Pc's for preschoolers

I just got done testing galpon minino -deigo in a dell vostro laptop I set up for a preschool my cousin teaches at.
he is impressed with all they can do with the system and excited to have it.
The distro is designed with both the teacher and student in mind, It has a lot of education and child developments apps as well as monitoring and lesson customizing software for the teacher or parent.
the vostro is an old dual core/64 bit processor with 4 gig of ram and a 250 gig sata drive.
this distro runs on it like its arse was on fire. and the kids went nuts over it.

We plan on getting some more equipment set up with it for the preschool and local library

5 Likes

You should do a write up on this so people can have a better idea of how it all works.

2 Likes

based on debian stable i believe and doesn’t have the usual installer but once you set up the partitions it has a system transfer to hard drive.
Its jam packed with lots of software including emulators, (dos and wine) and is capable of vm as well.
education packages such as g-compris math-blasters, matching games , association games, puzzles, and many more.
it networks easily including broadcom hardware, works with touchscreen technology,
the os boasts an incredible amount of software and synaptic and software installer gives you access to many more options.
the os is designed for children pre-school to 10 years of age
but can be configured for middle and high school age students later.
so this os can easily evolve.
and the game list is awesome (granted mostly kids games but still a metric butt-load of games)
like pingu! (if youve ever played lemmings, your right at home here)
maryo (mario brothers clone) and so on.
full suite of office software, dvd authoring, sound systems, archiving, backup, utilties, monitoring and reporting software for student development.
just so much to list.

to a typical user the os will seem childish and may not hold much interest for them. But to a parent of young children and primary school educators this provides a lot of quality tools for education (and best of all Its free!)

I am impressed with it because I do substitute teach once in a while.
the live dvd is nearly 4 gig in size to start with so its a decent sized download.

the primary language is spanish but you can choose english at boot of the live dvd, If you install it the first time you run the browser you have to select the translate page then it should be ok after that.

heres a link to it.
https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=minino

Please don’t do that. Kidss can have computers at middle school.

2 Likes

I used Apple IIe’s in grade school. What exactly is wrong with this? There is no escaping them, they are omnipresent and probably will be forever at this point.

1 Like

A: The internet is a shithole

B: Computer Addicition is real (just ask me)

C: We have a massive problem with youth becoming anti social right now because they can go online almost everywhere and ignore people.

I didn’t have a computer till late middle school and I was allowed 1 emulator to play snes games and a flight simulator. Otherwise it was only for work. I REALLY don’t think kids should have computers.

Best thing to do at a school for little kids is like all in ones. They can’t break anything, and toddlers to 6 yrs old have a habit of smashing things around. But honestly, give them a calculator and leave it there.

Sorry for the offshoot, but if you can avoid it don’t give kids computers. Its a horrible idea.

1 Like

It looks as if it is puppy based or inspired. But distrowatch says that it is based off of debian. Hmmm.

with todays education system they want children to be able to count to 100 and be able to read simple sentences when they finish kindergarten.
unlike schooling we had (before computers)
now we have the tools to get them prepared why would you not want a child to have the knowledge that’s going to let them get ahead?
when they learn problem solving and association at an early age they excel at everything else.

here in the US our education system is far behind in student performance due to frivolities and universal lack of resources!
do we have mandatory courses in robotics like china does? (the answer is NO)
how is our performance compared to a lot of different countries?
we owe it to our children to give them better chances than we had, not so much to rely on technology but to ingrain the crucial skills and the desire to learn and discover without holding their hands all through their school years.

and as far as giving them calculators absolutely not!
the math blaster game forces them to solve the problems in their head rapidly (no calculator involved) and by the way these do work whether the system is online or not
as a parent or teacher You have control of the system and can limit access to the web.

3 Likes

and to ask a pointed question
How much of that addiction is related to gaming?

I do games a little but a majority of my computer time is data processing and forum management (of a private training forum at my former place of work) and technical support for the machinery there.

please understand I am not slamming gamers but there is a lot more out there that needs talented people (programmers and annalists alike)
there is an incredible amount of talent here on this forum and so much could be done with that talent.

I just retired from an industrial job and Ive seen a frightening amount of technical and computer system integration and rapid technological upgrading being done
requiring specialized training at breakneck speeds.
I was highly skilled at the job and at training new people.
can you see my concern for education and use-able skills?
you have to be able to solve most of the problems in your head and don’t have a lot of time for a calculator.

could be a debian respin of a puppy distro.

