What could be the best way to introduce the world of computers to a kid, let’s say of 6 years old, so that he learns to handle it like a toy and stops dreading it like some esoteric, arcane and recondite machine from some eldritch, enigmatic, cryptic and phantasmal world ?
Keep it disconnected from the internet is the first thing I thought of.
We started with Win10 e-waste, and started with Ubuntu Mate. Java Minecraft was the trick. Got them motivated, reading, doing math. Then wanting to install mods taught them about the filesystem and such. Age 4 and 6, they both got on board and are now top tier computer users. Giving them access to gimp, inkscape, and tinkercad got them using it for art and 3d modelling to get involved in the 3d printer, and they use blockbench to make custom models…which you configure with json in a resource pack. They’re now 9 and 11 and are motivated to play on computers.
Heheh that was my oldest a couple years ago. He’s 9 now but I let him use one of my laptops when he was like 7 to play Minecraft, and it eventually became “his” laptop.
He’s also using Tumbleweed.
He learned how to do all sorts of Minecraft console commands mostly “on his own” (as in, without my guidance, he saw some of the stuff streamers were doing and I explained what it was printed out a little cheat sheet for him and set him off on his own to mess with it. I haven’t taught him any Linux shell (yet), but he is getting pretty good at typing and keyboard shortcuts.
I don’t much care for the streamers. Especially a lot of the Minecraft streamers that pander to kids (cough Mikey and JJ). I don’t allow them in the house anymore. But I’m glad he got some inspiration out of it at least.
I dont know much about how family friendly they are (id say mostly) but mumbo jumbo, grian, and a large number of the people who make up the Hermitcraft are all pretty wholesome, entertaining, some of them are wizards with Redstone, others for aesthetic builds.
Those you mentioned are pretty family friendly, I think. I’d add GoodTimesWithScar, he’s pretty wholesome.
To add to this comment, I’m over 30 and still can’t resist binging a few episodes once in a while, particularly Mumbo Jumbo’s Redstone magic. Don’t feel the need to watch everyone. I usually stick with Mumbo Jumbo and then when someone else builds something really cool I hop onto their video and watch a few episodes, like when Scar built the death star, or then when Grian showed Scar his secret temple I went to watch him build it. (… I had significantly more free time at that time due to life circumstances)
@titter@lemmy.world these are games ??🤔🤔🤔
My suggestions of grian and mumbo are you tube minecraft streamers. I used to only watch mumbo because he is good at technical things like the in-game logic circuitry called Redstone.
Hermitcraft is a minecraft server that hosts players over a season to build and play and create content together
We steered the kids away from Minecraft YouTube, but I actually watch it myself. And I would say Mumbo is good if you have a kid that likes technical stuff and contraptions. Grian is good if you like pranks. BdoubleO100 is an absolute artist, and I think he’s my pick, especially his Hermitcraft Season 10 complete season. GoodTimesWiithScar gets into a lot of silly chaos. Hermitcraft gets a new world every season, and so, picking a hermit and watching a whole season of their content actually may be a fun family activity. I get a lot of inspiration from what they do.
Get or build a PC instead of getting a console. Introduce to kid to games. After a while, say “you know, computers can do other stuff besides play games” and introduce the kid to that as well.
Tell them to keep their personal life completely separate from their online life. NO personal info shared online.
Start with building a very cheap computer with your kid.
You can buy parts for cheap or sometimes get them for free from e-waste processing places. You can do the screws to the case, but let the kid put the parts in place while you explain what they do.
Parts are easy to handle, just make sure to not damage the components as they look cute and are a bit malleable, but put too much pressure you can destroy it (not sure a kid will be strong enough for that).
It is as easy as building Lego, or putting a cartridge on an old console. This will help to make the computer less scary.
Make sure that you can do it yourself and test the parts first before involving your kid, so they do not get too frustrated if it fails.
This will cover hardware.
You can also help them to install the OS.
After, make a list of the programs you want your kid to be aware of: calculator, place to write text, anything you think it will be useful. Take some time to explain them, and do some exercises with each - let’s write a letter to a friend, etc… Let them play around with it without judgment. (remove things you don’t want them to use).
If you want to give the child some background in how software works, Logo was very popular with kids at the school.
Logo is this little turtle that you give orders, similar to imperative programming language used in most softwares.
Change colour to green, walk forward 50 steps.
And the turtle would draw a green line on the screen.
