Children computing

How can computers and computing assist children? Imagine this: if you were to give your daughter a computer, what would you wish it did, and what would you wish it didn't?

I would like a computer to help my child develop her thinking skills. I don't know all the thinking skills, nor their classification, so here are a few of them in no particular order:

• Memory: there are many ways to assist in memory training, one example among many being the method of loci.
• Classification: things that belong together go together. List-making is a great tool I was crazy about as a child. Also, distinction is an important facet.
• Cause and effect: I don't know of any tools/games that explicitly exercise this faculty. Logo or equivalent?
• Visual thinking: expression through diagrams, visual representation of concepts, of natural phenomena.
• Arithmetic and geometry
• Colors: Color mixing, coloring figures.
• Music: the rhythmic, harmonic and melodic senses are important
• Languages: mother tongue mainly, other tongues too.
• Identity and the Other: the building blocks of the psyche. How can they be transmitted?

I would also like the computer to show my child aspects of her and other cultures:

• Music
• Art
• Literature
• History
• Geography
• Religion

This cultural part should be reviewed by local communities before being open to children, I suspect the Internet at large would not be suitable. Or it could be generated by groups of children with a mediator, with the content then being published on a special children's subnetwork. This way all cultures would be revealed to the children, without the dilution of their own culture in the process.

Games are a very good medium for relaying information to children. The above tools could be packaged as games, but also traditional games could be used. I am especially thinking of folk games that are very simple but that seem to embody the training of a particular skill, like puzzles, word games, or even card games. Of course, most of these games would be multi-player, network-based. Of special interest are culturally-local games, the playing of which could be a great aid to cross-cultural pollination.