thin. So the next step was to give him control of a photo with both him and other people in it. These two photos were taken at the point he had gained enough confidence he only needed some verbal prompts.

As the main teacher of software/hardware in our house just listening to the interchange between them was fascinating. The language Jonathan had to understand and the connections he had to make between fine motor control of the mouse and what was happening on the screen. I had never really thought before how disconnected the mouse is from the focus of your eye. I guess it is a little like touch typing where you are relying on a kinesthetic memory of the keyboard. But I cant imagine many people would consider teaching a 7 year old to touch type.

Anyway by the end of the session he had a new skill he is keen to keep on practising and I hope my Dad was reassured that his ability as a teacher was still strong.

I meant to comment in my last post that the wireless laptop has been quite transformative in our house in bringing computer stuff back into the traffic spots. We have had computers in "public spaces" but increasingly they have been in the quieter public spaces. My laptop tends to live on the breakfast bar or a coffee table and is quite common for all three children to come in and show me something they have just found on the web or negotiate to play a game on it. (Our other next best computer beats it on RAM and processor but not graphics card)