Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Touchscreen Portables

Well, that's good that he's pretty careful. We don't seem to have that gene...

Have you thought about taking him into one of the computer stores and just pulling up the website right there to see if the screen is going to do what you hope?

Only drawback I can think of is that you might never get out of the store if it does work well for him

That's a good idea .. I was thinking the same thing when I got in this AM.

My DH has a touchscreen laptop (don't know the brand, but the sort where you can fold the keyboard portion behind so it becomes like a tablet) and uses that to let DS (22 months) navigate Starfall. However, since it's technically DH's work computer, we definitely don't allow any unsupervised use of it; DS sits on his lap to play with it, but he definitely does enjoy getting to navigate on his own.

I'd like to get him started on trying a mouse, though, so I'm going to check out those trackball suggestions a few posts up!

This is not really about touch screens but maybe it will work for someone.

We put an older computer on the floor. We put the litte monitor on the floor in an old tv cabinet that we took the tv out of. We have a wireless keyboard and wireless mouse. We set the mouse to the slowest setting and reversed the buttons for clicking. When DD was little I put a sticker on the clicking button. Then we loaded all the kids games on the kid computer. They can roll the mouse right over the carpet. When we want them off the computer we can close the tv cabnet and it just looks like a tv stand. It works pretty well for the younger ones. We also have a large tv sized monitor on top so the kids will sit in the middle of the room with the mouse and play games and they can click from where ever they are sitting or moving in the room.

I think if we got DD a lap top we would be in trouble because she would want to take it every where. We do limit screen time, but they have learned so much on line and playing games its incredible. They really don't watch tv because its not as interactive. I would rather have them play games than sit there watching tv. They can be pretty intense so it is a good thing for them to take a break and do something independent for short periods of time.

I got a large trackball and a cheap PC to hook up to the HD tv. We'll see how it goes this weekend.

If it works out, I'll post some pics of the setup on here.

I think the portable is the way to go at some point, but until he is drawing well, I am not sure he will be able to enjoy it.