Experimental results from getting a 3yo interested in technology:
1. I bought her a little broom, which she liked, and then showed her that our robot vacuum could do the same work automatically, After a year she’s still not totally comfortable with the sound, and gets scared when it’s going towards her. Best decision we made was getting a model that did /not/ have a mobile app, instead using a remote control (I believe it was this model: https://us.eufy.com/products/t2108124?ref=navimenu_2_2_4_1_img). She has learned to walk over to the shelf, find the button which makes it return home, and carefully watch it until it docks. I stress that, even when it feels scary to her, she’s always in control because she can find the remote.
2. Assembled a LEGO-like robot dog after she got excited seeing one on YouTube, but again it was too loud for her, and she gets very skittish when a device is moving towards her.
3. She enjoys asking questions to Bing Chat. I hold up my phone and turn on Siri dication, which she’s learned to recognize. She asks her question and I use the keyboard to clean up the text, then submit. I read her the output. She mostly asks under-specified questions about plot points in her favorite books, but doesn’t mind that the answers are basically a re-hash of a given character’s Wikipedia page. She’s never gotten interested in image generation, contra my expectations, mostly DALL-E can’t do specific characters (I haven’t tried the others).
This book is “for babies” but it’s probably just about right for a 3yo. It is the best “STEM for babies” book I have ever seen, maybe the only one I really like: https://computerengineeringforbabies.com/
Experimental results from getting a 3yo interested in technology:
1. I bought her a little broom, which she liked, and then showed her that our robot vacuum could do the same work automatically, After a year she’s still not totally comfortable with the sound, and gets scared when it’s going towards her. Best decision we made was getting a model that did /not/ have a mobile app, instead using a remote control (I believe it was this model: https://us.eufy.com/products/t2108124?ref=navimenu_2_2_4_1_img). She has learned to walk over to the shelf, find the button which makes it return home, and carefully watch it until it docks. I stress that, even when it feels scary to her, she’s always in control because she can find the remote.
2. Assembled a LEGO-like robot dog after she got excited seeing one on YouTube, but again it was too loud for her, and she gets very skittish when a device is moving towards her.
3. She enjoys asking questions to Bing Chat. I hold up my phone and turn on Siri dication, which she’s learned to recognize. She asks her question and I use the keyboard to clean up the text, then submit. I read her the output. She mostly asks under-specified questions about plot points in her favorite books, but doesn’t mind that the answers are basically a re-hash of a given character’s Wikipedia page. She’s never gotten interested in image generation, contra my expectations, mostly DALL-E can’t do specific characters (I haven’t tried the others).
This book is “for babies” but it’s probably just about right for a 3yo. It is the best “STEM for babies” book I have ever seen, maybe the only one I really like: https://computerengineeringforbabies.com/