A while ago now, I set Kylee up with her own computer. It’s not bad and is actually my old production machine.She picked up on how to use the mouse very quickly, manoeuvring it around with her right hand while using her left to click on it. You should try it.. very difficult, but she was doing it so adeptly.
So, one day, I was surfing through hardware websites and I came across keyboards and mice suitable for kids and noticed that one or two keyboards had built in trackballs. A good idea, yes, but as Kylee was doing so well, I drifted over them.
Just recently, I visited somebody who had a Logitech Trackball laying idle, and it got me thinking again. I asked if I could borrow it with a view to seeing how Kylee would get along with it, and I was offered it to keep for free.
I came back home, connected it and showed it to her. She seemed unimpressed at the time, but after she saw me do some updates on her computer, and decided to try it out for herself. Amazingly, she is now using the computer more than she has ever done.
She has developed a method of cupping the front leading edge in her right hand while using her left hand index finger to click on stuff. Now she can move the pointer with unerring accuracy and clicks away on her games like a pro. She still asks me to come look at what she is doing but now hardly requires any assistance to get her out of messes caused by trying to negotiate the screen with a regular mouse.
She has even taken to teaching her younger cousin how to use it. In case you don’t know what a trackball is…
This is the Logitech T-CM14 Marble Mouse, a PS/2 connected two button type. Newer versions of this have four buttons which could introduce problems, and I think that it would be best to disable two of them in the mouse control panel or give them the same function as the main buttons.
Kylee’s JK teacher teaches her songs, dance, and the normal education given at Junior Kindergarten. I am no expert in that field, but what I can do is introduce her to technology, get her beyond the fear that some have with it.
If you think that your child/grandchild would benefit from one of the above, they are available new for around $30 or just like the one above for maybe $18 on eBay. Trust me, they are worth every last cent.
Kylee is good at the games I have installed, but she also tells me when things are not right. She has been around me fixing computers and her own use of a computer to know when the computer is not doing what she knows that it should. How is that for just four years old, eh..
She even complains about slowness sometimes and she has a pretty good dual core, 4gb machine which can run high end games way above the stresses that Purble Place puts on the machine. I guess that I will have to upgrade her to a quad core for her fifth birthday.
Looking back at my life at four, I struggled to get a clockwork train to traverse the lounge floor, let alone have any real grasp of how it worked.
