[wvenable]

A lot of dinner time conversation revolves around stuff that any of us, including the kids, have read or seen online.

A few months ago (while school was closed and we were quarantined), my son relayed to us all information about COVID-19 that he had come across online (likely via YouTube). I was expecting a bunch of misinformation but all of it was spot on! We've also talked about Flat Earthers. The other day we ended up discussing why Wikipedia isn't allowed as source at school.

> I've been thinking about getting the kid a non-networked desktop PC with a keyboard and seeing whether he derives any joy from the kind of basic, actual applications I grew up with -- a word processor program and a printer; literally QBASIC and gorillas.bas; etc.; with the understanding that this is an amusing anachronistic toy.

We grew up in similar times and from my experience as a parent it doesn't really work. We did a lot of that stuff because it was what we had. I did introduce my son to emulators and classic Nintendo games; the idea of 3 lives and your dead was a bit of a shock. But he eventually got Super Mario Maker and making your own classic Mario levels is more fun than playing someone else's.

[user5994461]

>>> The other day we ended up discussing why Wikipedia isn't allowed as source at school.

Because Wikipedia has made obsolete all research tasks given by schools? One search and the wikipedia article will tell you everything there is to know about a subject.

[zpeti]

Yeah, try searching for anything even mildly political, and see how much of "everything" there is to know you see about it.