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Introducing a Child to Constructive Computer Use?
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?"
Why not think back to how you started and go from there? Did you have someone holding your hand or did you explore yourself from first principals on up?
The reason I suggest this is that back when I was that age, I did all the computer learning myself. My parents had no clue and never used the thing so that left it entirely in my hands. I wasn't monitored on the net or while playing games, typing in BASIC programs, etc. (Of course things were different back then as I didn't even get online with BBSes until I was around 14 or 15 with the net following soon after.)
All my parents did was buy the computer equipment (up until I got a job working for the first local ISP), take me to the library to get computer books now and then, and paid for the subscription to a couple magazines over my time growing up, and take me to swap meets (hamfests were awesome). The rest of the time I was typing in BASIC programs, playing games, hacking games, taking the machines apart and putting them back together, understanding IRQs, etc. by myself as I didn't have anyone around to ask. I think if I had had someone to ask all of the time, I'd not be nearly so into computers as I am. (For better or worse...)
If your kid is showing an interest in digging in and understand the machines as opposed to just using them, give them tools, books, magazines, and old hardware and just stand back and see what happens. Something interesting to try might be to not allow access to the web until the kid is able to build a computer from a pile of parts complete with working ethernet to connect it to the network. That might not be entirely reasonable, but it is certainly one way to go. If your kid is showing that kind of desire to understand the internals, you probably want to keep him challenged. Giving him a state of the art computer complete with broadband which you might feel you have to monitor right from the start is like handing him the keys to the Ferrari and telling him to keep it under 45. If he has to build his computer and figure out how to get connected himself, it might go a long ways towards building not only self esteem and pride, but useful skills that many of his peers are going to lack.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
My daughter has been pushing a mouse around since she was 2, and here are the top hits in our house...
There were some decent kid-appropriate cartoons in the wired.com/animation section, which was a nice break from the DisneyWarner machine. They are gone, which is sad, since they still have that three-legged dog called Webmonkey limping around.
Goof ball is a shareware, non-violent, dexterity building game, and it teaches some simple rules about gravity and colliding spheres that are probably good to have ingrained at a young age. It's actually a set of 6-8 ball games, so there's a lot to learn, ever for a grown up kid.
I found that Mame is an excellent source, since a lot of the games are easy, non-violent, non-indoctrinating into the DisneyWarner ad machine, and, uh, free.
That being said, my kids also go to a couple games on the Disney.crap site, though only under strict supervision, and only to a fraction of the offerings. I try to minimize their exposure to it, but some of the games/puzzles/activities are ok.
Shockwave games are usually better, but you have to sort of pre-screen the pages to make sure you have all of the inappropriate ad servers blocked.
Outside of games, NASA has an excellent kids' section, with models to build, pictures, projects, etc.
Zoo and aquarium sites are ok too, plenty of educational material with enough pictures to keep them entertained.
That's about the same age my younger son Jonatan started using the computer intensively. The older one (Daniel) started a bit later (about 4 1/2). But we had a laptop with only a touchpad back then so it was more difficult for him. Last year the children's demand for the computer became so high that I set them up with their own computers (photo of their room, that my wife would never have allowed me to publish if she could prevent it...).
Whatever they play, on the computer or not on the computer, the most important thing is that it should be a tool to aid their creativity, not to limit it. In "Hardware toys" it means things like Lego basic constrution sets (and other manufacturers. Both quality and quantity are mportant factors here: lack of each limits the child's creativity).
With Daniel we started with some cheap commercial games from Office Depot clearance. I don't think it's the right way. These quite limit the child to following instructions.
With Jonatan, we didn't make the effort to look for things to buy. He's a second child... So it was more like finding whatever we have that can occupy him so he doesn't bother us, and it worked better. M$ Paint turned out to be really great for him. It was simple enough to use, and he was very creative with it. Then he discovered Google: he uses Google images to look for pictures, then he cpopies and pastes them into his own works (He got a bit addicted to Google, and when we went on a 3 weeks vacation and he didn't have acess to the computer he was drawing pictures of the Google logo with his crayons... A few months ago when he wanted to find something his granfather told him it cannot be found on Google. So he said to his Grandpa: "Grandpa, anything can be found on Google if you know how to look for it!". Even searching Google requires creativity).
Another good piece of Children's software that encourages creativity is Drape (Drawing Programming Environment). It is a sort of programming environment similar to to Logo in some respect, but not exactly the same. One advantage is that it allows for very easy mouse interaction, so a child can create things that "work" quite easily (i.e., with just a bit of adult intervention). Form the same source, Game Maker is more suitable for older children. It is a programming environment to create games, either by using drag and drop or a builtin programming language. I've seen nice cooperation between the younger and older brother here: the young one chooses the objects and graphics, and drwas the levels of the games. The older one completes the game by adding the more abstract parts: actions and interactions. Logo is of course a very good thing for children. For the smaller ones the online r-logo is very easy and fun to use. For more serious Logo programming MSWlogo is a much more powerful implementation (including 3-dimensionality and multi-tasking). There's no need to "choose one". My son Daniel first thinks of an idea he wants to implement, then chooses the most appropriate tool, just like a programmer choosing the most appropriate programming languge for the job (he has several flavors of Logo and choses the one that has what he needs for a project. He also uses Visual Basic that he learned at school).
What else?
For several months my kids were addicted to Enigma. It's "just a game", but actually it involved loads of creativity in solving an entirely different puzzle in each level, and has the right balance between sing the brain and coordinating mo