I guess this is a general question to all of you at the Tek. I have a nephew whos 6 years old, and I'm raising him with my mother(his mother is kind of out of the picture, long story.) Anyways, he has recently been wanting to play minecraft, and I figure this may be an opportunity to teach him the ways of the beard. Do any of you have any suggestions/wise words to help me on my quest? I'm planning on buying him a desktop(Kabini, nothing fancy) for Christmas to get him started, but I'm worried that it wont be as affective as I want it to be.
Well, a quick tip... I would say in the "tech community"/"tech business" and the like, the term "Neckbeard" is can be taken as a derogatory term. So let's refrain from tossing that around. Now that is out of the way...
I would say that 6 is a little young for really understanding where the child's interests are. I am not a parent, but I'm an uncle of 20 children myself, so being able to watch many different parenting and/or nurturing I think its great to try to tune in on their interests. Present them with options and what the world has to offer and let them go where their little hearts and minds take them... within reason.
Getting a 6 year old a desktop is a little daunting. Minecraft is a great game for younger kids and I would even say for some as young as 6. This is where the parenting comes in (I know you are an uncle).
I guess what I'm getting at is that I'm a little hesitant to address the question. 6 could be way too young for desktop computing and even minecraft... but what do I know. You are the one that has to judge what he is capable of understanding and what he might actually enjoy. That might be why others haven't commented on this one yet.
Either way, good luck and come back and let us know how things are going.
My daughter is five and loves spending time on the computer with me. We killed a few hours today with some indie games from steam.
We've started mucking about with Scratch and have also downloaded and played about with some SmallBasic games. Nothing too much at the moment, but the plan is to start scanning in some of her drawings and using them as backgrounds in an Asteroids clone.
She now understands basic concepts such as the 'computer' is in the tower and not the screen etc. If you want a kid to pick up interfaces such as mouse, trackpad and touch screen installing angry birds on different devices works wonders!