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Introducing a Child to Constructive Computer Use?

Posted by Cliff on from the educating-while-they're-young dept.

trevorgensch asks: "I have a young boy, about 6 years old, who is starting to take an interest in the computer I seem to spend too much time at lately. Lots of Slashdot readers out there must have had experiences with their young child wanting to learn more. I am all for it! But where to start? He has had a bit of experience with the Internet and children's sites and official sites of Pixar and Disney movies, but he wants more. Any pointers?"

1 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. Re:mostly games, but some cartoons and science... by Ratbert42 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    DisneyWarner ad machine

    This is important. My 5-year old loves her computer and the ability to just go to the browser and type in "animal planet" and have the right page come up. What's scary is all the ads she sees. She ignores ads on TV most of the time, but a simple banner ad draws her in. She's been one mistake away from getting NetNanny installed for a while. (I just wish there was a good open-source solution for this that didn't mean going back to a Linux/BSD firewall/proxy).

    Then we just caught her looking around the house for a credit card to complete her order on an online candy store. We'd noticed her filling up a shopping cart there but thought it was cute. A $500 candy order wouldn't have been so cute.