I used to have this on a USB key for my daughter from age 2 to 5 (she is now 6).
The UX was terrible, full of inconsistencies, with different icon symbols in different positions from application to application to close windows, confirm menu choices etc.
But my daughter loved it to bits =) Some games are a lot of fun for a toddler.
And guess what, I think the struggle she experienced with the inconsistent UI may have been the best "school" she could have had for "real world" UIs.
At 6yo she is now completely autonomous navigating a Windows environment and any of the multitude of "Frankenstein" UIs I throw at her.
Might even revisit it now for the 1st grade level games I remember she couldn't play back then.
I tried Doudou, and then Qimo, and finally gave up and gave my kids xubuntu.
The sad truth is that the childrens games like Childs Play are sad stale games with hopeless UIs and glaring bugs like mislabelled animals in quizzes and things.
I have lots of feedback from watching my kids learning to use and play with Doudou and Qimo; even though it is several years ago now, I think - from looking at the screenshots - that nothing much has changed :(
I think the another issue with most of these "for kids" environments is that they have low ceilings of mastery. You know, like the "low barrier to entry, high ceiling" principle of Smalltalk? Usually because of some misguided desire to shelter them and keep them safe.
Also, I started out on DOS at the age of six, with the left-over computer my parents had after they upgraded the server at work. It had two hard drives of a whopping 40mb! Anyway, the neighbours next door had a slightly older son who explained to me how cd, copy, mkdir, del, etc. worked and he gave me a bunch of games via floppy disks. I didn't understand everything (this was before I spoke English, so no idea what the "park" command referred to or why it was important), nor knew why everything worked, or understood why some games didn't quite work when copied to the hard drive (because I didn't copy the sub folders) but I managed. Wanting to play games is a good motivator to learn any interface.
Based on Sugata Mitra's experiments, I'd say as an individual I wasn't exceptional in any way; give a group of kids a computer without an artificially low ceiling and watch them go! The circumstances I was in might have been unusual at the time, but that's different.
>I think the another issue with most of these "for kids" environments is that they have low ceilings of mastery
A modern GUI OS for adults has a very low ceiling of mastery. I don't know why we need to make simpler designs. When my kid was literally fourteen or fifteen months he could pick up a phone or tablet, swipe to the youtube app, press it, and then press the thumbnails from a recently viewed video and watch videos (usually Peppa Pig).
Kids don't need dumbed down displays. We already have dumbed down displays for adults. This reminds me of why the OLPC failed so badly. Even ignoring the cheap netbook competition, the interface was too 'top down' academic crap about 'how kids think' and involved a lot of shoddy assumptions on how to teach kids how to use a computer. A netbook with XP was perfectly usable by even the very young.
I was 6 or so I could use my parent's TRS-80 and was writing fun little BASIC programs with it. I think we need to give kids more credit here. They're much smarter than we think and its adult hubris to pretend they're so unintelligent and unable to figure things out on their own. Perhaps we shouldn't shy away from overly-challenging kids. The recent trends of 'soft' and 'helicopter' parenting cannot be good for the long run. I plan to be somewhat tough with my son because I don't want him to grow up into some of the people I work with who have near zero self-learning and critical thinking skills and have a 'give me fish' mentality and will actively fight against a 'teach me to fish' mentality.
I was a bit older at the age of 10, but on those days the Spectrum and C64 were the more advanced machines we could get hold of anyway.
So for the first two years it was mostly LOAD "", or trying to type-in listings from magazines that my father used to buy, mostly without success as they tended to have print errors we could not easily understand.
But eventually the bug stuck inside, and around the age of 12 I was already getting into Z80 Assembly.
Also it was great that back on those days, at least in Portugal we even got listenings on newspapers.
Many might remember the "A Capital" computer section on Fridays. :)
Aside: I just noticed that I wrote down "six" where it is supposed to be a "nine"! If it was a 6/9 typo I'd understand that, but written out in full like that it is kinda embarrassing.
I started playing computer games at the age of six, but having my own computer came a bit later.
I'm sure there are some very intelligent six-year olds out there though.
If they are in the UK, I'd recommend the staff development that the resilience gang provide. Reasonable rates to institutions that can get 16-20 teachers together.
(I'm a happy participant, no financial interest, &c.)
> Usually because of some misguided desire to shelter them and keep them safe.
The first computers I used (Amigas) ran off floppy disks. Whenever we bought new software, we'd use copies of the disks and keep the originals stored away.
