Great OS for babies?
I'm on a quest to find a good free OS to put on a beater laptop for the baby (15 months, obsessed with computers!) to play with. Sugar is a little too old for her, I think. I described it in my podcast some time ago -- easy UI, lots of cool sounds, BabySmash-style keyboard mappings, easy access to bookmarked, downloaded YouTube videos, etc.
Qimo looks like it's in the right ballpark -- anyone else got a good "BabyBuntu?"
Qimo (Thanks, @jonobarel!)
Qimo is a desktop operating system designed for kids. Based on the open source Ubuntu Linux desktop, Qimo comes pre-installed with educational games for children aged 3 and up. Qimo's interface has been designed to be intuitive and easy to use, providing large icons for all installed games, so that even the youngest users have no trouble selecting the activity they want.
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At that age, it may not actually be necessary that the machine do anything. I remember a friend's son being pretty well amused by pounding on the keyboard of an old (and not plugged in) machine put down at a convenient level for him. I'm not convinced kids have evolved _that_ much in two decades...
At age 3, I did okay with a mac classic. I have a few faint memories of mac paint and a flight sim (Microsoft?)
you may want to try a netbook remix -- these tend to replace the desktop with a top layer of icons that are easier to navigate. There is also edubuntu as an alternative to Qimo. However Qimo may be your best bet
I grew up on Rogue, on SCO Unix. Loved that game! I think I was around 7 or 8 years old?
I've heard that doctors are saying no TV before the age of 3, based on possible links to autism. Maybe look into this first, just in case.
To complete that thought, perhaps the best option is not to shoot for a kid-proof OS, but instead give the kid an old PC, install a real OS with some apps, and burn the disk image to a DVD for easy re-imaging if the kid gets in too much trouble.
Since there's so little real risk, might as well let 'em play with the real thing. That's a real educational experience.
I remember being 4 or 5 and having DOS. My dad write scripts so all I had to do to play games was write simple words and press enter. My favorite was the grover and big bird sesame street games. Qimo looks cool for the super young though.
Insert reference to the Young Ladies' Illustrated Primer here.
Though I did pretty well with Windows 3.1 when I was little. One popular story with my family is how I turned off the color, then turned it back on after my parents panicked, not knowing that I had been tinkering.
iPhone. Expensive, but intuitive and easy to learn. My 2 year old had it mastered after the first try, and it's amazing the complex stuff she can do.
Once a common toy was the bead frame based on the abacus. Haven't seen one in years.
Not long ago a real abacus could be found in many stores. No longer. I'm about to order some online for my nephews. The benefit is it gives one a strong number sense whereas an electronic calculator is garbage in gospel out. Long ago when calculators were expensive I balanced the checkbook using an abacus. It deserves a look.
It looks like a Mac OS anyway. Why not just go Apple?
/not a Mac user, but I can still appreciate
15 months old? Read real books, not screens. Play with Play-Doh, not the mouse.
Yeah, exposure to tech early is good, yada yada yada, but let kids figure out the real world before they get sucked in to an imaginary one.
http://www.qimo4kids.com/ is a prettier website with donation links and a lot more information.
I can see why they call their OS Quimo, but wouldn't 'Nuit' be more PC??
I think "Qimo" is an alternate Romanization of "chimo," an Inuktitut greeting, not a shortened version of "Eskimo."
Get an EEE and install a touch screen.
I have to agree. While it is great to have a "stimulating environment," it is possible to take stimulation too far, and a growing body of evidence (some of it admittedly soft, and some somewhat speculative) suggests that we may be taking it way too far in the modern post-industrial cultures.
I urge Cory -- and anyone else with kids -- to look into exposing young children to technology very, very carefully. We have made a fetish out of "development," and counter-intuitively are very possibly harming that development in deep and alarming ways.
I totally confirm
#12 posted by four12, May 12, 2009 12:48 PM
As a one-week old father I think a fifteen-month needs to get really clear about their own bodies and their immediate tactile surroundings before diving into a virtual world. This is way way too early.
Mo in Berlin
Granted I don't have kids so I don't know what they are capable of, but I would doubt that a window manager like that would be easy enough for a 15 month old baby navigate.
What I do think would work better is something similar to the Net Book Remix interface that Ubuntu puts out.
Just have all the icons for the applications the child can run right there all big like so they can easily choose what to play.
@Johnnyb - I like your derivation of the name; chimo isn't a word with which I was previously familiar.
It is, however, one step further from their son's name :)
Honestly, at 15 mos there's better things for the baby to play with than a PC.
>15 months, obsessed with computers!
Just as, I'm sure, that every major athlete's son is "obsessed with [SPORT]".
Well, as fun as it is to be lectured about what a rotten parent I am, allow me to affirm that Poesy has independently, without any urging on our part, begun to grab our laptops from our hands, side tables, etc, and plays with them for as long as we'll let her. This has nothing to do with your imaginary scenario in which a pushy parent has decided that her development demands technology.
For all of you criticizing Cory- eff off.
Computers have buttons which make magical images appear. Kids love that. He's not erring, he's just allowing his kid to do what she naturally exhibits interest in. I was operating a computer well before the age of five, and that was back before any neat, baby-safe OSes.
