Kids and computers any Pro advice from parents

[jpod]

Hi I have two nephews 6 and 8 playing Minecraft on my sisters laptop, phone, tablet..........

They get an our a day and there is friction over the laptop.

I want them to learn some PC skills and use them for good things (websites, video, photography, projects in balance with gaming!

I don't know anything about Raspberry Pis but I just installed the OS for a cousin. I do know how to build PCs and I have two GTX 560 Ti's on my shelf. So is a Raspberry Pi each? Or a PC each...or one of each?

My question is this - is it worth mucking about with Raspberry Pi's at 6 and 8 years or should they go straight to PCs?

 

[a1ex2001]

more important than the hardware is what you are going to do with it, give them a PC and they will just play minecraft on it and there is a version for Pi so they will likely just play that. You need to spend much more time thinking about how you are going to get them interested in using the technology for other things than you do worrying about the hardware. ie if you give them a Pi how will you get the to take up the challenge of programming it etc

 

[PlacidCasual]

@ jpod My kids are still too young for this but your nephews might soon be old enough https://diy.org/ it's an American website think of it like an online boy scouts association. I stumbled across it years ago and have been waiting for my kids to reach an age where I can try it with them. It started out quite camping, nature focussed but has really branched out and they definitely have some IT, electronics things there so might suit your need.

 

[KillBoY_UK]

Hi I have two nephews 6 and 8 playing Minecraft on my sisters laptop, phone, tablet..........

They get an our a day and there is friction over the laptop.

I want them to learn some PC skills and use them for good things (websites, video, photography, projects in balance with gaming!

I don't know anything about Raspberry Pis but I just installed the OS for a cousin. I do know how to build PCs and I have two GTX 560 Ti's on my shelf. So is a Raspberry Pi each? Or a PC each...or one of each?

My question is this - is it worth mucking about with Raspberry Pi's at 6 and 8 years or should they go straight to PCs?

I would recommend getting a Kano, as it and its coding tutorials are designed for kids (or idiots like me) and some of which are minecraft based

https://kano.me/

 

[valve90210]

@ jpod My kids are still too young for this but your nephews might soon be old enough https://diy.org/ it's an American website think of it like an online boy scouts association. I stumbled across it years ago and have been waiting for my kids to reach an age where I can try it with them. It started out quite camping, nature focussed but has really branched out and they definitely have some IT, electronics things there so might suit your need.

Glad you posted this, looks like something I can make use of for my little man, he's 6 and I'd love to get him doing more, different activities!

 

[[FnG]magnolia]

Without being that parent, an hour a day for a 6 year old on Minecraft sounds like a lot of gaming screen time. How does the 8 year old manage that, plus school, plus homework?

 

[jpod]

Many thanks so far great ideas - having a look at the site and Kano.

Magnolia, my nephews made up their own PC rules which they can recite on request - homework first, not on sunny days and no more than 1 hour per day. Monday to Thursday they do sports and don't get a lot of PC time following school, homework and tea and their bath and story, it is usually on Friday night, rainy weekends or when they/Mum/Dad/me, their uncle, have run out of steam and we need to entertain them.

They are passionate about electronic devices. The theme of my post is for them to learn valuable IT stuff.

So far there is a choice between Raspberry Pi, Kano and PC's. At 6 and 8 what do you think they should be tinkering with in order to enable to fix my PC when they are older!

 

[Weazle]

Have a look into the Lego Mindstorms or Lego Boost Creative sets, they're designed to be both a practical and programming set which may ease them into programming a little easier. I think it may be a little more fun when building something and then making it react to what they program.

 

[Haggisman]

The lego boost is awesome (although I think I've spent more time building/programming it than my 6 year old) only issue is you need a compatible tablet

 

[Deleted member 66701]

Get them on Photoshop and WordPress - my 10 and 11 year old sons have cranked out some astonishing websites.

 

[jpod]

They love Lego I will look into that - great idea. I have seen Mindstorm but not Boost. Thanks for this. That would be right up their street.

Amigafan - that is great to hear and what an achievement! Well done your sons. That is exactly what I want them to get into.