This had the effect of making everything safe; even accidentally formatting an OS disk was no problem, since it was just a copy and most things didn't need it to boot anyway.
When I was about 8 we got a hard drive, which made life much more convenient (e.g. the ability to install games, rather than swapping floppies around, easily finding saved data compared to trawling through umpteen disk boxes, etc.) but also introduced some danger: changes (including mistakes) would persist across reboots, the HD didn't just contain copies of stuff (we, like most people, didn't have backups), and the impact of something like data loss was expanded to include everything we have (including other people's stuff), rather than just the particular floppies in the drives.
I imagine those introduced to computers between, say, the mid 90s to ~2010, would be under more pressure to be conservative, as their mistakes might have a real impact on things like their parent's budgeting spreadsheets, etc. Also, a bit tangentially, I feel that Windows and Linux present more opportunities for mistakes compared to AmigaOS: they spread important files around various parts of the filesystem, and there's a quite tight coupling between the OS and third-party applications. My Amiga HDs all have a standalone Workbench partition for booting, an Applications partition with each program in its own drawer, etc. which limited the scope of any of my experimenting; I remember trying to set up Windows in a similar way, and find that whilst all installers give the option of installing to a user-chosen directory, many programs don't actually work if they're not in the default "C:\Program Files" :(
This is where I think initiatives like the RaspberryPi really shine: they're inexpensive, standalone machines, so the impact of any mistakes is very low. Accidentally formatted the drive? Your parent's work documents are safely stored on a different machine. Whilst you can't get back to a clean slate by rebooting, at least SD cards are easy to pull out and make backups of.
I don't know if VMs are as good a solution as a RaspberryPi(-alike).
VMs are part of the 'important' machine, rather than being separate; using the same keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc. there's always the risk of e.g. typing into the wrong 'important' terminal by mistake.
Plus, a VM is like a "computer simulator" rather than a computer; introducing a guest OS certainly wouldn't prevent me wanting to play with the host OS, and I'd worry that keeping the host off-limits would allow "magical thinking" regarding how the machine operates.
It's also probably more empowering to be given a real, physical box too. Whilst the RaspberryPi is inexpensive it's still a real computer, running real software, which a child can own and make their own. VMs, like all virtual entities, can't be "owned" in the same way (e.g. see copyright).
I've tried these things with the kids I'm around (aged 2-7), and I was just met with frustration for all the things I tried (Doudou, Xubuntu, whatever).
As much of a nix-zealot that I am, in the end I resigned to using an iPad with several educational apps.
As the parent of a 1 year old, this looks great, can the content filtering be disabled, since this is a Live CD?
I wonder if there's any evidence whatsoever for content filtering actually being useful for children's development, as opposed to just reinforcing societal squeamishness.
The example they have[1] on their page is blocking the DuckDuck go result for "sex", whose first result is the Wikipedia article.
I really can't imagine why a child who's developed enough to search for that on their own isn't ready to read about it. To the extent that the parent needs to be around to explain things to the child I don't see how that needs to be done for sex in particular, as opposed to say economics.
From their "Translator's FAQ" (which I think is meant for volunteers to help with localization):
"How should I tell to pronounce DoudouLinux?
In French and Chinese it is pronounced “doodoolinux”. However as the word “doodoo” has a weird meaning in slang American English, we recommend English-speakers to say it as if it was an English word, the way they prefer to say it. We also ask to not write “doodoolinux” at all to avoid any confusion (except here!). Of course if pronouncing the word the French way has no awful meaning in your language, please tell to use this pronunciation."
I'm not sure I understand what they mean by "say it as if it was an English word" though.
Starting out with a name that has a weird meaning in English - not a good idea. It's difficult to find a name that sounds good in all languages and has no offending meaning, but it's not impossible.
You mean US English. Sure, I know what "doo doo" means from US TV/movies, but I've never heard anyone use it. Neither would I assume poo if someone said it in relation to Linux.
That's because the word is generally considered juvenile - something a child of 2-12 would probably find hilarious. And despite how you might tell them to pronounce it, I'm pretty sure they'd end up calling it "doodoo" anyway, at least mine would.
Interesting - I would have gone with "Doo Doo", but I don't think there are standard English phonetic rules for this particular name. Mentally though knowing that it has French origins, I think I just compared it to other French words I know with "ou" when written out in english.