And how is the virtual world any less valuable than the tactile one? Funny for you to say that, folks, since you're entering information in keyboards right now.
No doubt Poe gets all the tactile play she needs. Just because Cory makes a post about OSes for children and mentions that she's obsessed with PCs at 15 mos doesn't mean that she's sitting like a little miniature Cory-zombie with coffee at the desk all day.
Jeez... I wish I could make major parental suggestions without having once met the man or his kid. That must take talent.
Go play outside.
What a great post, Cory! And how cool to see you in the NYT this morning. Though, I'm still not sure where I stand on copyright law... but anyway! We will be sure to check out the different operating systems you mention here. My 3 year old does really well with the pull down menus and desktop icons on some relatively recent version of Windows. But... one MAJOR caveat.... you have to reconfigure the mouse so that the right click acts as the left click would. We tried a couple of single click mice, but nothing works so well as reconfiguring the right click.
This is a link to a design game we've really enjoyed called Kaleidodraw. It's like a fractalized version of the MacPaint programs we grew up on. http://www.protozone.net/kaleidodraw.html
We got it at the Children's Museum in San Antonio. The museum had a touchscreen, but the (properly configured) mouse works just as well.
15 months is in no way too young begin playing with desktop design! Or games! Especially the educational ones... Have fun!
KidPix was entertaining too. Like Photoshop for kids, with interesting little things that you could put on the page to make sounds, animations, etcetera. And when she's older- Terrapin Logo is a must. It's based off LISP.
BTW, in all my spittle-spewing rage I forgot to mention that I like this post. Sometimes I am tempted to put a child-proof-OS on this PC for my grandparent's use. Like Jitterbug is to a cell phone.
Cory, whatever you tell people you let your kid do .. you will get many nay sayers ... I felt bad the first time I let my kiddo watch TV .. but this is a different day and age ...
Thanks for bringing something like a BabyBuntu to my attention .. I will try if that works on my old 1999 tangerine iBook ... kiddo (age 4) masters things like youtube well ... but I am just to afraid he will actually damage the laptop ...
Yeah ... our kids will be geeknerdsboingunicorns
seriously...your kids are getting all hot and heavy wanting their own computer because that's more than likely all they see mom & dad doing...pressing keys on their little light-up magic box.
Take the kid outside. There used to be these things called Libraries, Museums, Zoos, Parks, etc. I hear tell that there might be a few left...enjoy them with your children while you can.
I agree with Cory on this one. I have a toddler and I have no problem with exposing him to tech, I worry more about adds on websites then anything else.
@#12
The web is the "real" world and I nor anyone else can really imagine the great things these kids are going to create with it.
I never worried about a special OS, just a user account that was kid-specific. Customise the desktop yourself with what you want her to access/what she likes best.
Currently, my girl (4) is using an (already old!) Asus 2G running linux, customized to run paint apps, office, calculator (obsessed with that one) and firefox; firefox further customized with adblock etc and set up to stick to a whitelist of about 20 sites that keep her totally happy. (custom home page with links to all -- also, home page is on my server so we can access "her" internet from any computer.)
I doubt you'll have much luck getting 15 month old to use a computer - there are computer like toys for them to use, but a laptop or desktop seems like overkill.
My 18 month old knows a few signs (google baby sign) one one of them is the sign for sleep. When she sees my laptop, she does the sign for sleep - because my backgroup/wallpaper pic is one I took on our last trip to the zoo.... of a sleeping owl... she thinks of my laptop as a sleeping owl picture display machine
http://www.medicalnewsbase.com/child-health-news/experts-still-recommend-no-television-under-the-age-of-2/
"TV exposure in infants has been associated with increased risk of obesity, attention problems, and decreased sleep quality," adds Michael Rich, MD, MPH, the pediatrician who directs the Center on Media and Child Health and contributing author on this study and the current AAP Guidelines. "Parents need to understand that infants and toddlers do not learn or benefit in any way from viewing TV at an early age."
Most pediatricians say no screen time (tv or computer) before age 2. It may seem strict, but can anyone argue a good reason not to wait for a child to be more than 2? Even then limit time to less than 2 hours a day.
Don't sweat it too much, Cory. I've been told in BB forums that my children are certain to grow up homicidal monsters and the world would be a better place if I had been murdered by my own parents without procreating. It wasn't a joke, and it didn't get disemvoweled, and you know what? My kids are just fine. :)
More on-topic, I wish there was a toddler-keys program for ubuntu I could give you... and watch out for power buttons at floor level... and if you have windows or a mac handy, check out baby-safe and alpha-baby.
And again, no doubt Cory has heard / seen all this information before. And still chosen to raise Poesy the way he wishes to. I'm not obese and I've been using the computer forever. My brother's obese and all he does is watch television.
This post isn't requesting parental advice, folks. It's requesting OS advice. Especially to those of you who are parents- have you never gotten told that something you are doing with your child in public is incorrect and you should stop it now? It's infuriating, isn't it?
And to those of you who aren't parents and who have never dealt with small children in any form whatsoever- well, I'll be presenting my thesis on String Theory tomorrow night if you'd like to critique. I have no experience, but I'm certain I can tell those scientists what they're doing wrong.
