Computers for Toddlers (in its own thread)

[Dianne Marsh]

See the "Open Letter thread ..." for the gender issue.  I promise I'll reply to that but I wanted to say that
1. I didn't feel hijacked.  I've done it myself by changing the subject and not remembering that the thread would get modified
2. I think that the computers for toddlers topic is interesting too
3. I'll just restart the toddler thread here. 

I have to get some stuff done before the end of the day, and I'm holding out hope that I can get home for Pizza/Movie night with the kids.  EEK!

Dianne

[Josh Suereth]

I like turtles.... and java.


THREAD HIJACK ATTEMPT SUCCESSFUL!

[Steven Herod]

We have a two and a bit year old who enjoys sitting next to my wife or
I and requesting "Thomas... Computer!" (Thomas the tank engine's
website).

He's also mastered unlocking my iphone and starting apps. Luckily he
doesn't know my iTunes password.

In about 12 months I'd probably consider picking up a 2nd hand iBook
or a low end netbook for him.

About 10 years ago I watched a friends 4 year old boot Linux, start
XWindows and then run a game.

It sort of a little experiment, what is the earliest a child can
actually make meaningful use of a computer? Is there such a thing
as 'Toddler Linux' ?

[Reinier Zwitserloot]

I think that 'I like turtles' guy was just evangelising for Logo
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language) ) at a
young age.

I fondly remember getting a Commodore 64 for christmas and having
endless fun with programs like:

10 print "This is neat!"
20 goto 10

And a C64 isn't exactly the pinnacle of user friendliness. I wasn't 4
either, though. Don't remember exactly. More like 7 or 8.

If you can get a child to be at least passably comfortable with a
computer, I bet at 7 you can introduce logo and get somewhere. It sure
beats C64 basic, where to clear the screen or move the pointer around,
you had to print (as in System.out.println) whacky characters. The
inversed heart meant clear screen, I still remember that one. And you
didn't have to close string quotes, and memory was at a premium (64k,
heh), so you'd write stuff lke:

10 PRINT"❤

(but imagine the heart is reversed)

and -that- passed for programming back then.

[Peter Becker]

I think I was 13 or 14 when I got my C64 and I was utterly confused
about the way it behaved sometimes, printing funny characters instead of
cursor keys and the like. I actually returned it since it was broken,
only to learn later that that is the way it behaves -- if I recall
correctly it uses some funky representations for non-printable
characters like the cursor movements while a quotation is in place. Or
something like that.

I've seen quite a few newer projects in the spirit of Logo. This one
looks very cool: http://scratch.mit.edu/ -- but I haven't really spend
too much time investigating since I suspect that at the time Lucie can
handle Tuxpaint things might have changed :-)

The one thing that would have excited me back in the teenage days would
have been the Mindstorms and the like. I used to dream of getting the
C64 interface for my fischertechnik
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischertechnik ), but that was too
expensive. The fischertechnik stuff still exists at my mum's place, I
wonder if Lucie is ever going to play with that -- she likes her Duplo,
so I have my hopes up.

Peter

[Steven Herod]

All the computer books at my school were for C64 and BASIC.

When my parents bought the first family computer I tried running BASIC
from the DOS command line and not understanding why I'd type

c:>10 print 'hello'

and get

"Bad command or filename"

Ah, those were the days.

[Patrick Wilkes]

> It sort of a little experiment, what is the earliest a child can
> actually make meaningful use of a computer?    Is there such a thing
> as 'Toddler Linux' ?

There is the Sugar GUI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_(GUI)),
which is the interface for the One Laptop Per Child project. From the
article - "Unlike more traditional desktop environments, it does not
use a "desktop" metaphor and only focuses on one task at a time."

Looks like it's easy to install on Linux.

Patrick

[Christian Catchpole]

Yeah, once you open quotes, cursor and special keys become printable.
That was so you could put the special characters into your PRINT
statements. i remember that we didn't have a joystick on the C64 at
school. but since the keyboard matrix and joystick ports are one in
the same, we could play Ghettoblaster by pressing down about 7 keys in
various combinations to activate the 4 directions and fire.

My 3 year old can fully operate the set top box, DVD player and TV.
My wife commented on how even she didn't know how to change DVD
languages.

She can also start VMware on the mac, select the Windows image and
start Dora's Lost City Adventure. I didn't teach specifically, her
she just watched me do it.

On Feb 22, 10:15 am, Peter Becker <peter.becker...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think I was 13 or 14 when I got my C64 and I was utterly confused
> about the way it behaved sometimes, printing funny characters instead of
> cursor keys and the like. I actually returned it since it was broken,
> only to learn later that that is the way it behaves -- if I recall
> correctly it uses some funky representations for non-printable
> characters like the cursor movements while a quotation is in place. Or
> something like that.
>
> I've seen quite a few newer projects in the spirit of Logo. This one

> looks very cool:http://scratch.mit.edu/-- but I haven't really spend

> too much time investigating since I suspect that at the time Lucie can
> handle Tuxpaint things might have changed :-)
>
> The one thing that would have excited me back in the teenage days would
> have been the Mindstorms and the like. I used to dream of getting the
> C64 interface for my fischertechnik

> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischertechnik), but that was too

[Hamlet D'Arcy]

I'm not sure if this thread is looking for serious replies or not.

Here is my experience with my 3.5 year old daughter.

1. TuxPaint is a must have program. Stella started using it at 2.5
years of age and still plays it. It is a paint program designed for
children. Builds good mouse skills, has fun noises and animation.

2. Potato Guy - I'm not sure why this is fun, but Stella likes it:
http://www.dotmon.com/hwyl_a_sbri/subalbum_30.html

3. Tux Type and Tux of Math Command - These are missile command style
games that teach the keyboard. This can provide about 15 minutes of
playtime before boredom sets in (that's pretty good).

All of these so far ship with the EEEPC from Asus. Finally! A human
whose hands actually fit the darned thing.

4. pbskids.org has a lot of Flash games that are great. Caillou and
SuperWhy are among the best. However, Stella wasn't capable of playing
these until she was about 3.5 years old.

5. Wii - Stella is capable of playing a few minutes of World of Goo
(puzzle game) unsupervised. Wii sports is a hit of course, and Raving
Rabbits 2 & Cooking Mama are good. For all wii games though, you
really need to guide a child through using it. For some reason she
doesn't want to do it alone. Also, most games are way too hard.

6. Eclipse + Groovy - Seriously, Stella and I wrote our first program
while on the airplane earlier this week. The reason Groovy is
important is because of support for multiline strings (with the triple
quotes). I did a
println """

"""
and then let her write a letter to mom in the space. Clicking Run to
see the output was fun. We also paired on a quick rhyming script to
create derivations of her name that we could laugh at. Actually trying
to program was pretty tough though.

I tried with Logo but she is really uninterested. Logo is _not_ a
language for toddlers. However, I was writing a toddler accessible
version of Logo in my spare time this Fall. If anyone seriously wants
to know more about an F# based Logo interpreter and IDE disguised as a
Paint program for kids then let me know. My daughter played with it
quite a bit and it's not as bad as you'd think.

--
Hamlet D'Arcy