GPL Edutainment Software

haxot writes "I'm the technologist at a local library. In our lab, I've managed to get some recognition for tools such as GIMP and Open Office, and even such toys as Bomberman and BZFlag. Now I'm turning towards the children's computers, which are mostly filled with ancient, buggy, rather boring games that try to be interactive TV shows rather than something entertaining. I'm looking for good OSS games and education suites (preferably multi-platform — I want to be ready for an OS switch to Linux). I'm not picky about the license; I'd just like the software to actually have that 'neat' appeal. Some examples I've found already are Gcompris and Tux Paint. My focus is the 2-year-old to 8-year-old range, but I'm happy to hear teen-oriented suggestions too. Since it's a public library, however, I can't have any software on the computers that is risqué, gory, or violent."

Media production for Linux (And OSX, And Windows)

[conner_bw (120497)]

This is my list of cool apps, although probably more for teens, any smart motivated kid will go far:

Pencil, A traditional 2D Animation Software (Linux, OS X, Windows - GPL)
http://www.les-stooges.org/pascal/pencil/ [les-stooges.org]
Newly discovered by me, simple, fun, and effective.

Blender, A 3D content creation suite (Linux, OS X, Windows - GPL)
http://www.blender.org/ [blender.org]
You can do video compositing, and sound, and a whole lot more.

Renoise, A music program based based on the design principles of the module tracker (Linux, OS X, Windows - Shareware)
http://www.renoise.com/ [renoise.com]
Love this app, very educational for anyone who wants to learn from the ground up. Optionally there's the less powerful MilkyTracker [milkytracker.net] which is GPL

Audacity, software for recording and editing sound (Linux, OS X, Windows - GPL)
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
A sound editing workhorse.

Processing, a programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions (Linux, OS X, Windows - GPL)
http://processing.org/ [processing.org]
Probably for the gifted class, a very results oriented way to learn programming

Re:Media production for Linux (And OSX, And Window

[ZenDragon (1205104)]

Its absolutely amazing and a true testament to the power of open source that programs like Blender actually exist. I mean there is obviously hundreds of thousands of hours of dev time behind that program. Competitors sell similar programs for tens of thousand of dollars, and you can go down that for free. Just... awesome.

Re:Media production for Linux (And OSX, And Window

[Narishma (822073)]

Yeah but Blender wasn't always open source.

Re:Media production for Linux (And OSX, And Window

[Daengbo (523424)]

Bender and OpenOffice.org are both formerly closed source programs. OO.o (then StarOffice) was purchased by Sun and released so that they would have a viable alternative to MS Office on their platform, while Blender wwent under and was purchased through donations from the FOSS community.

Re:Media production for Linux (And OSX, And Window

[HeavensBlade23 (946140)]

I think small children would have an easier and significantly more fun time playing with a kitchen blender than trying to learn the application.

Edutainment - games

[Lord Satri (609291)]

Here's the educative games I suggest.

http://www.food-force.com/ [food-force.com] Made by the U.N. Free, MacOS X or Windows. (sorry no Linux afaik) Probably the best one in my list for the 6-8 years old.

http://www.tqworld.com/ [tqworld.com] - Tranquility. After years and years, this game has something no other game offers. Well suited for the youngsters. Free, but not open source.

http://www.stopdisastersgame.org/ [stopdisastersgame.org] U.N. too. Free and web-based. Excellent. Probably best for 8 years old (older ones of your range). Surprisingly informative.

http://www.stepmania.com/ [stepmania.com] Not sure that ones counts as edutainment, but it sure is good for the children! Open source and available for all platforms.

http://www.openttd.org/ [openttd.org] A railroad tycoon open source clone (gosh I'm getting old ;-). Suitable for your oldest ones?

For the curious ones, here's the other worthy (subjective) open source games I discovered with time. http://del.icio.us/Satri/game+opensource [del.icio.us]

3D CAD

[pipingguy (566974)]

Don't forget BRL-CAD [google.com] (open-source 3D solids modeling) which now has been added to Google's Summer of Code program. Not easy to get into or understand, but excellent potential, given its origins (core not written by amateurs).

