Are you smarter than an 8 year old?
Last Wednesday I had the enviable task of doing a presentation about a career in web design to two full classes of 8 year olds at a nearby primary school.
Not having children myself I suppose I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was genuinely suprised at how ‘on the ball’ these kids are when it comes to the web, I.T. and computers in general.
“So how many of you have been on the internet before?” was my first question, as every hand shot up within a second.
“How many have been on more than ten times?” was my second, with the same re-action from the kids.
“OK, which sites are your favourites sites?” was the next. The answers were many and varied. Social networking played a big part with Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, MSN and even Twitter (yes, Twitter with a bunch of 8 year olds!) scoring well.
We then went on to look at a selection of ten websites I had chosen the night before and talk about whether we liked them, what we like about them and what we didn’t like. The car sites scored well with the boys with “Audi” and “Porsche” being the sites of choice. A much more intelligent choice came from the girls with the excellent “Coraline” site from the stop-start animation film and the breathtaking “Hello Sour Sally“, which has to be the most inventive way ever to try to sell pots of frozen yoghurt!
There were some clangers too, like the intentionally appalling “World’s Worst Site” and the textbook ‘how not to build an information website’ example at “Havenworks“. To their credit, the kids picked out all of the clangers and came out with incredibly astute observations such as “I like this one because it is nice and simple, you understand what it does and you can easily find your way around it”.
Other comments such as “I like this one cos it’s got a smiley flashing face in the corner” restored natures balance though!
The full list is here if you fancy a look. Which are your favourites?
