Samayaka eagerly waits for her father to come home every evening. He carries something the five-year-old regards as magical. An iPhone.
“She just grabs it when I return. My iPhone is more with her than with me,” says Samson Naik, deputy manager at Stock Holding Corporation of India Ltd, indulgently. Initially, it was games and art apps that had Samayaka hooked. “Now, I have educational apps like spellings, mental maths, etc. Why not use it productively?” Naik reasons.
It’s the same story for Diwakar Kaiwar, founder-director of Pravva, a business mobile applications company. His two young daughters are hooked on his iPad. His six-year-old now finds TV uninteresting. And crayons are so yesterday. The iPad is her virtual easel of creativity. “She loves the art apps and has picked up her tables faster on the iPad,” says Kaiwar.
From nursery rhymes to cursive writing, today’s tech-savvy generation is learning to draw, spell, colour and count on smartphones . As if that weren’t all, Kimberly-Clark, of Huggies diapers, has introduced a new iPhone app, iGo Potty, where children receive calls throughout the day from Patty the Potty telling them it’s time to ‘go’.
In fact, today’s children seem hardwired to touch screen user interfaces. This is borne out by technology research and advisory company Gartner, which says that touch technology will soon be an inextricable part of the lives of children under 15.
By 2015, it says, more than 50% of PCs bought for the under-15 will have touch screens. Education will use these devices in a big way. The generation that leaves school within the next 10 to 15 years will find touch input very natural, it adds in its findings.
This has already begun in Mumbai. The Universal Education Group (UEG) has introduced the iPod Touch in kindergarten. Jesus S M Lall, UEG’s chairman and CEO, says they “researched (this) thoroughly, started it as a pilot project and it worked well.” Each child is given an iPod Touch with pre-loaded applications to use half-an-hour at a time four times a week. The apps are divided into math, language and environmental studies.
Asha Bhargav Patel, who teaches at UEG Malad, says that it’s easier for children to commit concepts and facts to memory when visuals are paired with audio. For example, when a child is learning to write alphabets on the iPod, he learns phonics too. This is particularly beneficial for slow learners.
Meanwhile, Shemrock School in Delhi has installed touch screen interactive whiteboards. Amol Arora, the school’s managing director, says, “The iPad apps are very good, but its price and fragility are a deterrent. It’s too delicate to hand over to a two-year-old.”
There are other concerns too. Kaiwar wonders how good cursive writing will be on an iPad. “What of good old paper and pen? And their handwriting?” he asks. But which child can resist the touch of magic?