Re:

[pipingguy (566974)]

BRL-CAD and Google will probably take it slow. I can't wait to see what it develops into in 2-3 years. The big boys in the CAD market have had their way for far too long - let's see what a few thousand developers can make this into.

If nothing else, it should light a fire under some asses.

Re:

[calebt3 (1098475)]

I disagree. Although telling them to have fun with it is expecting a bit much.

Re:Media production for Linux (And OSX, And Window

[Facetious (710885)]

Tell that to my 10-year-old son. He does great with it, and he teaches himself by watching tutorials on Youtube.

Re:

[SanityInAnarchy (655584)]

I'll bet they'd learn it easier than you.

That's not a slight on you, just that it's well known that kids pick up things quicker than adults. That's why "child-proof" caps really end up being adult-proof -- my parents always used to ask me to open them, as a kid.

Sorry, I'll get off your lawn now.

Mindrover

[khayman80 (824400)]

I highly recommend "Mindrover". In this game, you build and program a little robot that goes through obstacle courses, fights other robots, etc. It's got an intuitive graphical programming language (though you can edit the files directly for a more hands on approach). You get to program the robot's default behavior, define how it responds to threats, program "hunting" strategies, etc.

There's a demo available online, I recommend at least trying it out: http://www.mindrover.com/ [mindrover.com]

Oh, and there's a Linux version too.

Re:

[Rudeboy777 (214749)]

It does look kinda cool, but doesn't seem to meet the poster's GPL requirement

Re:

[reset_button (903303)]

While the headline says "GPL", the summary says "I'm not picky about the license". I guess the poster doesn't know what the L in GPL stands for...

Re:

[cerberusss (660701)]

"Mindrover". In this game, you build and program a little robot that goes through obstacle courses, fights other robots, etc. It's got an intuitive graphical programming language (though you can edit the files directly

This game scared the living hell out of me. My 9-year-old nephew started editing the files directly and turned this game into a nightmare where one giant robot called Azr43L enslaved humandkind and started eating babies.

Take a look at MIT Scratch

[by Anonymous Coward]

Website is here [mit.edu]. It's a different approach to teaching programming fundamentals to kids, somewhat akin to the concept behind LOGO.

Re:

[mmurphy000 (556983)]

And, for us programming geeks, Scratch is built on Squeak [squeak.org], the open source implementation of Smalltalk.

Anyone else laugh at the last two sentences?

[CrazyJim1 (809850)]

My focus is the 2-year old to 8-year old range, but I'm happy to hear teen-oriented suggestions too. Since it's a public library, however, I can't have any software on the computers that is risqué, gory, or violent.
No gore, cuz it is a public library. Otherwise it'd be cool for the 2-8 year olds.

Going back to my youth

[joeflies (529536)]

It seems that there are modern day ports of LOGO [berkeley.edu] and Robot Odyssey [happypenguin.org], both of which were pretty influential in my early education and gravitated me towards computer science ever since.

Disclaimer, I haven't actually tried the software in the links above.

Re:

[Angostura (703910)]

There's a very nice port of Logo for OS X here: http://www.alancsmith.co.uk/logo/index.html [alancsmith.co.uk]. It's free as in beer, but not as in speech.

educational games suck

[SoupGuru (723634)]

One thing I remember from working at a school years ago is that educational games tend to suck really bad.

There's just no motivation to be fun. Speaking from a proprietary standpoint, what factors does an educator look for when deciding which games to purchase? Cost and what the learning topics are. "Here's a game that teaches multiplication and is $10 cheaper than all the others." Fun doesn't fit into the equation. And it's not like many educators are test-driving these games either. Oh, and these are typically poorly written games too.

My point being, the educational games sector is filled with poorly made products that feature very little fun and are a pain to administer. Hopefully some open source options don't suffer from the same issues. Hopefully you'll be able to sort through the crap and find some good ones though.

Re:

[Blakey Rat (99501)]

Bah, you just haven't tried the right ones. Obviously The Oregon Trail didn't suck, it was played by millions of a full decade. (I'm sure it's still on most school computers today.) Rocky's Boots, which badly needs a revival, was a great way to learn logic and programming. I had it on my C-64 when I was a kid, and I don't go a week without thinking back to something I learned in that game.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

http://www.virtualapple.org/

Online emulator for all Apple II and Apple IIgs games. Includes Oregon Trail, Number Munchers and lots others.

