My twin 3 year old sons learned to use a trackball before they could
talk. Jonathan taught Benjamin how to operate it when we weren't
looking. Now they can start programs, quit programs, shut down the
computer, restart it, and even watch videos, all with just a minimum of
help from Mom and Dad.
On an aging Power Mac
8500, I have a few of the Living Book CD-ROMs installed on the hard
drive - plus one big one sitting in the CD drive. They won't all fit on
the original hard drive, but so far my wife has resisted investing any
upgrade money in the machine. We haven't yet run out of software that
will run on it, but we have run out of drive space.
A few years ago, you could walk into any store with kids software
and find a good slection of cross-platform titles for the younger set.
Unfortunately, that's not true any more. On a recent visit to Zany
Brainy, I found only about one box in ten available cross-platform, and
I already owned the few I could find. Either that's bad news - lack of
access for the Mac - or good news - maybe the Mac is moving away from
the "toy" computer label it once held.
Anyway, we cleaned up the machine, and I put icons for the kids'
programs on the Launcher, which I set to auto start with the general
controls control panel.
Somehow or other the kids managed to change the resolution and made
all the icons lose their custom pictures, but throwing away the
Launcher prefs cleared that up.
The 8500 we use for the kids has a video I/O card installed, so I
talked for a long time about hooking up a VCR to it so they could watch
"Chowwy Bown and Sippy" (Charlie Brown and Snoopy) while we watched
some grown-up TV in the other room. A couple of days ago I hooked up
the wires and started everything up, but I got an error (either some
software is missing or you do not have the hardware for this function)
and so, that set me off.
I burned a CD with some updaters I got from Apple's support pages,
then retreated downstairs to try to get the thing working right. I
tried updating from OS 8.0 to 8.1 (no good), then installing the video
software from apple's older software downloads site (all good LEM
readers should know this address: http://www.info.apple.com/support/oldersoftwarelist.html.
I finally removed all older versions of the software and
reinstalled both things again; for whatever reason, this worked, and
tonight I got to watch "Who's Line Is It Anyway?" while the kids
watched Sippy (er, Snoopy) provide a popcorn and toast Thanksgiving.
While the process wasn't as simple as I'd hoped, at least it was doable
in a couple of hours instead of the days of anguish I undoubtedly would
have had to endure battling the Dark Side.
Sometimes we have to remember that there are things to be thankful
for every day of the year.
is a longtime Mac user. He was using digital sensors on Apple II computers in the 1980's and has networked computers in his classroom since before the internet existed. In 2006 he was selected at the California Computer Using Educator's teacher of the year. His students have used NASA space probes and regularly participate in piloting new materials for NASA. He is the author of two books and numerous articles and scientific papers. He currently teaches astronomy and physics in California, where he lives with his twin sons, Jony and Ben.< And there's still a Mac G3 in his classroom which finds occasional use.