You should take a look at Kiddix (www.kiddix-computing.com). As far as I know they have the only OS that has really been built for kids. I've been using it at my home for a while now and my kids (4 and 7) love it. I'm not sure how a 15 month old would like it, but there are plenty of interesting things to click on and it includes many fun child games and educational software. The developers over at Kiddix are usually really responsive to questions if you had any.
I call shenanigans. By the time that I was three, all I ever wanted to do was read. My mother was constantly trying to shoehorn me out the door, but to no avail. Didn't want to play sports, didn't want to talk to other kids. Spent my whole childhood and adolescence inside reading. And yet, I'm a healthy, physically active, well-traveled, normally sociable adult. The notion that children should all be outside instead of reading for pleasure was quite normal then. I think that technology has simply taken the place of the paperback novel as the Pied Piper that leads children astray.
As to the autism question, I stayed inside and read because I'm an introvert. It's likely that children with yet-undiagnosed autism spectrum disorders choose different play activities than other children. If a child is terrified of loud noises, wind, crowds, etc., forcing them out into that environment is not doing them any developmental favors.
My boys (3&5) were enertained by the stuff in edubuntu which although simple has real developmental value.
They quickly became more interested in the stuff on Cbeebies/CBBC site which is more appealing. There's a lot of great stuff there.
It's important to keep the sessions quite short and try and match games and activities to appropriate ages. This can be a challenge with eager young gamers who just want to try everything. Avoid sessions near bedtime is one I've learned the hard way.
Using the computer with your kids is a wonderful opportunity to work together to discover 'how it works', explore games, cause and effect, problem solving etc. All those who commented "play outside" or similar should come back when they actually have young children of their own. It's not either/or. My boys have access to DVD's, on demand TV, Wii and laptops but they are, by choice, always playing in the garden when I come home.
I found that this system comes with a pretty age-appropriate OS for my 18-month-old nephew.
As to the autism question
As to the autism question, it's actually complete BS. There is no actual evidence that television is the X-factor in autism. The statistical study that did that was a throwdown of graphs showing rainy weather, cable installation, and autism rates charts. :)
Long time, no see, Antinous. Yet again I find out I am more like you than I expected! My mom encouraged the reading, though, they were scared I would get hit by a stray soccerball if I was outside and explode, maybe.
But unless you live in scandinavia (i'm guessing) the sun does go down at some point, and it is advisable to bring the children in from the garden. At which point books, art, building, cooking, watching shows and yes, learning games on the computer are all fair game. At least they are in this house. Then again, we go to bed really late so there are many many hours of inside play time.
Tenn you bring up some great points about how it feels to be told the "right way" to parent. How did you know? We had a babysitter today who had many many ideas on what Wolfie needed to be learning and how best he could be learning it. So strange! Got a little lecture on how only children have a hard time with certain things and how she could address it. I cringe to think of the presumptuous advice I've offered to other parents over the years. Wish I could take it all back now! Oh well!
Ha! The only thing better would be if it was a gum-snapping fourteen year old with tobacco stains on her teeth. Tell me it was.
No, but she did have to reschedule from yesterday because she had an previous engagement to get her tattoo retouched. :) Anyway, we are going to try again on Friday with a looser, more child-directed agenda. He doesn't respond very well to, here look at this cool activity that I came up with for you that highlights my organizational skills. He is all about the self directed learning. Right now he's looking at a dead butterfly through a microscope. And he doesn't want you to show him how to use it, he'll figure it out himself, thank you very much.
I understand where people are trying to come from on overforced development, but I definitely think it's misplaced in this case.
Trying to force children to read before the age of 5 (maybe late 4s in some cases) is an example of counterproductive attempts to push development. The mind just isn't ready for reading yet, and all you'll really teach them to do is memorize some books and repeat them back to you with the books in their hands.
But learning about computers, the idea that symbols represent programs, the cause and effect of pushing a button to make things happen? Right up an infant's alley.
That said, I don't think the kid reaching for the keyboards means he/she wants to play with the computer as much as they just want to imitate what they see adults doing.
There is no right or wrong time to learn to read, if you ask me. Some people learn at age 3 or 5 or 10 and maybe we should allow for that flexibility. Learning to read is a long long process. I don't think I really learned how to do it until I was in my 20's.
Very, very few people, if any, actually learn to read at 3. The mind simply isn't ready for it.
First let me introduce myself as a graduate student in internet studies, researching the current media panic about social networking 'rewiring childrens' minds'. My undergraduate degree is Medicine, so I can accurately and critically read neurological papers.
@33 ReverendDrJice
If you read the article you linked to, you will find that it says
"In this study, TV viewing in itself did not have measurable effects on cognition,” adds Schmidt. “TV viewing is perhaps best viewed as a marker for a host of other environmental and familial influences, which may themselves be detrimental to cognitive development.” This is not the only study that finds TV in itself is neither harmful nor beneficial.
@5, the 'TV causes autism' myth, promoted by the International Campaign Against Television (and others) is based on a Cornell study by some guys qualified in management and economics, not neuroscience. That idea has been debunked, over and over. Autism involves genes that are variably expressed.
