if the answer is separate for writing and sketching/drawing, or let’s say if you think there are 3 answers - for alphabetic writing, Chinese writing and sketching/drawing, please say so.
Let’s assume that there is no threat of damage to the gadget and the software is just amazing - easy to use, powerful and overall perfect. I would imagine that at least in software it’s easy to beat a paper notebook while still providing the same easy to understand visual metaphor.
So maybe the question should be restated as, are there some features that are inherent in making lines on paper using a pencil and are also thought to be significant for a child’s development that are not now accurately duplicated in making lines on tablet using the tablet writing instrument?
Small child uses only computer writing tablet: “Hm, the world works by some abstract magic that I cannot understand. Oh well, I’ll just passively accept it.”
Small child uses crayon on paper: "Hm, this thing in my hand has color that transfers to paper. The harder I push, the more intense the color. If I push too hard the crayon snaps in half. This crayon feels kind of like birthday candles. I wonder if they could be made of the same stuff? Crayon doesn’t come off on my fingers, but I can write on my clothes if I really try, and on the walls it works great! Once I left a crayon in the back window of the car and it melted into a puddle! Hey, this paper stuff is interesting. I can tear it, fold it, cut it, even get a paper cut! I can stack it and make a book. I can roll it into a telescope and if I put the crayon in the roll, it’s a blowgun!
The actual writing and drawing might proceed equally well with either, but paper and crayon facilitate active exploration of materials and scientific principles whereas the computer tablet limits the child. (Assuming the kid is ONLY given one or the other.)
xoferew, so it sounds like you don’t see any substantial difference in mechanics of the two ways to draw, even if the artist is a child and not adult, right?
To this analytically thinking person your criticism sounds like a collection of just-so stories intended to reach a predetermined conclusion. How do you know that any of those things you claim actually happens in the kid’s head or that any of that has long term significance? What if that has no significance, whereas the kids are missing out on some valuable features (e.g. easier undo, cut-and-paste, easier way of saving sketches for later review and editing) they could gain from learning to draw on a tablet?
Further, if I wanted the kid to explore blowguns or materials, I would give him appropriate toys. Except, I don’t, at least not during the time slot called “time to learn drawing”. I want (for the sake of argument) to develop an optimal way of teaching him to write or draw, not to let him go off on tangents.
In terms of responding variously to pressure, I thought that the writing tablet can handle that. If that is not so, perhaps we need a better writing tablet? Or do professional artists use some other multiplexing mechanism on writing tablets instead of pressure differentials?
Well, my profession is teaching early childhood, so on a daily basis I am making decisions about what materials to provide to children and observing their use of the materials. I hear the kids verbalizing their observations and speculations. I see that real materials lead to rich explorations and connections and make the child feel that he or she is an active agent in learning about the world, which is a powerful motivator for future learning. Also, easier is not necessary better for learning. If it takes work to use an eraser, the child may be more apt to think first and make the lines carefully. And, how big is your tablet? Kids the age I teach benefit from using their whole arm, such as drawing and painting while standing at a big easel or mural paper on a wall. You mentioned writing; preschoolers can learn to form letters better when they get to practice writing huge ones; it really helps them remember. Kids get good control of those big muscles first, and after practicing with that, can operate with the hand, and finally get the dexterity to control a pencil or brush with their fingers. Now if you are talking about an older child, and/or one who also has access to paper and art materials, then sure, go ahead with your tablet.
ok, the big easel bit makes sense. So if the tablet of that size does not sell in stores already for professional artists, creating and mass-producing it for a relatively small market may prove a chore.
The biggest tablets I have heard of is tablet PC. Not all that big (not small either) and priced at a level affordable for the sort of 1st world people that may actually care about systematic instruction of any sort for their kids.
I doubt either method is quantitatively better or worse; they’re just different. A tablet is a different medium, the same way pencil and paper is different from crayon or oil or watercolor or woodprint.
From a usability standpoint, tablets that can match the size, resolution, and responsiveness of colored pencil are prohibitively expensive.
