Most kids are exposed to computers early in life and enter Kindergarten with basic computer skills. For those that don't have that luxury, most public kindergartens work on computer skills right away.

Many of us have computers in our homes and some have a separate one for their school-aged kids. Most college students need access to a computer whether it's through student computer labs or one of their own.

What's your thoughts on computers for students? How has it changed as your kids have gotten older?

What software do you have for them to use? Do you buy what the school uses?

Do you allow free Internet access on your computers or do you have parental controls in place?

Share your thoughts and ideas here.

My son had his first computer game at about 2 and darn if he didn't figure out the mouse right away. His first game was Rodney's Funscreen. I still call out "You found it!" from that game.

We quickly got him his own computer because kids games are horribly written and can really screw up computer memory. Well, he got our old one when we upgraded.

Other games he loved were the Busy Town and the Putt Putt. Doctor Diane's game is another one that we quote to this day. When we get a bandaid out, we say "I'll put a bandaid on it. That'll make it all better."

In elementary school, we got him KidPix since that's what the school had. He used Word for any word processing stuff though.

We never worried too much about Internet access. When he was little, there wasn't much out there and you bought all the games. When he was older, I just told him that I knew the sites he visited so watch out. He got a bad virus one time and lost a lot so that made it all hit home for him.

My son is the art major so we got to buy the expensive stuff like Photoshop. Sigh.

His current computer is a 2yr old Dell XPS 16 (Intel i5) laptop, 8GB, Radeon 4670 w/1GB, 500GB (7200rpm). He refuses to get a Mac as is common in the art industry. This charms my heart as an ex-MSFT employee. Heh.

What's your story?

Grounding kid from the computer through the years:
• Remove mouse ball
• Remove mouse altogether
• Remove the monitor
• Take the wireless card from computer
• Remove the router and connect the modem to just my computer
• When he figured that out, I took the router to work with me

I was good.

Boxymoron wrote:I hear that for activation for some of the editions of Photoshop, there's a long quote and counterquote you've gotta tell them in a phone call, like you're some secret agent. Did you have to do that?

You can get student pricing for most software, including Adobe Photoshop. We got the student pricing but that's still pretty pricey.

BTW, did you know that ANY student K-12 can get discounts on software? You have to prove you're a student, of course. Same goes for teachers and faculty of schools.

This is the site that I use:http://www.journeyed.com. There's a link at the bottom of the page for "Purchase Requirements" that explains what you need to provide. I order the product and then email them a copy of the required documentation right after.