Ideas like these are part of a continuum of panics occurring whenever new media technology is adopted by the youth of the day, dating all the way back to the invention of writing. Plato had a lot to say about how bad writing would be for the memory, and what it would do to the mind. I don't have time to list all the panics, and all the projected social and psychological calamities, but the printing press is in there, so are novels, theatre, the railroad, movies, comics, rock 'n roll, video games, and now of course computers, online gaming and social networking.
Cory, go for it. Children's minds develop in relation to their environment, and they copy what the people around them do. Even though that OS is designed for 3yo and up, Poesy might surprise you. When my son was little, we didn't have computers (or TV) but he was very interested in our record player. I decided he needed his own sound machine, to keep him from damaging mine. For his first birthday, I got him a tape recorder designed for 6 year olds. He loved it, and could use it perfectly within a day.
Trying to force children to read before the age of 5 (maybe late 4s in some cases) is an example of counterproductive attempts to push development. The mind just isn't ready for reading yet, and all you'll really teach them to do is memorize some books and repeat them back to you with the books in their hands.
At the risk of tooting my own horn and flashing my (non-existent) Mensa badge...
Anecdotal evidence is worthless, I know, but I learned to read at the age of two, without any direction or forced development whatsoever (unless you count children's programming).
The first time my parents realized I could 'read', it was because my granddad was looking for a street sign and I pointed directly at it and said, "Red!" (as in red lane.) Then, when I realized it got me attention, I started pointing out every sign I could and reading it.
It was, as far as I can surmise, simple pattern recognition. Obviously, compound words were beyond me, but I could read the stop signs, the simple street names, and when a kid's book was placed in front of me, that too. As long as I'd been introduced to the word before.
Of course my pronunciation has and always will be terrible, because I learned phonics quite a bit after learning to read (age of six or so), but if I -did- memorize language, it was to a degree that I never forget words and can generally figure out what they mean by remembering similar words. And because I suppose I did learn by memorization, I only need to see the shape of the word and go. I read faster than anyone I have ever met, because I just flash from word to word.
There is no right age to read, only the age at which you are capable. Tuition is necessary- if the child shows interest when you try before the age of five, teach them. If they don't, wait until they're five or so and start then with bribery.
I may be getting in over my depth, but I was taught that there is a difference between being able to repeat words associated with patterns and formal reading.
Is there? Could be. There's also a difference between taking road A and road B, but if road B gets you there quicker and with better results, well then, let them use it.
In response to the "Keep your kids off computers" crowd, as mentioned above, my sister and I were both raised with abundant access to computers since before either of us can remember (well under age 3). We're now both in our early-to-mid 20s.
While there have probably been drawbacks (neither of us are terribly athletic or social, although how much of that is directly attributable is unclear), there have also been benefits.
Endless hours at the computer gave me ample opportunity to teach myself about computers and programming. At age 11, I was writing simple programs to solve homework projects for math class (they threw us complex problems once a week, which we were given the whole of the week to solve). I was the first to undertake a Java programming independent study course at my (1200 student) highschool in the late nineties. As an adult, I have managed to create a solid career for myself as a programmer, despite not having a college degree.
My sister, meanwhile, is a skilled, largely self-taught digital artist.
Getting a head start with computers can really pay off in the long run. Whether or not it's worth the cost may be debatable -- but it's not just wasted time.
I know I wouldn't change a thing about my life. I'm well equipped to do my job, and I enjoy it thoroughly.
Save your money on the OS and hardware: save it in case you need it to pay for the tens of thousands of dollars you may end up spending on an autism therapist.
Two points, based on my experience with my 10 year old autistic nephew:
First, apart from the autism issue, why would anyone want to encourage a child to the least stimulation possible? Children's bodies are barely under their control, and even at 3 or 4 there is a huge distance to go to master running, throwing, catching, climbing, drawing, petting animals, riding a bike, stacking blocks, climbing stairs... the list goes on forever. Displacing these activities is a very, very real possibility. Of course the kid's fascinated by computers; they are addictive to anyone reading BoingBoing, why not to your kid? But that means they're addictive, not good for them. If they liked the smell of your cigarette smoke, is the answer to ask what the best tobacco for children is? I didn't think so.
Second: whether or not technology played a causal role in the development of my nephew's autism, it CERTAINLY played a major role in delaying the diagnosis of it. The reasons for this should be obvious, but to spell it out, using technology, besides its anti-physical emphasis that reduces the human to a pair of eyes and a set of fingers, or more reductively two thumbs, also produces and introspective set of behaviours. It is much harder to compare behaviours of kids whose acitivities tend to exclude other kids, communication, summary of experiences, interactive physical play. But, when you're really busy, it's very tempting to prop them up with the game or the console. You tend to measure your kid's performance and development by the standards of what he or she (but if they're autistic, probably he) do best at. I'm against standardization of measuring behaviour, but it has a role.
There is no doubt that autism has a major manifestation in the autistic child's need to connect to their body. Repetitive motion, rocking, humming, singing, repeated phrases are all part of this. Essentially encouraging your kid to spend time in a deprivation chamber where their physical self is overwhelmed by their cognitive and small motor facilities, almost useless at that level of development is just wrong. And, communication and eye contact is a major issue for many autistics. Again, what will a really good OS for kids do for that?
