[HLUG] education related software for ISFD

[Richard Smedley]

On 02/08/10 18:49, Sarah Chard wrote:
> does anyone know if any of the  other main distro's do 'education'
> versions?

"education" covers age 2 to 18, as well as tertiary education,
so difficult to cover with one distro. What edubuntu does is
makes LTSP work well almost straight out of the box (though it's
pretty easy with the Debian packages anyway, nowadays).

If you're sitting at a Debian box now (or Ubuntu, Mint, etc.), try

apt-cache search junior

This will show you the dozen or so debian-junior collections of
educational games. The original packager told me they're for
2-10 yr olds but plenty of them are suitable for younger children.

For 2-6yr olds also try both GCompris and Childsplay, each of
which packages up several educational apps on a single platform
interface.

I've got all of these running fine at the moment on a ThinkPad 570
(366MHz Pentium II, 128MB RAM), on Ubuntu 10.04 + LXDE.

kde-games still includes kturtle, I think, and scheme is also
a good programming intro for kids.

For older children there's plenty of software in the repositories
for maths, chemistry, astronomy and other geek subjects :-)

Arduino boards [0], FOSS Lego Mindstorms, and face-tracking robots [1]
are all great Free Software projects for kids :-)

Then there's Ruby-on-Rails....

..I could go on, but I already have elsewhere ;-)   [2]

> also any ideas for cross platform software?

R-o-R :)

... and don't forget Moodle.

NOTES:

[0] http://www.goodgnus.org/2010/02/cool-arduino-projects/

[1]
<http://blog.aicookbook.com/2010/06/building-a-face-tracking-robot-headroid1-with-python-in-an-afternoon/>

[2] http://www.goodgnus.org/published-works/

Linux Magazine 5 February 2001 Lessons in Linux: Linux for Schools - An
Introduction (pp30-32)

Linux Magazine 8 May 2001 Open Source in Education (pp8-9) - a round-up
from the OSiE conference.

Linux Magazine June 2001 Young at Heart: Games for Education. Games for
Fun (pp96-97)

Linux Magazine July 2001 The K Factor (pp96-97) - a round-up of
children’s games on KDE, and investigation of Sokoban in AI research.

Linux Magazine 11 August 2001 Easy as ABC (pp97-98) - children’s word
and number puzzles

Linux Magazine 12 September 2001 The GNU Generation (pp98-102) The
Debian Jr Project, with an interview with Ben Armstrong

Linux Magazine 13 October 2001 Linux for Kids: Summer Round-Up (p82) -
International FOSS education efforts

Linux Magazine 15 December 2001 Talking My Language (p86-89) -
Programming for kids

Linux Format 57 September 2004 (Linux Pro supplement, pp6-15): Free
Education [Free Software in UK education]

Linux Format 81 July 2006 Lessons in Linux (pp50-59) Free Software in
Education, at Primary, Secondary & Tertiary levels.

There were a couple in LinuxUser too - when I find them I'll add them to
http://www.goodgnus.org/published-works/

 - Richard

--
http://www.goodgnus.org/2010/02/so-what-am-i-up-to/