 

[ArchAnGeL]

Minecraft will lead to searching you tube for how to's etc which is not on its own a bad thing. That said, there's a lot of annoying and strangely addictive (to kids) content out there, and a lot of it unsuitable for younger ages. As we all know there is a lot of other terrible content on you tube for impressionable minds as well. As they get older, peer pressure is likely to lead to exposure to this anyway so you can old hope to teach them to question it rather than take it as fact.

 

[jpod]

Hi I like Minecraft cos it is a bit more intelligent...virtual lego....surprisingly they are not into looking thing up on youtube....they have the excellent Mojang books which are very good value..............they are not using redstone yet.........just exploring and building things. They made a trampoline and a light beam with sea glass.....caught a fish.....killing villagers!

I am not a MC expert - just had a little look.

But yes the internet is full of inappropriate stuff!

 

[terley]

Have a look into the Lego Mindstorms or Lego Boost Creative sets, they're designed to be both a practical and programming set which may ease them into programming a little easier. I think it may be a little more fun when building something and then making it react to what they program.

This.

Lego mind-storms is a really cool way to get in to programming, unfortunatley i had to learn through pure java rather than the application, regardless we had good fun with it last year

 

[james.miller]

My eldest has a pi, he's 7. He uses it mostly for youtube and Google play music. He does occasional play around with minecraft on it, but he's be the first to tell you it's really basic compared to pocket edition or java. Minecraft pi is meant to be used in conjunction with the programming tools that come with raspbian.

 

[jpod]

Been researching robots and liking the Boost and Mindstorm. This is great for parentals - turns Windows PCs off with no tears, no cajoling necessary! I made two shortcuts on my desktop.......

Open short cut type the command shutdown -s -t 3600

The time is seconds shuts the PC off in 1 hour. It gives a 2 minute warning which is handy for the little tiddlers.

To create a short cut to abort it do the same with shutdown -a

May need to hide that one!

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/put-a-shutdown-timer-on-your-windows-desktop-with-this-command/

 

[phonemonkey]

more important than the hardware is what you are going to do with it, give them a PC and they will just play minecraft on it and there is a version for Pi so they will likely just play that. You need to spend much more time thinking about how you are going to get them interested in using the technology for other things than you do worrying about the hardware. ie if you give them a Pi how will you get the to take up the challenge of programming it etc

Nothing wrong with playing. They're 6 and 8 years old, that's how they learn. You're right to a certain extent though, at least some of the games they play can/should have an educational focus and as the adults in charge its up to us to determine how much of their time is spent being productive and how much of it is 'down time'.

I used to teach swimming and for my 6 year old beginners every lesson was a story. We'd be frog's to learn breast stroke legs, hippos to blow bubbles underwater, we'd escape from wizards if i wanted them to concentrate on keeping the splash to min when kicking their legs etc. Even so, there was always a few mins at the end for just fun. After all kids who enjoy swimming/IT/whatever will be far more engaged in learning.

Kids aren't little adults and kids are not simply an economic unit that needs to be productive every waking hour to have value.

 

[chroniclard]

Using microsoft family the kids get allocated screen time per day. Once thats used up they are done. They can then earn further time by helping out. I can also shut them off if they are playing up.

 

[jpod]

Ta Lard

Couldn't agree more with Alex and Phonemonkey............it is a challenge getting them interested in non-gaming IT, kids play is essential, and tasks must leave kids enthusiastic about learning more. There lies the rub.

I hate it when mums and dads approach everything as an opportunity for learning.

However, there are scientific studies which suggest that too much electronic device gaming too early rewires the way developing children derive pleasure. I take that seriously.

And many mums and dads are not tech savy to know how to prevent over-logging!

 

[AHarvey]

Go Raspi.

They've got a laptop already for playing Minecraft so use their love of the game to broaden their knowledge.

Minecraft Pi allows coding to be used with Python and they can interact and alter the Minecraft world via code. Once they are good at his, there are hundreds if not thousands of Python tutorials out there, such as "Python for kids".

You've used something they love to introduce something new, then they've got the tools to expand on that something new freely available online.