I wonder how much thought people give this, but the generation raising kids now seems more disconnected from the underlying realities of the role of physical play in human development than any before it, imagining that the role of children is to mimic the behaviours of adults, with games that mimic the conditions of many adults' wage slavery or drudgery. If you're not ready to understand your children as what they are, you're also going to have a hard time with the tantrums, bedwetting and other behaviours that are appropriate to their age but not yours.
Omnivore, it is so not a trade-off. Didn't you read what I said about playing outside until the sun goes down then coming in for the computer and book time? I'm sure there are many kids that don't get enough physical play. But most kids find a way to run off their energy, whether it is bouncing up and down on the couch or climbing on the table and diving onto the bed. Running up and down the sidewalk, check. Daily. Looking for bugs, seeds, flowers, rocks. Chasing the cats. There really is enough time in the day to everything, and we do, every day. Every 14 hour stretch of one on one play, day after day. after. day. Two hours of computer time is not a problem in the grand scheme of things. If our kids learn to read and write on the computer, maybe they will be able to navigate their own learning through the many wikis of the world. :)
Any fifteen month old is going to try to grab computers and other electronics--that's just toddler behavior. Fifteen months is really too young to become and independent computer "user." She will not be able to navigate any OS and make independent selections of activities she wants to do. Not only can't she read, but she would have trouble with spoken instructions, like, "Which game do you want to play now?" She is still at the age of being fascinated with the buttons and the lights. It is probably a better plan to do computer time together, so that you can make sure she doesn't destroy the computer, and also to prevent her from eating the keys and choking. A kid-friendly OS is cute, but really all you need is a software application to boot up that will entertain her. At fifteen months, babies are still quite farsighted, so large, colorful images will be more interesting to her, and she probably will have trouble tracking the cursor on the screen up close. In fact, she might do better with a desktop where she can sit back from the screen.
I allowed my son to watch TV and play with computers from around that age, and so far he is a very intelligent, active, and popular child--no autism, no behavior problems, no ADD. He still likes computers and computer games a lot, though I do kick him out of the house at regular intervals. I believe these correlations and associations are merely that--that screen time is not causative of any kind of problem. Rather, it maybe be a symptom or a marker of a child that is not developing normally to spend more time in front of the screen.
@Wolfiesma
Given all that, and taking it at face value, why on earth would you want an OS or a computer for your kid, then? Really, the world is the world and there isn't in fact time for everything. Sometimes when you have a fifteen month old the world can look very small, and it might seem that way. This changes, and you may look back on the two hours of computer time * 5 days a week * 52 weeks a year with a different perspective that you have now.
As it changes, you bring along the things established in previous stages. A child "obsessed" (not my term) with computers will see such a thing in terms of their own gratification. This does not translate to their well being or progress or benefit.
What does a computer OS do? It presents a symbolic world for manipulation for task-oriented purposes. Fifteen month olds are not operating in task-oriented worlds, that being the antithesis of creative and imaginative thinking. It's a glorified telegraph key when it comes to pediatric cognitive development, and the techno-optimism about learning to read and write on a computer and using wikis to master the world already sounds rather naive and quaint.
Computers are not actually what the marketing copy from Apple and Dell and MS say: they aren't liberating tools: they're classic systems like lathes and jacquard looms and autopilots and IMAX movies: they embody skills, abstracted from others, to devalue them in the skilled, and make them available to the unskilled. They are, in and of themselves avoidance mechanisms for skills development, and I say this as a Rails and iPhone and robotics programmer, an ex 3D animator, and a long list of other computer related toil. I can't write shell commands to run my Mac at the rate I can click icons and open files, but I don't need to, since I have to OS, goes the thinking.
How could this possibly relate to the fifteen month old mind? If, by some chance your fifteen month old is actually able to use a computer, if they actually have developed this task-oriented abstract thinking about manipulating symbolic objects, why not teach them chess instead? At least then the same skills are developed with a more open-ended set of possibilities for actual cognitive development. Like all task-oriented systems that abstract skill, computers, and particularly OS's contain underlying assumptions that they enforce about the world. If these limits are that far beyond the scope of your kid, then their use of the computer is by definition trivial. But their imaginative play is not, and there is never enough imaginative play, so it turns out that there isn't enough time in the day to displace the joy of childhood with banal, over-determined, task-oriented activities, regardless of the pretty picture of the "eskimo".
If their use is not, then is it actually beneficial to expose them to a world so rife with assumptions? At least with chess they have access to a vital and perpetually developing community that is both historical and progressive in its development and exploration of thinking through a system of abstract representations. Same is true of Go and perhaps other games and systems.
But not an OS.
BamBam is a keyboard mashing app for kids written in Python:
http://code.google.com/p/bambam/
There's a similar MacOS program called AlphaBaby:
http://alphababy.sourceforge.net/
I think it would be a blast to hack BamBam so that every 140 characters or after 1 min. of inactivity, it posts the characters in the buffer to Twitter.