There are plenty of options for software that provides that, here is an option https://apps.kde.org/kturtle/
And, of course, try to break these in multiple days, building a PC, installing OS and playing with programs can be overwhelming for some kids.
yeah logo is how I get into computers at that age, it’s still a great choice imo
Old computer no wifi, as a kid I just explored the computer menus and played the few offline games, drew in paint, by like 10 I had swapped to adobe flash off some piraxy yt videos, maybe load it up with software that could be fun for kids to use
Scratch is a good one, might be too young, but learn to think like a coder while playing around
This plus a Lego mindstorm.
I’ve been using computers longer than that and when I started I had to type commands into DOS to play games. It was never scary. My dad showed me how to do it and wrote down the commands for me and I took it from there.
I know that journey…
CD GAMES
CD SIMCITY
SIM
All the basic important things
Minecraft (Java) with Mods
Recommendation
I think the Raspberry Pi has a suit of prepackaged games and things like that, which you could use. Give your Raspberry Pi a good casing, and it will be indestructible.
Tangent
I would still warn them from the dangers of the modern digital world, in the sense of surveillance and censorship of social media, what is posted on the internet stays there forever, how proprietary software tricks the user and is oftentimes malware (Gmail, Windows, etc.) and things like that.
I mean, computers are cool, but the mainstream computer world is filled with so much nonsense or outright malice. And if I had a child, I wouldn’t want them to be harmed by that. Like, I don’t want my child to be indoctrinated into the sexist manosphere, just because the Instagram Algo said so and will do literally anything to keep them on the platform as long as possible. Software and computers are cool, but there’s so much vile and genuinely dangerous stuff even for adults. For a child it must be hard to navigate. If you say, for example, that Apple devices literally scan every single picture on your device and send the result to Apple, you’ll sound like a crazed tin foil hat lunatic. But this is quite literally what happens with MediaAnalysisD. In the USA, a young family got harassed by police because they sent a picture of their sick child to their doctor via Gmail.
Edit: typo.
Maybe my https://fabien.benetou.fr/Content/BuildingAComputer could help.
I also answered your question in https://lemmy.ml/post/38363131/21987482 but it’s intertwined.
I wouldn’t “teach” them what a computer is, I would co-explore with them instead.
The BBC Microbit was designed for exactly this scenario: https://microbit.org/
If you want them to have a more desktop-like environment, the Raspberry Pi has kid-specific projects: https://www.raspberrypi.org/learn/
Or you can get a Pi Kano kit and it has everything you need: https://www.kano.me/
You pretty much had the answer in the query there is think. Just present it as toy to be handled.
To get more into detail, you probably would prefer those you can indeed pull apart and handle like toys than the “modern” slick ones. I see people mentioning raspberry pi. It’s hard to fear it looking at its guts with bare eyes. After they fried a few chips pressing soldering iron for too long they will have zero respect for electrical computers.
To me the main thing is to relate to a computer as a programmable device, not just a shiny box with pictures and videos. To that end, it might be more effective to have the computer be in command line mode rather than it just being a conduit to youtube.
I started on an apple II at a friend’s house. BASIC was built right in to the command line. Our family ended up with a TRS-80 compatible which also had BASIC. Back then everything you needed to know was in the TRS-80 basic manual. I spent hours and hours making games on it.
Perhaps something like LOGO? Some simple command line environment where the knowledge required is small, and there are easily reachable payoffs for making loops and so forth.
Reminds me of this post, I wanted to do something like this when I have a kid, but it turns out not all children are the same, who would have thought, and mine isn’t interested in how things work.
https://changelog.complete.org/archives/1448-introducing-the-command-line-at-3-years
I installed gcompris for my 5 year old. FOSS childrens educational software and games from KDE.
I also bought her a cheap, pink, 65% keyboard and mouse set that make it “her computer”.
There’s also a few free resources to teach typing once your kid can read and write enough to understand what they’re typing. I’ve heard good things about Typing.com and typingclub.com but we’re not ready to start typing yet so I haven’t used them.
Also, if my kids ask a question that’s a little tricky to explain I’ll show them how I use a computer (or phone) to look for answers. One of the few practical applications I’ve ever found for AI is “can you explain [abstract concept] in a way that a 5 year old can understand”. This isn’t explicitly teaching computer skills, but showing them a practical use case and how to dig into their curiosity.
His videos are a great learning resources too
Just some idea: archive.org (and ruffle) for old flash games
Easier to give them Flashpoint. You could restrict the age inappropriate games too.