Re:

[Jorophose (1062218)]

I remember SimHealth...

Wasn't that the one funded by some US health org to try and get people to fix the health problem in the US, Canada, and other places facing the same situation?

Of course, I don't think anybody got a "good" score in that game. We went after it for years and barely got close.

SimEarth was fun too. A bit less "educational" from a quick glance, but playing in it you do understand concepts of how species need some things and will adapt to satisfy needs and how they react to other species, ho

Re:

[RiotingPacifist (1228016)]

While on the whole your right, the 1st game i remember playing was a maths challenge on the acorn, took you through a maths based version of jack and the beanstalk. never finished the damn thing tho.

In the Ubuntu repos i spotted a few but none seamed promising, id suggest finding a computer with over 512 ram and using a liveCD to test out the games, if you find anything, as its OSS chances are it will be available for windows too.

However here are very few programs for kids under GPL, they dont really confor

Lemonade Stand

[athloi (1075845)]

http://www.codenautics.com/lemonade/ [codenautics.com]

Just like the Apple II classic. Teach them capitalism so they don't end up on drugs ;)

Re:Lemonade Stand

[HeavensBlade23 (946140)]

Capitalism will teach them dealing drugs is a much better hobby than doing them.

Re:

[urcreepyneighbor (1171755)]

Uh. No. It won't.

I submit as my two pieces of evidence: a TED talk by Levitt and his book.

Steven Levitt: Why do crack dealers still live with their moms? [ted.com].

You may also want to check out his book (Freakonomics [amazon.com]).

there's Sqeak e-Toys and others

[Locutus (9039)]

Sqeak is a Smalltalk-like language and environment, runs on many platforms and has a package called e-Toys. It's on the OLPC

I believe they have other education software too so here's a link for you to search for yourself:

http://www.squeak.org/Features/Education/ [squeak.org]

LoB

crap, it's Squeak not Sqeak dumbass

[Locutus (9039)]

I hate when that happens. :-/

LoB

Dope Wars

[ceroklis (1083863)]

A very educational game to learn all you need to know about drugs, guns, prostitutes, loan sharks and New York geography. Highly recommended! http://dopewars.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

Physics and Software

[macneib (1038802)]

Phun is an educational, entertaining and somewhat addictive piece of software for designing and exploring 2D multi-physics simulations in a cartoony fashion.

http://www.vrlab.umu.se/research/phun/ [vrlab.umu.se]

Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience.

http://www.alice.org/ [alice.org]

You can't. Really?

[pclminion (145572)]

Since it's a public library, however, I can't have any software on the computers that is risqué, gory, or violent.

Exactly why not? Does your library also lack risqué, gory, and violent books? What the hell sort of library is this?

Re:

[TomRK1089 (1270906)]

I'm pretty sure that, given the ages specified in the actual post, there'd be plenty of parents objecting to that material being aimed at their children, just as parents protest the inclusion of said material on television. That's not to say there aren't kids (like myself at that age) who will be reading those books anyways, but I suppose the idea is that it requires the kid to actively seek it out, rather than stumble onto it rather easily.

try K12LTSP

[dalesyk (302267)]

Take a look at http://k12ltsp.org They focus on educational software and thin clients. Both would be a good fit for a library environment.

Frozen Bubbles

[RiffRafff (234408)]

Frozen Bubbles. Fun, and teaches some geometry.

http://www.frozen-bubble.org/ [frozen-bubble.org]

Free alternative

[meregistered (895132)]

Hello

Having children in that age range, and having looked to some degree I haven't found any GPL educational games that really got my kids interest (Tux paint held the 6 year olds attention for an afternoon).

What has held my children's interest are games on the following websites:
http://www.pbskids.org/ [pbskids.org]
http://funschool.kaboose.com/ [kaboose.com]
http://www.starfall.com/ [starfall.com]
http://kids.discovery.com/ [discovery.com]

Re:

[El_Oscuro (1022477)]

If you have Linux, goto http://www.cnr.com [cnr.com]. In addition to the usual Linux games for Linspire/Ubuntu, they have a ton of links to Linux friendly web games. One of my girls favourites is http://www.clubpenguin.com [clubpenguin.com], which ironically does not have anything to do with Linux, but runs fine on it.