"“Doudou” is a French word that means wubby, the teddy bear or the cloth that children carry everywhere and hug very strongly in their arms before falling asleep. In China the word 豆豆 means the same and is pronounced the same too."
Chinese it's pronounced doughdough (4th tone, if anyone cares) as someone else mentioned below.
I think we should define a low level learning virtual machine. Basically something like a C64 but updated to be a bit more modern. Have a virtual 4 core CPU that runs a fake machine code, have memory mapped IO so that you can put a pixel on a screen by writing a byte to memory, you can read a mouse position from a fixed memory address etc.
You could make it more advanced by using the IO. We could define things like a 3d graphics interface by defining virtual registers that take commands. Pretend hardware instead of an API.
Basically a fake blank computer for learning fun stuff on that's a bit more modern than an old spectrum of C64 but still (emulated) basic hardware and no layers or libraries...
Perhaps if it became popular people might create the actual hardware...
Hmm, I might make one :P
Personally i don't understand why you need a 7 and under child to use a computer. And 7 year olds pick up computer just as quickly as an adult would if they used computers for the first time
Probably even quicker than an adult from my point of view. But then again, computers were much simpler in my childhood days. As an aside: It still bugs me that I don't have anymore access to this kind of fearless, joyfull learning today.
What I mean is: If I would pick up Arduino now I'd fail to make rapid progress.
Over the years it became harder and harder for me to just innocently interact with a new domain. I've acquired so many mental frameworks that clutter up my thinking.
If I run into a problem nowadays I'd frequently resort to reading things up (instead of joyful playing around). And this, of course, would only happen after I spend an enormous amount of time finding the best material and so on. Or I'd wonder from time to time whether Arduino actually is something for me and think about how else I could spend my time more usefully.
The reasons may sound silly but they are very real.
Nah I struggle through similar reasons. I think most people do; it's hard not to when there's practically infinite access to information. For me at least, I find it's a matter of just diving in with a slight "f*ck it" attitude - if I later find out I didn't start with the "best" material, or that something doesn't interest me as much as I thought it would, I try to just cut my losses and move on. Personally, I find that "joyful learning sensation" is more a matter of mental perspective than anything else. For what it's worth :)
> I don't understand why you need a 7 and under child to use a computer
I suppose you don't need to, they don't have to fill out taxes or look up a grocery store's opening hours, but might they not have fun playing some games or learn something?
I'd refrain from letting my infant kid (I don't have one) use a computer. I've first seen one when I was 11 (about 2000) and I'm just fine with computers now. Plus, I've been able to play outside, run around, climb trees etc. It is a question of predisposition, not how early you've started with computers.
Reminds me a bit of the One Laptop Per Child project, which according to some people is a little bit defunct. They produced a distro called Sugar (https://www.sugarlabs.org) that might be worth looking into.
Now tablets have largely overcome laptops as an inexpensive computing device for children.
EDIT: not defunct as people let me know. thanks for pointing this out.
> Now tablets have largely overcome laptops as an inexpensive computing device for children.
Children get exposed to horrible devices a lot. The One Laptop Per Child project gives children a device that is sturdy, energy efficient, easy to repair, and comes with full editable source code and no ties to brainwashing data thieves like Google and Facebook.
Agreed. And tablets are very opaque too, UIs hide all the internals and don't leave much to learn... as opposed to early home computers like the ZX Spectrum, which exposed people to programming right away.
True, but in this regard iPads are actually quite good when compared with the alternatives.
Granted, kids will need their parents to install them the apps, but there are quite a few to play around with programming.
For example Pythonista.
And Apple now even is investing into it with the Playgrounds, of course not out of kindness, but also to get children hooked on Swift.
Then I would put Windows tablets on second, because most of them are hybrid computers, so there are some options there.
On Android parents are stuck with AIDE or apps that feel like people bundling text input fields with an eval button over the weekend. So nothing really appropriate here and 100% in sync with your remark.
I recently came to realize that on that price range you can find hybrid laptops (tablets with detachable keyboard) and that my Eee PC 1215B was probably one of the last models to be produced for that price range.
Which puts GNU/Linux outside this price range, unless parents get PIs and similar computers.
I just donated $100 to OLPC yesterday, so I might be swayed here, but I think laptops still fit the cheap-to-produce educational niche – the newer models have a tablet mode, but a flat tablet couldn't easily hold the wifi antennas needed for community-based "intra"net.
