From Consumers to Creators: Ideas How to Engage Your Kids with Technology Creatively

Children and Technology is a subject frequently under heated discussion, with one side trying to convince us that backlit screens will melt our children’s eyes and brains and the other championing learning technology in attempt to start an educational revolution. While which side is right is still, for some reason, under debate (for more on this debate, click here), it is easy to see that a child purely consuming technology is just wasted potential. Here are some tips on how to move your children from consumers to creators.

Do it Yourself: The Maker Movement

Involve your child in a creative community. The Maker movement is a grassroots community who aim to move DIY projects and creating tech away from big industry and into the garden shed. With open-sourced information and designs and a focus on inexpensive manufacturing you have a huge choice of projects that can be engaging for the whole family. You could buy a simple kit that allows you to make and programme your own simple machine – teaching you and your child basic coding and circuitry in the process. [If you want to find out more about the Maker Movement, try checking out Brighton Digital Festival]

Straight outta Star Trek: 3D Printing

3D printers really are a perfect demonstration of how creative you could be with high tech gadgetry. They combine the thrill of science fiction turning into science fact (they even make beep-boop noises like space ships from the 80's) and show how a stream of digital information can be used to create something physical. While still expensive now, they are becoming increasingly cheaper and may well be a standard household object soon enough. They allow children create a design and watch it slowly beam straight outta Star Trek into something they can hold in their hands. They can then print other parts and interact them with each other, maybe even adding electronics or an arduino to create your own little robot. This kind of interaction with tech can encourage children to stop seeing tech as something genius scientists make in laboratories, to something they can make themselves in the garage, while taking the first few steps towards becoming a genius scientist.

Drawable Circuits?

Technology doesn't have to all be staring at screens either. What would you say if I told you your kid could use a conductive ink pen to draw a a beautiful starry night with battery-powered LED stars supplied by the circuit created by the ink? This may sound crazy, but products such as Circuit Scribe really do exist and are seriously cool. Doodling suddenly becomes a creative science lesson, where you and your child could learn how to create simple circuits. Again, this learning through creation allows your child to see the theory behind the science in action.

TV Time becomes Story Time

Even seemingly passive activities like watching TV or web content can be used actively and creatively. Video content, just like books, can engage children with narratives and stories, stimulating their imagination and their visual imagination. In the case of young children, even if all they are watching is the Tele-tubbies using nonsense words for custard, they are still interacting with their imagination and language, and when Dora asks a question their answering develops their social skills. The key here, though, is to try and switch their ‘passive’ learning into ‘active’ learning. Instead of leaving them to just stare at the screen, watch shows as a family unit. Play pretend with them using the stories and characters on the show, talk to them about it, asking them about what happened in the story and whose their favourite characters. Making them excited about the fantasy world of the show will make them more engaged in the story and help create a love of narrative that can be translated into reading and writing.

Then, with the seeds sewn, when they grow older, buy them a Kindle. There is already a huge amount of children’s books, classic novels and learning materials available free and easily online, including the free Family Reading Experience created by the US PTA (Parent Teacher Association) designed to help families bond over learning to read. With a Kindle (or just the Kindle app on their smart phone) your kids can carry around all 3,407 pages of the Harry Potter series in their pocket instead of dragging them around in a horse-drawn cart, and could turn every bus ride they take to a ride in a mobile library.

Sticking to the Good Stuff: Go on a Consumer Diet

In the end, however, no matter how much your kids are creating with technology they are always going to be consuming a lot as well. But this is where you can introduce on of technologies strongest learning tools – the endless amount of information online. Whether it’s scrolling through pictures of amazing landscapes on Pintrest, watching a how-to video on Youtube or being part of an online community, the internet can allow your children to experience or observe the world in ways they may not even had considered. The web is full of documentaries, life stories and Wiki pages that can help children learn about other people’s lives and cultures from all around the world, and this global scale helps develop a sense of perspective and empathy. Forums and MMO’s can help children find large-scale communities they want to belong to, even if they feel alienated in their local community. Of course there are going to be topics online that children just aren't ready to experience, so it is always important to stay aware of what your child is doing online so you are ready to intervene if needed.