Laptops for Kids

You can try an Alpha Smart—it is basically just a keyboard. It can interface with the PC so the notes can be down loaded to a computer. You can purchase an Alpha Smart for home use at a reasonable price. Laptops can be expensive Alpha smart is approx 300.00. I think there web address is alphasmart.com. My daughter says her school uses them in the writing class for all students. Just a suggestion.

What ever you purchase, spend the extra $ on a good, protective carrying case. Our 19 yr old was doing great with his until it dropped one day… and now we need to see about getting the screen replaced or something along those lines. Oh well. We picked up a lap top that was on special for about $700 & change, figuring for college and all… right now it is sitting and waiting for some assistance from me. I’ll get around to it eventually. The concept and tool are a great help, just protect it as best you can. I’d even suggest some kind of incentive for safety if that is at all possible. Also, if there is a chance to purchase a warranty that is all inclusive of such happenings, all the better.

That’s what we’re going to get for our dysgraphic daughter as soon as she can keyboard. If you go to http://www.metacrawler.com and do a search on “alphasmart” you will find a couple of websites with good descriptions. http://www.alphasmart.com has information too. I think this is better than a laptop, especially since they are made to be durable. If the school is set up for them, all homework assignments can be downloaded and uploaded — very easy.

Mary

Alphasmarts are certainly durable and inexpensive, but it depends on how a kid’s brain works, whether it will work well for them. It has the advantage that a kid can’t get distracted by the other programs and applications in a lap top, but some kids don’t do well with just 4 lines of readable text at a time. Also, there are many other programs that can help a child on a lap top, like Excel for graphing, otline templates in Word, etc. Plus they have a very limited memory on their own. From what I’ve seen, Alphasmarts seem most useful at the elementary school level.

Because the computer industry changes so quickly, it doesn’t take long for computers to be pretty out of date. And out of date means inexpensive, particularly for used machines. It isn’t hard to find a used laptop that will do all the basics a kid will need for under $500. If you can get by with just word processing functionality, you could probably get one at close to the same price as an Alphasmart.

Karen

I think it depends on the age of the child. If the child is below 5th grade the Alphasmart could be a starting place. If your child has a LD and trouble writing an Assistive Technology Assessment by a qualified person might be in order. IDEA states that the IEP team must consider the need of Assistive Technology in an IEP. The school could then be responsible for providing the Alphasmart.
My son started with an Alphasmart in 5th grade. He found the spell checker to be poor on that model and it would fail at times and loose his work. This is three years ago and the newer model is probably better. The small screen was a problem.

We bought him a HP Jornada PDA in 6th grade and he is still using it in 8th grade. It has a nice size screen and is light weight and had Pocket Word and Excel. They no longer make the version he has and I’m not sure other companies are making the same type of product. I would go for a laptop as the next best alternative for this age level. Look for a light weight and also buy a padded case for it as Andy stated.

Helen

that a laptop might be better than an AlphaSmart for my daughter (she’s in 5th grade this year). We actually have a laptap that doesn’t get much use, so that might do the trick.

Mary

In our school, we use the Alphasmart through third grade but the kids, those who can afford it, move to a laptop in fourth grade. They do just fine with the laptop. The older classrooms are equipped with a couple of Alphasmarts for the kids who can’t afford a laptop.

I can’t stress enough how valuable these keyboarding aids are. When parents balk at the idea, and many do because they think their child “ought to know how to write”, I often find that the way to get the parent’s consent is to remind them that by high school, nearly every child will be typing their papers on computers. This way, their elementary school child, for whom school can be such a struggle, actually gets to have a headstart on learning word processing skills that everyone will need to know eventually.

AlphaSmarts are great tools, but they often are not often for some students. Some quick reasons to consider a laptop are the limits of 4 lines on the screen and no text to speech. MathPad Plus (IntelliTools) is critical for some folks as well as a grammar check in a word proc., etc. etc..

We have had great luck with the new ibooks, students I know as young as 10 are using them-bringing them back in forth in a back pack with addtional insert for laptop.

Good luck, I think it all depends upon the individual and what their needs are. Watch out some school systems tend to just rec. AlphaSmarts as a cheap way out.