1 Like

Preschool is too young. Children should be outside and playing and working on motor skills.

There’s absolutely 0 evidence to show that a child that goes to something like nature preschool is any less prepared than a child in preschool.

maybe so but my cousin already said they are better behaved and eager to learn after just 1 week!
they are not spending the entire day on the computer ( he has it set up on the projector and screen) and they participate by answering the questions and problems. and he takes regular (15 minutes every hour) breaks and recess
and one thing they don’t learn is the nasty habit of being bullies!

and as far as kids becoming antisocial!
you would be surprised how fast an antisocial attitude will end when a laptop or phone shatters against a brick wall!

you have to be strict as a parent because any kid from 2 to 18 needs to know what is unacceptable.
after 18 they answer for their own mistakes.

and to answer another question both my boys are fireman and one works in the oil fields and the other is a hospital admin.
they both echo my sentiments exactly.

1 Like

You also would be surprised at how quickly people will turn against you when you try to solve a problem by making an even bigger one.

1 Like

As a 30+yo who had access to a computer/online world in preschool (whatever shape or form), arguably, this is possibly not the fault of computers. IMHO, not running away from your problems and learning how to empathize with humans and maintain and value relationships afk is something you need to learn without becoming a ludite.

3 Likes

exactly!
kids becoming antisocial is not the hardware’s fault, prime example
when my nephews and their friends became belligerent and displayed antisocial attitudes it was centred around interruptions their halo and call of duty games, Not time on a computer.
besides television has been around a lot longer than computers and the same is said about it as well.
technology is a wonderful tool when its properly used and monitored by the parents and teachers,
it is up to them to decide what a child watches and not to rely on technology to be a babysitter!

now how about we get back on topic instead of this becoming a bashing match?
the originality of my post was about the software and the positive response i got with the kids.
so review the software if you wish and post your impressions of it and try to keep it on topic.

I’m not blaming the computer for it, I’m just saying its a leech.

And tbh there wasn’t stuff like what we’d call social networks nowadays back then when you were little.

Children are more ludite-able nowadays. And I see it all the time, both at schools, and just out in public.

I get those saying it’s too early for preschoolers to use PC, but I think when there’s proper control, it’ll be beneficial. Especially when the teachers also teach them early on how long should they be spending time on gadgets. So kudos, Gnuuser!

Looks a lot easier to setup than most education based distributions were 10 years ago. Also nice to see that a sane person was able to define sane defaults for the education software, setting things up around 10 years or more ago didn’t feel that far removed from just writing the program.

Math Blaster was one of the first games I played in school back in the late 80’s early 90’s, though learning to do algebra in my head ended up backfiring.

Guided instruction on using a computer for preschoolers is IMO a really good idea especially when it encourages responsible usage. I don’t really see preschoolers having to deal with the issue in the first place in a structured environment but there are search engines setup for kids that only include educational content.

When it comes down to it I wouldn’t have received a decent education if I wasn’t into computers in the first place.

I think it is important to teach kids that devices are useful machines in the first place which might become playgrounds also from time to time.
PCs are just the tool for that. These days the first impression of technology many kids get is playing addictive but relatively dumb games on their parents (or their own) phones or tablets. On a PC on the other hand, there aren’t only some quality child games (beside also bad ones) but also the opportunity to show them around in productivity tools. I remember learning the basics of spreadsheets by categorizing my toy cars by color or brand and rendering pie charts. A couple of years later in middle school some fellow students still had a hard time browsing through filesystems because they didn’t have much access to desktop PCs besides from school.
Whether we like it or not, basic computer skills are just as important as holding a pencil and basic math.

To the distro at hand: I like how they have opted for a slightly reduced but traditional desktop approach in contrast to other child oriented enviroments like SoaS.

talk to your kids about computers before someone else does…

1 Like

my point exactly! Soas is an ok distro but just a bit too simple!
really parents need to get involved a whole lot more in the early years and they need to learn how to use the system to protect their kids without going overboard.
so many people cant do any more than play cards or surf the net.
There is so much more they need to learn
the biggest hurdle is getting them to admit they need to learn a lot more!