Jumat, 15 Februari 2008

Teach Your Little Ones with Google Apps

By Scott Horne - Thu, 01/03/2008 - 11:31am.

My seven year old son wants to program online games badly.

After playing Pokemon online he got the notion that he wanted to make something like that. He pestered me for days about setting him up so he could make cool games where his friends could checkout his games. I struggled for a few days trying to find a solution for him. He’s seven so there has to be some reward for the initial work he does to keep his interest. You can’t just throw a seven year old in the deep end and let him flounder.

What could I do to get a kid that age making web pages that were interesting quickly? I could set him up on my server but I didn’t want to do that just yet. The thought of installing Dreamweaver on his box teaching him how to use it didn’t seem like fun. Naturally after thinking about it, it came down to finding a service with good online editor. Google Page Creator of course popped into my head and the rest was history.We signed him up for Google Apps for families. It was very painless. I bought him his domain for $10 via Google Checkout and that was it. I had him signed in, added as an admin, and having him customize his domains start page in 30 minutes.

Then he started make pages asking me for help as needed. He uploaded a pic of his dog, added a protest about coal power, and shared his newest obsession, Turtle programing, in short order. He thought the results were “awesome!“.

It just makes a nerd dad proud.

I know soon he’ll outgrow the training wheels that Googles Page Creator is providing him. For now though this is just the thing. It gets him him started and opens the door to conversations about how it all works.

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