10 best tablets for kids
Summary: With the tablet becoming more and more commonplace, here are ten options for getting your kids in on the fun.
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In the consumer electronics world there are two types of parents: Those that are interested in buying tablet computers for their kids and those that are staunchly opposed to doing so. For the latter group, a large part of that rejection comes from price. Electronics are, after all, pretty expensive. Considering how often kids tend to drop or otherwise destroy things, spending hundreds of dollars in a device that may before long be destroyed isn't too bright of an investment. Price-wary parents should be soothed, however, by the fact that, like most things, tablets vary greatly in price. Here's a list of seven kid-friendly tablets ranging from under a hundred dollars to five hundred bucks.
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Talkback
RE: 10 Best Tablets for Kids
Then you also have the option of leaving it running the Nook software with it's library of kid's books and games, OR booting to a CM7 microSD to have access to the entire Android Marketplace.
Too many choices
RE: 10 Best Tablets for Kids
Not always nearby
RE: 10 Best Tablets for Kids
RE: 10 Best Tablets for Kids
Let me guess - you're Amish?
Agreed
But with electronic books that can be leased, at a cost higher than printed books and for a limited period of time before they can be re-locked, like how some colleges* are now doing, all of this looks like a petty money grab - on top of the usual rants and cants accorded tablet companies' app store policies and other issues.
* private colleges, with no union or any other public sector influence (apart from taxpayer-funded subsidies and other handouts that question the claim we're a "free market, where government intervention hurts", but I digress...) - these issues seem to be all over the map, and teachers all over the place are all zombified by the latest pied piper/pt barnum craze.
Upgrade
RE: 10 Best Tablets for Kids
Cursive
Cursive writing is for quill pens.
The does not mean printing/block text will ever be removed. The ability, desire and need to write on paper will always remain. Cursive is a thing of the past and is often difficult to read. I am thankful for it's demise.
RE: 10 Best Tablets for Kids
It's a pity some people can't even READ it.
And, yes, even some corporate logos use fancy cursive script. Try to get Jr Brat to figure it out because we, in our infinite so-called "wisdom" decided to let it go.
Now try to do the green thing and replace a burnt out fuse or resistor on a circuit board for a nickel instead of spending $1000 for a new TV. Most people have no clue about electronic devices, not even the rudimentary basics... because everybody had the same sorry mindset about "old hat", "old tech", etc, and then whine why nobody understands anything anymore... we let it all go because we saw zero value in the past... sorry to digress into what could go into about 1000 tangents...
Technology if our Friend, if used properly
What do corporate logos have to do with anything? You are forgetting that we live in a technological world. Schools are not there to teach our children all there is to know about the world...the parents have to be involved in their children's studies, otherwise they will end up as narrow-minded as you seem to be.
My son is five. He has a Leap-pad learning tablet and a Kindle Fire. He knows how to read and just finished his first full length book by C.S.Lewis. He learned to read because WE, his parents, taught him to read. His Kindergarten teacher helped but we had him reading on his tablet everyday in a reward based environment. He enjoys learning because we make it fun for him. If he reads a book, any appropriate book, he gets to watch a show on his Kindle Fire...it gives him the "ownership" to choose to read and be rewarded with something HE wants...that's the key to successful learning...Make it a game...kids LOVE games...
He can also write...of course he is no prodigy, but he is at the 2nd grade level for his writing skills and he just finished Kindergarten. He can also type and knows where al the keys are on the keyboard.
Some of you are placing too much responsibility on your children's teachers...they are an adjunct, but success of your child is YOUR responsibility, not their's. Technology is our friend, and can be a very useful tool if used properly.
Some old tech needs to die
As for cursive, what purpose does it serve today? Teach kids to print by hand, but cursive no longer serves any purpose. Let it go the way of buggy whips and rotary dial phones.
Nope
Writing with pen to paper teach better ways to think, speak and even to express their ideas than typing on computer. And when it comes to hand coordination and visual co-work with it, it does better job than typing with computer or even playing any FPS games.
I am not saying that digital writing needs to be thrown away, only that cursive writing is something what is needed to be teached for kids to give them very basic skills of life.
Everyone who say that typing is more needed skill than handwriting, have forgotten totally everything what humans have learn in last few thousand years.
There is more harm for not learning to cursive writing, than learning it (meaning that time is away from something else).
Or maybe we should just stop teaching our kids any geometry, science, poetry, meaning of words... lets just make them as breeding machines what only purpose is to breed and buy crap what is marketed in TV at that moment.
RE: 10 Best Tablets for Kids
Hatch Tablet for Early Learning
Research-driven was my selling point.
This has to be the best product on the market in terms of a tablet for kids. http://www.hatchearlychildhood.com/pages/early-learning-tablet-for-kids
My reply:
Totally agree. The research done behind the apps is what blows me away. I also like that I can use the tablet for me!