From a convenience standpoint, naturally pen and paper can’t match the undo features of digital illustration, but that hasn’t stopped millions of artists from sticking with them well into the 21st century.
From a learning perspective, I won’t pretend to know more than xoferew, but there’s definitely learning involved with both styles. I would argue that computers could also be endlessly fascinating if not for the social stigma generally attached to them and if teachers knew how to teach digital technologies better. The magic that goes on behind the scenes really is quite astounding, and there is almost boundless creative power available to people who know how to harness that magic.
And purely subjectively: As a kid I loved crayons – the smell of them, the texture, the variable sharpness – but the tablet-in-Photoshop experience is also incredibly neat, and things like real-time photo manipulation, layer blending effects, custom/strange brushes, etc. are all much harder to do in real life.
are you serious? So you are saying that even the $2000 tablet for professional artists does not let you do decent resolution sketches? Or do you mean that a couple grand is prohibitively expensive?
And do I understand correctly that you mean “pencil” in general rather than color pencil? I mean, we can always change the color of a line on the screen, right?
I am not anti-technology, btw. For younger kids still learning the most basic stuff about the world, real materials help build a good general foundation and the more you simulate, the farther you go from this. But for older kids computers are immensely useful, and there are plenty of kids who have trouble with handwriting who shine when allowed to type on a keyboard. Even my four year olds get to use the computer to type titles for books they make. For some who can barely hold a pencil in their fist, poking keys is within their level of manual dexterity and they are pleased by how neat their typing comes out. But the cause and effect of why pushing “a” makes an “a” appear on the screen and then print out on the paper is beyond their comprehension. “God made it like that” tends to be their best guess, and I just respond, “People made it like that.”
When I teach letters we use pencils, crayons, chalk, paint, clay, collage materials, white boards, writing in sand, walking on a giant letter taped to the floor, forming letters with our bodies, etc. etc. Rather than picking one method, we use as many as possible because different things motivate different kids, and learning is richer when they come at it from different directions, including all the senses (doesn’t the smell of a box of crayons take you back?) – we’re helping them form a more complex network of neural connections. The tablet could certainly be one more tool in the toolbox. And if your kid is sitting next to me on an airplane, by all means use the tablet rather than get markers on my sleeve!
Cognitively speaking, the act of writing is reproducing pictures (or symbols) from memory. These symbols represent sounds. The sounds form words or thoughts in the child’s L1.
So yes, a child could learn to write by using a tablet.
It doesn’t mean he will instinctively use a pen and paper correctly (in terms of dexterity and handwriting).
Arguably, if the software was designed in such a way that wouldn’t allow for certain spatial errors (for example, kids must write in lines and not all over the paper) there could be a behavioral effect in which a child may learn how to write* cohesively* a little sooner than others. A tablet may also help keep a child organized (I’m thinking of the 1,000 eraser marks on my son’s homework right now.) but it’s not going to have the same kinesthetic value as creating something.
And what do you do when the technology isn’t available? Kids (especially young kids) don’t always understand that doing it oneself is a desirable alternative; witness the cashier who can’t make change unless the register tells them how much to give back. They know how to make change, it just doesn’t occur to them that they can use their existing skills to do it.
Neural connections were being formed long before the invention of modern kindergarten. My son gets overstimulated in that Crayola colored kind of environment. I see how it’s useful for some kids, but he really doesn’t learn academic squat when it comes to reading and writing unless he’s at home. I was the same way, but I went to a much stricter school.
I don’t believe in throwing 20 methods (or five) at a group of students. I know that’s all antithetical to whatever teaching colleges are saying these days, but I swear, a little old skool will make kids better adults.
The OP was asking about alternatives to pen and paper. For some kids, the keyboard IS their mode of writing. I’m thinking of some with physical or cognitive disorders that learned to read, write, and spell that way.
I understand that, and I understand that some kids (and people) need assistive technology.
