Kids and computers

[fragment]

My flatmate's seven year-old boy is starting to get interested in my computer. He's after more games - as if he doesn't already have heaps more games & toys than I had at his age, grumble grumble. Does anyone here have any recommendations for how to set up a PC (windows) to be safe and fun for kids? I'm guessing some kind of net nanny software would be advisable (free, preferably), and whether there's any good educational-but-fun websites for kids, and whether there's anything else that I should look into.

[Dingfod]

My 3-1/2 year old grandson plays with some of the games on Sesame Street's website. He also knows how to maneuver through the LEGO bible stories site, Brick Testament (http://www.thebricktestament.com/).

[fragment]

:lol:

This kid likes LEGO, but I think his mother may not want him exposed to that site!

[Dingfod]

Dylan doesn't understand what he's seeing, he thinks the images are funny. And they are.

For instance, he doesn't realize they're depicting Lot's daughter having sex with him in this one.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/genesis/the_seduction_of_lot/gn19_33b.jpg

[fragment]

To be honest I might not have figured that one out right away either... but the religious content would probably be as much of a no-no as the sexual. Greek myth would probably go down OK, though. Well, the less-explicit bits, anyway.

[Julie]

Net nanny is a good thing, set it up so that the kid can only go to sites you put in.

Fun game sites are easy to find, most of his favorite TV shows will have games about them, I know the canadian websites for the cartoon games

YTV.com - Kids' TV site with Games, Videos, Shows and Contests (www.YTV.ca)
TELETOON / TÉLÉTOON (www.teletoon.com)
Treehouse TV - Preschool kids shows, online games, activities and articles (www.treehousetv.ca)
my kids love webkins.com, you buy the stuffed animal for ~$10 and it gets you a year on their site

Remember netnanny is good (free? aren't all programs free?) its suprisingly easy to find innapropreate content even at 7...


*edit wtf I didnt put the urls inside url tags...and it did it automatically...and added a bunch of info! totally weird! Stupid french in my post now!

[fragment]

Thanks, Julie! Do you know where I can get net nanny from? (Too lazy to google right now).

And the url thing is this feature (http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12921)...

[Julie]

any bit torrent serach will have net nanny....I hear...

I hear a person can get it off of isoHunt - World's largest BitTorrent and P2P search engine (www.isohunt.com) and that it only takes a few min to download, I'm told.

[Uthgar the Brazen]

Make him play a 'Silent Hill' game late at night, alone, with the lights turned off and the sound turned up.

You won't have to worry about having to set up a computer-for-the-kid budget for awhile after that. :wink:

[Julie]

Heh if he's anything like mine he'd trun into a huge computer geek from that....

I was up at 2am once playing half life in the dark with the sound on low...I had no idea that my son had woken up to come find out what the noise was and had stood behind me for a good 20-30 min.....

It was after that that I started hearing "Mom is it my turn yet? Mom can I play your games? Mom Mom Mom Mom Mom Mom"

[Kyuss Apollo]

Here (http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/coloring_book/java_cb/cb_sun.html&edu=high) is an online coloring book of the solar system. The pictures are down-loadable too for offline coloring fun! :rainbow:

[mindbender]

I'm not sure kids that age should be allowed online unsupervised.

[Dingfod]

Who said they were unsupervised?

[viscousmemories]

Thanks, Julie! Do you know where I can get net nanny from? (Too lazy to google right now)
If you don't want to steal it :glare: you can get it for $39.99 at netnanny.com.

[fragment]

I'm not sure kids that age should be allowed online unsupervised.
At the moment I'm thinking that there should be no problems if access is restricted to reputable websites that we check out and approve of. Do you think that would be insufficient protection?

Thanks, Julie! Do you know where I can get net nanny from? (Too lazy to google right now)
If you don't want to steal it :glare: you can get it for $39.99 at netnanny.com.
My first choice is to do neither. Are there no free/open source utilities that offer equivalent functionality?

[Julie]

I havn't found any free ones. I got netnanny at the grocery store for free when I bought other software.

This one is free but I dont know how good it is (http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Network_and_Internet/Misc__Web_Browser_Tools/KiddieWeb.html)

[fragment]

Thanks, I'll check that out.

[JoeP]

There's a very well-regarded free site/content filter package call DansGuardian, but I'm only aware of it running on firewalls.
eta: specifically, on Linux/UNIX boxes.

So the next question would be: is a separate firewall box a good idea? Does this family have other internetted PCs?

[fragment]

Nah, it's just my box and the ADSL router. Good idea, though, I wouldn't have considered that option.

[JoeP]

A Linux-based firewall like SmoothWall: free
DansGuardian: free
A box to run it on with two Ethernet cards (nothing else special): whatever you can pick up.

[Kyuss Apollo]

I'm not sure kids that age should be allowed online unsupervised.


Yah, even with the netnanny or whatever software, the computer should still be in the general living area and adults should be present, not necessarily watching every single second but looking over every once in a while. Also, install some "approved" games and disconnect from the internet when there can be no adults present.

Important for kids of all ages.

Even big kids like us :wink:

[Julie]

All that and TALk to the child about why all this is being done.

My 8 year old son knows why he is so closely supervised on the internet, its for his own safety.....


And after all these years I've finally gotten my own mother to realise that teh interwebs is dangerous and shes finally starting to understand just what my sister and I used to do on it (Her first clue should have been us grabbing the car keys saying "Bye Mom we're off to meet a bunch of people off the internet!")

[fragment]

All good ideas, but I should have made my situation clearer. These are just some people I'm living with, and I'm not likely to be doing so past the end of the year. The mother is a student and unable to pay for any of this, and I'm unwilling to shell out given the situation. I work from home, so I'm not going to move my PC out of my office into a public part of the house.

I was thinking that a bit of access could be both fun and educational for the child, and that a restrictive enough approach to which sites he could access would be sufficient. You guys are saying not, so I might just can the idea. Maybe see if there's some OK free games or educational stuff to download sometime (suggestions, anyone?) and kill the net side of things entirely.

[lisarea]

This might be worth looking into. (http://sourceforge.net/projects/kid-safe)

It's no longer supported, but still available for download.

I can't vouch for it personally, but the idea of a Live CD is a really good one, I'd think. It'd keep the kid from messing up your stuff, and he'd still have some stuff to mess around with. Supposedly, it filters internet access, points them to kid-oriented stuff from the browser, and includes games and edumacational stuff.

Also: Free.

[fragment]

Thanks for the input, all of you. I've never had to think much about this before, it's good to get your advice.