One more point there, Omnivore. You mention tantrums and I wanted to share the way I deal with it. Basically, whenever any little thing goes wrong, I pick him up and hold him. I guess a lot of people would say that is spoiling, but I think it helps the kids feel more secure. Rather than a time-out, I do a time-in which means giving him a hug or holding him, even laying down on the pillows to just take some comfort and feel better. I try to disconnect the tantrum state by flooding his senses with love, and tv.
Chess and Go of course are dwarfed by the possibilities of music. Should have used that example.
Not two yet?
Then you haven't actually experienced a tantrum.
But it sounds like you'll do fine if you stick to love and holding and being there. We didn't do the time-out thing. What we discovered was that you found out more about why the little guy was in a state if you stuck with him through the process. Either directly or indirectly, you started to learn what initiated and ended those moments. Invaluable.
I may be getting in over my depth, but I was taught that there is a difference between being able to repeat words associated with patterns and formal reading.
I learnt the letter P because of 'patterns'. In Australia Probationary Drivers have to display a big red P plate in their windows. The next letter was L (learner driver, less common).
I've always had lots of books and have always read a lot. I was playing Hugo's House of Horrors by the age of four (starting by simply sitting on my sisters lap telling her what to do whilst she helped read the screens, progressing to me playing by myself and just asking for help spelling words) which helped me both learn to read better and spell words (old school game where you had to type out your actions, "Pick up the punmpkin", "Break the Pumpkin" - "The Pumpkin breaks open to reveal a key", etc, etc).
So whilst I initially started learning letters because of familiar patterns (P plates, L plates) I certainly could at least read basic words before I was 4 and read basic paragraphs by the age of 5. I also believe that computers or more specifically Hugo's House of Horrors and X-Tree Gold made a huge impact at how fast I learnt to read and also probably explain why I work in IT now.
Omnivore,
What I'm describing with the computer relates to a 3 year old child, not this hypothetical 15-month-old baby you keep talking about. Obviously, the 15th month old is not going to use pull down menus, but my 3 year old surprised me with that little skill just yesterday and I was impressed, but not surprised.
That Kalaidodraw program I mentioned would be very visually interesting to a 15th month old, though of course they might not be ready to operate the mouse themselves at that age. A three year old wouldn't have any trouble operating the program that is virtually identical to putting paint to paper. We do alot with paint and paper, too. It is just one more tool.
I can't believe I'm explaining myself on BoingBoing about the potential of virtual games and learning. If you can't see the potential by now... don't worry. In time, you'll see! I have no doubt that software/education companies will be able to put together online learning packages for every age so that children and parents can stay home, skipping the commute to school both ways, playing educational games and learning the basic skills they need. I think kids would do better if they learned from home. But that's just me.
The argument that kids need to be programming the games themselves and that everything else is passive consumption has never been very persuasive. Reading and writing and graphic design are skills just as important as programming, and can be taught and learned online.
One of the best things about online learning tools is that they are available anytime, like at night when kids and parents tend to be together. After a long day of doing whatever you do, a ready supply of educational media will be a godsend. Don't snub your nose at those cute little imaginary, trademarked friends that are practically free for the taking.
Every day I'm tasked with playing Ernie, the Count and Kitty Cat. At any moment I could be asked to jump into a character and force a hardy rendition of let's count the light fixtures or what have you. It's okay, but it can get a little old. I don't begrudge him his interest in any of the little letter wielding gnomes of public tv and internet fame. I'm thrilled that he gets a chance to interact with them. It affords me the priceless gift of conversing with all of you good people. Cheers.
When I was 2 (in 1983) I could type things like:
Load "Jumpman" ,8,1
into our Commodore 64 to play the games I wanted to play. We had a few games for learning where letters were on the keyboard (letters fell from the sky and you had to type them before they hit the ground) and Faye the Math Lady. I also enjoyed books, the outdoors, playing with friends, etc. I highly recommend computers for kids. Just make sure you give your kid games that take some thought and that take clunky motor skills into account (like a Commodore 64 keyboard and joystick!) -- as you should with any book or toy or friend you expose them to!
http://lifehacker.com/395647/baby-smash-kid+proofs-your-computer
Looks like someone else has mentioned this kind of program, though.
I'm kind of uncomfortable with people citing autism, behaviour problems, and ADD as a direct result of childhood contact with computers. I hope you don't encounter a disabled person and think "That one spent WAY too much time with the commodore 64 when he was two." Way too refrigerator mother for my tastes.
@Wolfiesma
That hypothetical 15 month old is the original subject of the post.
"I'm on a quest to find a good free OS to put on a beater laptop for the baby (15 months, obsessed with computers!) to play with."
My original post was directed not at you but in reaction to Cory's post, quoted above. Did you assume that a posting here, once you'd posted, would be a response to you? If so, you're mistaken.
That said, I home-schooled my daughter (16) and my son (13 1/2) for ten years, until they elected to go to public school, where they're now thriving. During that period, which ended just a few years ago, I became very resourceful in finding, assessing and at times using online learning resources for both of them. And my conclusion, based on literally thousands of hours of time spent in these activities and comparing it to what they learned without these resources: they suck. They teach little, and what they teach is finite, bound by the assumptions that come from people creating limited systems of limited resources with limited objectives and with limited interest in any rigorous assessment of how they stack up against other methods. What it primarily did was prepare them for more electronic media. But learning in other media prepared them for any number of situations, in which they could be creative, imaginative and take joy in learning. And the immediacy of digital media taught another thing: impatience with the pace of other media and approaches, making them less accessible.
