Computers for children

From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis_at_freegate.com>
Date: Tue Jan 12 18:50:28 1999

At 02:34 PM 1/12/99 -0800, Fred wrote:
>This'll probably offend many.

Perhaps not.

>I think that an 8 year old would be best off with a machine with CD-ROM
>capability. And a good size stack of reference disks, including
>Encyclopedia Brittanica, atlases, and several collections of literature.

This I have, a full up multimedia capable machine with large quantities of
reference material. We've got both the paper WorldBook and the CD version
(fewer pictures!) and we've done our share of research on the web using
this tool. But now she wants to know "how it works" and "how can I make it
do Y" kinds of things.

The challenge of developing a curriculum for her is isolating the concepts.
Teaching programming without teaching file systems etc. The PDP-8 is
wonderful for demonstrating the lower level concepts of "this signal turns
on this this other thing when which causes this action." But that low a
level can get in the way when learning more generic programming concepts.
(And I surely wouldn't use it for teaching her Subroutines! :-)

As someone else pointed out the C64's advantage is its "instant on"
capability. The best analogy I can come up with is a whiteboard with
execution access. Type in a bubble sort and see it in action. It also has
rudimentary color graphics capability so there are interesting places to
explore that keep the learning "fresh."

One of the more fun things I did was to demonstrate programming to her
first grade class. We wrote a "Towers of Hanoi" solver by giving each child
an "instruction" which had a picture and words for what that child was to
do (things like "move the top disk on the left to the middle pole, "if the
disk on the right pole is bigger, skip the next child", etc). Then we
"programmed" the computer by lining up the children and had them walk up to
the towers, execute their instruction and then get back in line. It was fun
because none of them could solve it on their own, and yet they all thought
their individual instructions were "dopey." But when we had the program
right, the problem "solved" itself. Lots of fun.

>For programming, I would recommend BASIC, TO START WITH, followed by an
>introduction to C and assembly as soon as basic principles are understood.

I agree, although PASCAL has its place here as well. I _wish_ I had
something like a C64 that had the original Oak (now called Java) in it. One
of the things that got deleted was a sort of "immediate" mode that let you
write code "outside" of any object in the environment and that became the
"application." When FreeGate goes public and I'm a zillionaire I'll build
that box :-)

>In the PC world, that would call for 386SX with VGA video, and DOS 3.10
>or above. (preferably 6.2x) I would also recommend Windoze Notepad and
>Windoze Write for word processing.

The interesting thing here is that she can easily distinguish between the
"teaching" computer and the "tool" computer. I've got a Win95 system I
built out of my scrap pile that provides all the tools. Its the lab
computers that I'm working on.

>Once the kid has gotten thoroughly into it, THEN maybe a birthday present
>of a set of Linux disks?

In my case FreeBSD disks simply because I'm very familiar with the
development of that system and know most of the design decisions that went
into doing things various ways. (I get a lot of 'but why do it _that_ way
dad?' kinds of questions.)

>How much more than a C64 would a generic 386 AT cost? Do you need some
>of us to contribute some parts?

My current plan is:
        Topic Lab Equipment
        Computer Fundamentals PDP-8 with some custom I/O hardware.
        Programming Fundamentals I C64 + TV
        Introduction to Robotics Lego Mindstorms
        Programming Fundamentals FreeBSD system
        Introduction to Graphics I C64 + TV
        Introduction to Graphics II FreeBSD system with custom graphics card

If we get through all of this we'd probably pick one of operating systems,
language design, or databases to do next.

One of the interesting thing I've discovered about children is that their
lack of preconcieved notions allows them to get right to the material. Same
with spoken languages, my three year old is picking up spanish from a live
in college student. I asked her how she knew what to say in spanish and her
answer was appropriately "That's how Marta would have said it."

--Chuck
Received on Tue Jan 12 1999 - 18:50:28 GMT