My daughter is in Kindergarten and one day they sent her home with some instructions on how to use a computer reading program that I could download And install.
The instructions to install looked pretty hideous but one night I sat down and did it. It’s some kind of licensed software that the school district uses and it’s an app that runs on Mac OS, Windows XP – Windows 7. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. An App, not a web site which is what it should be.
Anyways, I loaded this thing up expecting the worst. I installed it on our Windows 8 All In One PC that has a 24 inch touch screen. This application was not designed for touch. It runs at 800 x 600.
After installing I put my little girl in front of the thing. She started to use the mouse because that’s what she is using at School since their computers are all Macs.
Watching a 6 year old use a mouse designed for an adult made me squirm a bit. It just wasn’t working. She was clicking the right mouse button instead of the left one.
So I said: Sarah, touch the screen. And within 5 seconds she was flying through the lessons with her fingers. She was easily 2-3 times faster than if she were using the mouse.
When you see your kids use computing, and learn, and gravitate and excel with a mode of input that didn’t exist 6 years ago you can see the world changing.
People thought that typing on a 3.7 inch glass screen was absurd when most folks only had chiclet keyboards. No one thinks that’s absurd any more. Touching a PC screen because it’s faster and better and more natural is going to be normal if it isn’t already.
Touch isn’t just for phones and tablets. Just ask my kid.
I am the network admin at Preschool + K-12 school. We tried using special single button mice with PS and K and it worked ok. Then in March of this year we got some all in one 23″ dell touch screens and installed Win8 preview build. It was like night and day.
We have been using PC Tablets in 7-12 since XP SP2 and Toshiba M200. We saw what a stylus could do and now finally everyone is getting that and more with the touch capabilities.