On balance of creativity and passivity with kids and screentime

This is from a great episode of the ChangeLog podcast that interviews Tim Bell, the founder and creator of CS Unplugged: a collection of free teaching material that teaches computer science through engaging games and puzzles.

I struggle with how much screentime our kids have. Perhaps this quote will inspire is to do more creative things with our kids’ screentime!

We do kinda see the Unplugged stuff as a kind of gateway drug [to actually using a computer] but I think a lot of it is about balance because as parents a lot of us are rightly concerned about screen time, but again we have to think are kids on computers consuming and being a user or are they creating and thinking and so on. And even with programming, if a kid is writing programs and creating things that is quite different things happening in their minds than if they are sitting there watching stuff and playing.

The Changelog 302: Computer Science without a computer – Listen on Changelog.com