In the last article in the “Warming up Children to Use Linux” series, we now take a different approach with other resources, such as some articles, ebooks and parental controls.
Introduction
Setting up a Linux desktop system and installing applications is not enough to make a successful switch to Linux for your children. You need a few additional things to feel comfortable and go all the way to freeing them from a Microsoft only future.
Parental Controls
Linux offers in-depth parental controls, as well as excellent solutions in all other areas. You can find DNS configuration programs such as DansGuardian, but these type of solutions are for parents who have a certian level of technical knowledge. There are also easier solutions, such as kid-safe browsers, like KidZui.
KidZui is a free web browser for children, which provides a very high level of control to the parents. It has both free and commercial releases, the latter one on subscription basis. The subscription offers detailed reports of the children’s Internet usage (the free version offers weekly reports), websites visited and an excellent report on guiding the parents on what the kids’ interests by their online activity. The kids are able to create their online content, share them with friends, get help on their homework with “Homework Helper” and decorate their own Zui with clothes and accessories. The program gives the kids the fun they want both through the program itself and online.
Parents can configure the program as their liking, even set it so that the children are not able to close KidZui and open another web browser. Or, parents can set KidZui to start automatically when the computer boots to desktop so kids can use it as an “environment” rather than a browser.
Ebooks and Audiobooks
Children today are “Digital Natives” as put by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser in Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives. They will want to have ebooks and readers in their digital library. Of course, they will want to have some audiobooks, which they can send to their media players and listen them on-the-go. For the parents, TuxMobil is a great place to visit and save as a bookmark for their children to download royalty-free texts and ebooks. When your kid can sync “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” to his iPod in Linux, you will eliminate one of the Linux-transition barriers.
Articles
A lifetime is not long enough to experience everything in life, so we develop a survival strategy to learn from others’ experiences. Why not read about others parents’ experiences while they were trying to switch their children to Linux? Here are two great articles, which you will find invaluable:
Software Resources
SchoolForge is a directory that contains Free Open Source Software (FOSS) that includes educational software. For each application on site, the platform(s) it runs on, such as Linux, Windows or Mac is clearly marked. For kid and family-friendly games, keep MyGameCompany in your bookmarks, which screens the game titles for violence, adult sexuality and foul language and distributes the games that can pass through this screening process. Finally, as you will be providing technical support for your kids (at least at first; they will learn how to fix things in a very short time), it’s better to have a remote access program that supports Linux. YuuGuu is free and Linux friendly and you can set it up pretty quickly. If you are a tech-savvy parent, you can consider VNC.
Programming
If you think your children are interested in programming, or if you want to see what they feel about programming and don’t know where to start, check this resource:
Conclusion
Keep this in mind, and consider joining the conversation with other parents in “The Linux for Kids Experiment” page. All of this will go a long way to helping your kids switch to Linux.
Finally, two Bright Hub tips for you:
- Keep the latest version of WINE installed (you can do that from your distribution’s package manager), so that if your kids ask you why they can’t play a game that they have played together with their friends, you have the possibility of installing it on their computers. If it doesn’t work with WINE, you may want to try Cedega.
- If you have more than one child using the same computer, open up different accounts for each one and disable them from seeing each other’s files to ensure their own privacy.
Please share your experience below, in the comments section.