I've seen some kids who are positively scary on computers. The kids don't have any real fear of the machines. When PCs first came on the market, I was tasked with teaching fellow employees, fully grown adults, how to use the PCs. We had (and this goes back a while) for spreadsheets VisiCalc, then Mutiplan, then Lotus 1-2-3 [v1.0]; for databases DBase 1.0, then Paradox; for word processing Wordstar, later the word processing component of Lotus Symphony. I had to move heaven and earth to get those employees to even touch the computers, much less use them. I attribute this in part to the really primitive (by today's standards) nature of the operating system (MS-DOS) and the available software. Now, everything related to PCs is much more intuitive, "user-friendly", and more on a human rather than technical level. Kids seemingly just "feel" the aspects of cumputers and software more than the previous generations. I have taught a few kids how to properly use computers and software and am constantly amazed at the ease with which they "connect the dots" when using PCs. The ability to make comparisons to already learned information and the information and concepts they are currently learning is key to their success. This combined with kids' natural curiosity and affinity for puzzles and riddles makes them more than capable to use hardware software and even to create programs...
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