I'm aware of a small but thriving home ed community in France - tying home education exclusively to fundamentalist religion is something that's pretty much only a US thing.
What does the research on computer literacy (if any) say about the appropriate time to introduce these things? I don't think a five year old will be tremendously behind. UI literacy probably comes from mapping UIs to things you are familiar with in the real world. Command line literacy comes from knowing how to read, type, and organize information.
No idea about research, but my youngest first started playing with a smart phone at about 9 months. Yes, really.
After about a month he could unlock it and launch games. Soon progressed to finding YouTube videos of preschool songs for the alphabet, colours, shapes, etc. He is now 5, and can happily search google for things like mine craft hacks, which he can easily apply, and his current hobby is installing old skool operating systems on Oracle VM. His current favorite sound is the Win 95 start up sound....
He has now got a reading age of about 13, so for example he can read a broadsheet newspaper with out help, he can type anything, but is only just learning to write with a pen. But even that is now happening super quick. He started learning to write 9 months ago and had caught up with his class.
Just by my experience, I'd give them devices as soon as possible, but perhaps remember to get them writing as well.
Why didnt we take care of making sure he could also write? Frankly piss poor parenting on our part.
Thanks for the feedback. I imagine an ipad pro with the stylus could probably catch him up on that. What caused the advanced reading age in your opinion?
I don't think so, I started my son on it when he was 4. To me it doesn't seem any more violent than old Looney Tunes cartoons where people get shot in the face or blown up or anvils dropped on them. And it's adorable to watch him do Reaper's DIE DIE DIE dance.
My son just turned 4. He doesnt seem to mind using a keyboard occasionally, though searching for the keys leads to losing his interest quickly. He still finds it amusing typing words in a text editor and seeing them appear on the screen.
Touchscreen seems to be easiest be it for playing games or navigating youtube. He uses google voice quite a bit on an Android smart phone, since he found the "mic" button.
I have a 23-inch touch monitor hooked up to an intel nuc with Win10, which he seems to like a lot. Though the educational apps in windows store are very few. I was not able to find a way to hook up an Android variant to the touch monitor.
My kid only used to be exposed to touch screens. Her daycare then introduced them to more traditional computers with a keyboard and mouse, and they adapted fine.
Am I the outlier here? I don't see my daughter - who is 6 - using a desktop regularly enough to need a special distro.. if she is using it, it's that we are doing it together. I would like to see her have a Linux tablet though
My kids aged 4 8 9 and 12 each use the desktop every day, for recreation and for homeschool, but they use Windows 10, they each have their own user account, and they use it for various apps, including games like Minecraft and Factorio, painting programs like Photoshop and Paint.NET, beginner programming environments like Scratch and Sublime Text (for Love2d games), and more heavy programming environments like IntelliJ and Visual Studio Express. Tablets and Linux desktop distros wouldn't really make sense for us. But maybe this is an atypical setup for children?
My daughter (5) got her laptop when she was 4.
She is now quite proficient with the keyboard and mouse, and is able to start the computer, open minecraft, log into our lan server and build/run around.
But that would not have happened if it was not for minecraft I think. They need to get interested enough.
Doudou [1] is French for a kid's favorite, day and night, bring everywhere teddy bear. You can see further francophone influence in the use of SPIP (the CMS used for the website).
But in English, a "Doo-doo" is one of a kids favourite pass times before they are capable of doing much other than drinking milk and sleeping. If Google "doo doo", and you get a lot of pictures of excrement (NSFW, probably).
Childish is an ironic way to describe it. :) It is a term that only small children use, but almost all American children at least know what it means even if they don't say it all the time.
I just realized that it's strange that there would be a slang term only used by children, but that remained in use by generation after generation of children over a period of at a minimum 50 years but probably much longer.
I'm not a parent, but I suspect that it's a word used by American parents during potty training, hence its longevity.
The UX was terrible, full of inconsistencies, with different icon symbols in different positions from application to application to close windows, confirm menu choices etc.
But my daughter loved it to bits =) Some games are a lot of fun for a toddler.
And guess what, I think the struggle she experienced with the inconsistent UI may have been the best "school" she could have had for "real world" UIs.
At 6yo she is now completely autonomous navigating a Windows environment and any of the multitude of "Frankenstein" UIs I throw at her.
Might even revisit it now for the 1st grade level games I remember she couldn't play back then.