Clay Shirkey’s book “Here Comes Everybody” is worth a read. In the video, below, he’s also worth listening to. He tells a nice storey three-quarters of the way through a four year old kid watching a dvd with her dad. Half-way through the movie she goes searching behind the TV. When asked what she’s looking for, she says “a mouse”. As Shirkey says, four year olds know that a screen that ships without a mouse is broken. It reminds me of how Zoe, 8, consumes TV. She’d far rather do it on a computer. She’ll watch “I’d do anything“, her favourite programme, live, but she’ll go on youtube afterwards to watch the best songs again, and again, and again. Within a day she knows all the words and all the dance moves. I read something the other day about how kids that had memorised three nursery rhymes by the time they were five go on to be better readers. I don’t know how many complete lyrics Zoe knows, but way more than me.
The best thing about all this is that kids pick it up without the aid of their parents. I came downstairs yesterday to find Zac playing World of Warcraft. He’d heard about it, found the site, saw that there was a free 10 day trial, downloaded it, installed it, and had encouraged his friends to do the same. When I found him he was busy chatting to his mates in-game about what they were going to do together next. Next to all this, TV is dull.