Line Rider

[RiffRafff (234408)]

How about Line Rider as a flash game?

http://www8.agame.com/mirror/flash/l/linerider_v1_5.swf [agame.com]

OpenDisc and OpenEducationDisc

[PineHall (206441)]

Check out OpenEducationDisc [theopendisc.com] and OpenDisc [theopendisc.com].

KDE4 Education and Games

[MtHuurne (602934)]

The KDE Education [kde.org] package contains some impressive applications. The KDE Games [kde.org] package contains some nice casual games. In KDE4, many of them were given new good-looking SVG graphics. Also since KDE4, they can be run on Windows and Mac OS X natively (and on Linux too of course). The Windows port is a work in progress; maybe not something you should install tomorrow, but something to keep an eye on.

Edubuntu?

[linuxwrangler (582055)]

I'd find a machine and see what you think of Edubuntu ("Linux for Young Human Beings").

http://www.edubuntu.org/UsingEdubuntu [edubuntu.org]

My daughter is 3-1/2 and loves the stuff on Linux. She was typing her name on TuxPaint before she turned three but we had to click on the icons for her to set it to text or other modes since the mouse was too big and unwieldy.

So I bought her a laptop mouse which is perfect for her small hand. Big mistake. She will now sneak into the computer and start up "Paint Penguins" (TuxPaint), draw something, print it and come show us.

If she's bored with that she plays "Running Penguins" (SuperTux) or "Bubble Penguins" (Frozen Bubbles) or steals my Blackberry to show where Nana lives on Google Maps.

If she finds my bank-account numbers I'm in trouble. But seriously, Linux has plenty of edutainment software available and Edubuntu packages it in one place. It it also designed for classroom (and therefore, I suppose, library) use with features like centralized-management (LTSP) and such.

For astronomy

[SlowDancing (687920)]

Stellarium [stellarium.org] for star charts and constellations. Windows, Mac, Linux versions. Highly recommended.

Just get KDE

[ChameleonDave (1041178)]

You don't really need individual suggestions, as most of the decent open-source educational programs out there are part of KDE. The latest version of KDE will hopefully be installable on Windows this year.

Just install the full package, and you'll have stuff like KLatin and KVerbos for learning languages, as well as star-gazing software, plus KTurtle, KTouch and a load more.

Edutainment?

[ChilyWily (162187)]

Yuck! I cringe whenever someone uses that word. Perhaps because lately I feel very much offended that a lot of 'Information' out there is in fact nothing more than a subtle (or increasingly not-so-subtle) attempt at Marketing.

Please enough already - no more of this Hollywood style, flashy, 'make believe' stuff with specious vocabulary. There is a certain spark in the Human psyche that gets lit whenever a person truly gains comprehension or insight into something they did not know before. Especially with Children, in my humble opinion, what's need is to light that little flame. 'Edutainment' makes it seem like it's a bitter pill that must be sugar coated with oodles of artificial sweeteners to be palatable.

I say, leave them kids alone. Let them discover the joys of the Earth without the myopic view of Google Earth and look for the Stars in the night sky ... rather than on a computer screen. Teach them well those basics that our ancestors took so long to truly comprehend, preferably with a pencil and paper.

SimCity / Micropolis

[Danious (202113)]

The original version of SimCity was recently Open Sourced, more info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropolis_(software) [wikipedia.org] and download. at
http://www.donhopkins.com/home/micropolis/ [donhopkins.com]

Re:

[conner_bw (120497)]

GCompris -> French: J'ai Compris -> English: I have understood

Re:hahaha

[moderatorrater (1095745)]

As a library worker, it's his job to make sure that the computers run the best they can for the least amount of money. If he's more capable with the free software than he is with the proprietary stuff, then he's not so much an "evangelist" as a good employee.

Re:

[bigstrat2003 (1058574)]

True, although it's hard to say from the summary whether the submitter is actually opposed to commercial software or not. If he is, shame on him for reducing his options... but hopefully he's looking for quality software first, and its free/commercial status is a secondary consideration.

Books???

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

Keep the games boring so that the kids read some books!