You have to understand that at that time, I was a real evangelist for online everything, I had been one of the first people I knew to make their living coding for the web, a programmer, and a designer who primarily worked in electronic media. I had every reason to think that it would be great, better, the future. The only problem was, as soon as their objectives (learning) became more important than my pre-formed beliefs, I had to be honest and admit that time spent with electronic media of all sorts might have fascinated or diverted, but they didn't do what other methods did. Hence my rant about OSes.
More importantly, our approach to home schooling was actually de-schooling: Ivan Ilyich's book, if you haven't yet read it. I presume you have.
Our objective was to assemble resources, allow independent inquiry at the level appropriate to the individual kid, not emphasize outcomes and encourage the formation of individual interests and the pleasure of trying and learning. It was on all these criteria that digital media came so radically and usually pathetically short. It's on these criteria that the quest for a kid's OS seems so, to be blunt, pathetic.
I could use a little less patronization, but that's also the quotidian reassurance of the online world for whom the centrality of these media is a badge of their alienation from the physicality of childhood, and the unmediated. I feel that I've made an adequate effort, adapted myself to the demands of this approach and learned enough in the process that while I can certainly learn from someone starting out on the long path of raising a kid, I also remember the illusions and misguided and doctrinaire views that I came into the arena with, and many of those are part of what I recognize in what you've been saying. Part of that doctrinaire attitude is the self-evidential qualities you assume about the things you advocate for. You don't know how all that turns out. You haven't got the perspective of how something learned online influences what comes 3 or 10 years later. You don't know the value of these things. So I don't know why you say that they're great. Perhaps they amuse you, or satisfy your sense of what learning ought to look like. That's not suprprising: many such resources exist for those reasons.
That said, it's a journey that you take once, the greatest in your life, and the one that, at least for me was the first time I could recognize the awesome and humbling understanding that my own love of my own prejudices would have crucial effects in another person's life, in a way that even they would never be able to quantify or fully understand. As Leonard Cohen says, that means you listen to what you have to say, and when you realize that you're really repeating a slogan you heard elsewhere, throw it away.
Hey, you homeschooled your kids for ten years, my hat's off to you. More and more that seems like the best option for us and our many quirky ways.
I was just being silly with the hypothetical baby talk. Of course I remember the original post... even if I did sort of lose myself in it for a bit!
That's the mark of good writing, I think, is making it universal so we do lose ourselves in it. It's also the mark of losing one's mind. It's a fine line!
I take a little issue with the insinuation that I'm mindlessly parroting some slogan I've heard somewhere else that confirms my own prejudice. That's just not true. I don't ascribe to any philosophy except my own, and its not called prejudice, its called instinct.
I won't admit to screen media being any sort of stealer of childhood. That is just so silly. The whole family shared some laughs for a few minutes this afternoon over a short episode of the Pink Panther. The Mancini soundtrack. The wonderful 1960's era graphics. Magnifique! There is nothing wrong with taking some visual nourishment from the tv or the computer. I need to look at art, in its many forms for several hours every day just to feel normal. I wouldn't expect my child to be so different.
I could do a lot of things better. Getting myself to bed a little earlier would probably be a good start! Oh well! Thanks for the great discussion!
Omni'
Perhaps you are so against these thing because you went too far with them yourself. As you say, all the online leaning resources you found suck.. but maybe learning at home, removed from your peers, is what really sucks.
I think it very likely that there is a healthy balance, as espoused by many on this thread (Cory, Tenn, Wolfiesma, Pam, Ito', others), and that really you are going to have to divorce the actual 'right thing' from your personal experience of lots of myriad rights and wrongs.
Frankly your ideas on abstraction and removal-from-the-fact are called "progress". We could all be going out to hunt our dinner tonight, but we have offloaded that to farmers. Yes, I could walk into town, but offloading that task onto a bus lets me have more time to do more important things. Yes I could interact with my computer through assembly, or shift individual bits as I navigated through options, but again - I have more important things to do, like use the computer to quickly assemble a set of media or write a paper.
Your comments have some weight in the common-sense department, but you just come off sounding like Judgey McBitter, to me.
It's only normal for kids to want to do what they see their parents do all day.
I bet you within three years cory doctorow will have the sprog join Boing Boing as a contributor, writing about technology from a kid's point of view.
Cory Doctorow @23 allow me to affirm that Poesy has independently, without any urging on our part, begun to grab our laptops from our hands, side tables, etc, and plays with them for as long as we'll let her.
Sorry if anybody else already brought this up. This really sounds a lot like a case of learning by imitation to me. When young children see you doing something (like typing at the computer) often, they get the idea that this is an important thing to do, and imitate it, even if they don't understand what they're doing or why. Parents are the most important people in a child's life at that age, so naturally your child wants to be like you and do what you do.
