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)

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

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

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

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:

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

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

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

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

Yeah but Blender wasn't always open source.

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

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.

Mindrover

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.

Take a look at MIT Scratch

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

Anyone else laugh at the last two sentences?

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

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:

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

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.

Dope Wars

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

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]

OpenDisc and OpenEducationDisc

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

KDE4 Education and Games

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?

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

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

Just get KDE

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?

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.

Re:

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

Re:hahaha

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:Lemonade Stand

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