What could be the best way to introduce the world of computers to a kid, let’s say of 6 years old, so that he learns to handle it like a toy and stops dreading it like some esoteric, arcane and recondite machine from some eldritch, enigmatic, cryptic and phantasmal world ?
We started with Win10 e-waste, and started with Ubuntu Mate. Java Minecraft was the trick. Got them motivated, reading, doing math. Then wanting to install mods taught them about the filesystem and such. Age 4 and 6, they both got on board and are now top tier computer users. Giving them access to gimp, inkscape, and tinkercad got them using it for art and 3d modelling to get involved in the 3d printer, and they use blockbench to make custom models…which you configure with json in a resource pack. They’re now 9 and 11 and are motivated to play on computers.
Heheh that was my oldest a couple years ago. He’s 9 now but I let him use one of my laptops when he was like 7 to play Minecraft, and it eventually became “his” laptop.
He’s also using Tumbleweed.
He learned how to do all sorts of Minecraft console commands mostly “on his own” (as in, without my guidance, he saw some of the stuff streamers were doing and I explained what it was printed out a little cheat sheet for him and set him off on his own to mess with it. I haven’t taught him any Linux shell (yet), but he is getting pretty good at typing and keyboard shortcuts.
I don’t much care for the streamers. Especially a lot of the Minecraft streamers that pander to kids (cough Mikey and JJ). I don’t allow them in the house anymore. But I’m glad he got some inspiration out of it at least.
Linkzey is a really good family friendly streamer.