My daughter also loved to play with the keyboard when she was a baby, because she saw us doing it all the time. She didn't understand that we using the computer to do something as abstract as write or communicate. As far as she knew, our behavior consisted of tapping on those buttons with funny shapes on them. She was perfectly happy to bang away on a keyboard that wasn't connected to anything.
Now she's 5 and has her first real computer. I installed Edubuntu, which also comes with educational games. We've customized the GUI a little bit and added shortcuts to things she uses often. She doesn't read or write yet, but she still manages to use it pretty well. I hadn't previously heard of Qimo, but now I'm thinking about trying it.
FritzfromLondon -- she won't be techblogging, she'll be discussing copyrights on Goodnight Moon.
Hands down the best OS for a toddler is an iPod touch. Play music, play video, play games, and use the iPod touch as a controller for the media center. My 2.5 yo loves my iPod touch.
Well, everyone is tired now, so off to bed. Me included. We've had a long day saving the world. ;)
@Wolfiesma
The slogan thing: not at all trying to say that it's mindless. Anyone who hasn't checked out Leonard Cohen's interview on CBC with Jian Ghomeshi should do so: Cohen is a kind of wonder when it comes to understanding how subtle all of our utterances are, and how hard it is to say something original: the point I was making was that we all have to work so hard to free ourselves from our preconceptions. Certainly people often say things mindlessly, but when it comes to our kids, we have such a mirror reflecting us back to ourselves, we have to be really mindful of why we think and advocate for the things we do. Nothing personal meant there, and I enjoyed the debate too.
@Arkizzle:
A couple of things. First, you're making some really really huge assumptions about me and about what homeschooling looks like. To give you a glimpse: it's not isolated or isolating. One small example: We started a music class that ran each wednesday: up to 40 kids attended, along with from 10 to 20 musicians: rockers, members of the symphony, reggae players, jazz guys, african drummers, brazilian samba players, opera singers. Dozens of parents met and talked, of home schoolers and school-schoolers. It's a persistent myth that home schooling is some kind of Unabomber strategy. It's not, get informed about it.
One of the reasons people sometimes homeschool is to break the isolation across age lines that schools impose. It's this isolation that convinces people that they are part of a "generation". Marketers, politicians, the military, religions, the press, all know what the value of convincing young people that things are somehow different for them, that some change in the material conditions is earthshattering. They use these ideas for their purposes.
This is a very useful strategy for ignoring the objections, points of view and reasoned arguments of others. Those who disagree are trying to ignore progress. It's amusing to look back at the times I've make these arguments, and see how it all turned out. Not infrequently, the conclusions that I've come to through a series of disillusionments were the things that I dismissed at the time for the reasons cited.
A shining example is 9/11, which "changed everything". Well, yes and no. It didn't change the need to preserve principles of justice, privacy and democracy, but the isolationism of that period produced the idea that exactly those principles should be weakened, because it this was all different. These ideas, which now seem derisory to people as they regain their sanity through a series of disillusionments, are not different from the "but this is different" attitude people have towards the transformations of networked and computing technology. Not as different as you think, and the risks aren't being borne by you, but by your children.
In the end, my challenge has been for someone to define a demonstrable benefit to the child of the inclusion of technology in the ways sought by Cory. Most benefits cited have been to the ego or assumptions of the parent. In the end, what 99.9% of what people do with technology can be learned by a reasonably intelligent 10 year old in a few days of playing with it themselves or with a parent or friend. Growing up with it offers no demonstrable benefit, apart from liking it more and being more impatient with other media.
Or am I wrong? Provide some examples and convince me.
I have to chime in on this one since I'm doing NIH research on this.
We've had kids with disabilities using computers for functional, meaningful activities as young as 8 months. (You read that right: 8 months.) Kids with Down syndrome and cerebral palsy can be reading well above grade level by kindergarten (particularly important since they risk being behind in so many ways later on).
It matters what you have available to the child to do on the computer.
Scan a book on a flatbed printer. Put it into OOo Impress. Make clickable objects in the pictures that do interesting things. Record the text in your own voice. Bang! You've got a book they can read independently.
Set up a word processor with text-to-speech. As the child types, it reads letter sounds and proto-words out loud. Cool! You're exploring letter-sound correspondences.
The toughest thing is the input device. The mouse is highly unintuitive. We use a touch-screen.
my 3 year old grandson kills his mother's Vista laptop... he's done it three times so far and each time has required a complete re-install from the factory discs... (Boy am I glad i made those the first day...)
we think he closes the lid and then re-opens it while the OS is still trying to hibernate... whatever it is, Vista hates it...
I'm going to have to dedicate a laptop for the grandkids running Edubuntu, but looking at this, Qimo seems a far easier interface...
ps. I used to let my daughters play on my Spectrum running various kid orientated programs and the worst they could do was having to reload the program in from cassette
PCs are too fragile, especially ones running windows...
Tenn mentioned it way up there, but I just want to say that KidPix is still around and still rocks.
I remember my first Mac. My 1.5 year old quickly figured out if he moved the mouse, the little arrow would move on the screen. Then he figured out if he pressed the mouse button down while the arrow was on a picture on the screen, he could move it around with the arrow. Finally, he figured out that if he dragged the picture over to the trash can, it would disappear. Bye-bye, System Folder. True dat! :D
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