My point is that relying almost exclusively on technology isn’t a good thing, because if it’s gone, it’s harder to cope. For example, I am so keyboard- and computer-dependent that my handwriting has gotten impossible to read unless I’m being careful. (I write with fountain pens for this reason.) It’s easier and faster to bang out the same document on a computer than it is to write it out by hand. Yet I know that there are times when I need to be able to write by hand. Having started out with writing on paper with a pencil, I know how to do that, and I know that I can do that. Start the other way, and it gets harder.
I want to clarify: I know that some people have a need for keyboards/tablets/other technology because of a cognitive or physical deficit. I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the people who have no such deficits.
But I can see how a tablet could help early literacy. Just don’t replace a pen and paper with a tablet. (Although if you watch futuristic stuff like my son’s love affair with the newish Batman cartoon, that’s pretty much what they do.)
CitizenPained, thanks for coming out in support of a more structured approach to instruction. At a time of universal holistic nonsense speaking of structure and results is a revolutionary act
Yeah, so in this thread I am not concerned about keyboards, or Windows, or teaching typing, or children who lack technology/lunch/what have you or any of that. I am studying the ideal case of carrying out a specific task - teaching sketching and drawing. Being able to understand and draw spatial objects is essential skill for many engineers, regardless of using keyboards for writing and so on. So it would make sense for people who think that their kids may grow up to be that sort of engineers to start preparing their kids early on.
I do not disagree with the notion that children also benefit from playing or training with toys that can be handled, whether it be the nice-and-clean Lego or something a lot messier and hackish than that (glue, crayons, etc). But this is a separate issue and a much more complicated one at that (e.g. notice that off the top of my head I already identified two distinct forms of that sort of play - in reality there must be a lot more variants, and figuring out what should be done in a dedicated fashion and what should be pruned for lack of time is not a simple thing).
The OP question suggests that you don’t think this, this, or this is a writing tablet, though they’ve been labeled such for decades if not centuries. Responders in this thread caught on to your meaning, which is great, but I fear that kind of carelessness in terminology will be problematic at some point (word to the wise).
I meant a couple grand is prohibitively expensive for most schools which already have trouble buying modern computers, textbooks, and other more critical supplies. And this pretty much leaves out the developing world. There’s nothing stopping individual parents from getting tablets for their own kids, though. If they’re treated well, they ought to last a while (minus the occasional pen nib replacement).
And yeah, I meant pencil in the general sense. Modern tablets are pressure-sensitive and tilt-sensitive, but the tactile feedback is lacking compared to physical devices… Also, it’s a different feeling drawing on a tablet and seeing the output on a separate screen – sometimes with noticeable lag. There are professional tablets with built-in monitors that you draw directly on and those might be good, but the consumer-level stuff (when I last tried it in a few years ago) offers a rather… lackluster experience between the calibration, lag, and sheer thickness of the stylus that obscures the part of the screen you’re trying to draw on.
Reply, yes, the tablets I was talking about are the professional ones where you draw on screen. I doubt that you could learn to draw well on the more primitive one, and besides why run such brutal experiments on children.
Nevertheless, it may well be that tactile feedback sucks even for the best of them compared to pencil. That’s why I am asking here where I would expect to find experts in every way of doing this sort of stuff.
Spending couple grand per kid on a gadget that (hopefully) lasts for a few years does not sound like a big deal. If a bunch of American public schools have spent all their money who knows where it doesn’t mean that all progress must stop in the field of early childhood education.
Then again, maybe the tablet wouldn’t really last long in the hands of a kid? Can you do lasting damage to it by pressing too hard? In general, if you wanted to break it, what would you do?
actually, it may also hypothetically be the case that small children are incapable of drawing with the “right” pressure. Maybe at their skill level this is fully immaterial because “learn to walk before you run”. If that were the case, maybe we ought to seek a gadget that actually doesn’t respond to pressure differences, just to keep things simple for them and for us? Or are such gadgets simply not available because gadgets are made for professional artists and professional artists use pressure differentials while sketching?
