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Doudou Linux – For children from 2 to 12 years old

doudoulinux.org

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Re: Doudou Linux – For children from 2 to 12 years old

#71

Post by arclyte »

Walf wrote: post #66
hollander wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Doudou Linux – For children from 2 to 12 years old

#72

Post by hrabago »

urlwolf wrote: post #68

I have a soon-to-be-4. Is touchscreen a must? I'm not sure he will be very good with mice or trackpads.

I have a 4 yr old. They adapt well.

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.

Re: Doudou Linux – For children from 2 to 12 years old

#73

Post by pen2l »

willvarfar wrote: post #18

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 - tha…

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.

Re: Doudou Linux – For children from 2 to 12 years old

#75

Post by sdegutis »

spraak wrote: post #74

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?

Re: Doudou Linux – For children from 2 to 12 years old

#76

Post by drzaiusapelord »

vanderZwan wrote: post #32
willvarfar wrote: post #18

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 - tha…

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…

>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.

Re: Doudou Linux – For children from 2 to 12 years old

#77

Post by jonbarker »

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.

Re: Doudou Linux – For children from 2 to 12 years old

#78

Post by agentgt »

vanderZwan wrote: post #32
willvarfar wrote: post #18

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 - tha…

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…

Speaking of Smalltalk an alternative is to run Squeak and/or one if its subprojects: EToys, Scratch.

I haven't tried them in a while but they are designed for kids to explore and have high ceilings.

Scratch particularly looks pretty cool.

Re: Doudou Linux – For children from 2 to 12 years old

#79

Post by alan_cx »

jonbarker wrote: post #77

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.

Re: Doudou Linux – For children from 2 to 12 years old

#80

Post by tyfon »

spraak wrote: post #74

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 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.

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