Hi,
Le 9 août 09 à 12:40, Andrea Pescetti a écrit :
I support the idea of a version of OOo tailored for 7-12 years old
students.
And I say you thank you very much, for your support !
That said, I expected that the initial effort went more in the
direction of including additional cliparts, providing educational
content,
In fact, the OOo4Kids project, as just a little part of the whole, is
not made for that, because there is something else already existing,
to fit the need.
But let me explain more : the main objective of the Education
Project, is to create a strong bridge between the Educationnal World,
and OpenOffice.org Project. For that, we (not only me, but the people
who participated to the IRC meeting, and the organization) have
choosen 3 directions/axes:
Point 1: create a network of academic correspondants ( and schools ! )
Concerned public: teachers, for cooperative work, provide feedback,
link them with other OpenOffice.org Projects, represent us in local
events (*Education* oriented only)
Point 2: propose a space for content (pedagogical purpose only).
Campus Libre, and our next toy
Concerned public: teachers, students for cooperative work, around
OpenOffice.org and pedagogical contents (only, nothing use of OOo)
Point 3 : attract new developpers (see Education Proejct Effort on
the wiki).
Concerned public: schools, professors, students, developers,
professionals .. and so on
Shortly : OOo4Kids is the way we to rely 1 and 3, thus, to work on 2.
So, the need is more complicated that the apparence let imagine, and
what you are talking about is already existing (though, a bit young).
Please search for CampusLibre on http://www.educoo.org website. (btw,
feel free to provide whatever Educational material: it will be welcome)
P.S. : to avoid boring people, and for further information about the
entire structure, please read : http://eric.bachard.free.fr/
Education/LinuxDays2009/en-US/Linux_Days2009_en-US_ericb.pdf
simplifying the UI: more or less, the same indications I read in
http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/Main_Page
Simplify the UI is almost started (like menus in writer already,
searching how improve the fonts, and so on). All of this is
continuous work. Port important changes, make everything build, work,
fix bugs, is the mandatory first step. And yes, I assume : the 1.0
will not integrate everything (excepted if 10 devs join the project
today, and work all the summer on OOo4Kids :-)
Instead, this list of "1.0 goals" seems very aggressive in the
direction of "reducing/optimizing OOo",
And why not ? :-)
The content, respecting the need and the reducing / optimizing,
respecting the reality, are complementary there : we need to provide
something simple (7-12 children) and light (old machines, or XO,
gdium low power netbooks).
Everything is compromise in this situation. Nevertheless, if you have
a better solution to make the software work on poor in ram and
powerless machines, please tell us. I'd be really eager to read your
solution :-)
which gets almost no coverage on http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/
I'm glad you consider OOo4Kids with such interest, but what you wrote
about the coverage is not true.
This is the beginning (see the creation date), and everything is not
concentrated on the wiki you mentionned : we have other places, where
things are progressively set up. For example, in parallel, we work
with teachers, and teachers managing teachers .. an so on, more
people, institutions than it appears. And we must progress prudently,
even silently from time to time.
and which will probably distract from the "educational" goal.
Sorry, but no. We never have been so close to the Educational goal,
even doing optimization :) (the one who will bring the most to
OpenOffice.org). Apparently, we temporarly do not work for elementary
level, but what we do does concern all levels, including high schools.
Doing that ("reducing/optimizing OOo") is technically extremely
interesting, for a lot of reasons. First, because we must have a good
knowledge of the build process, and of the sources too. Second, we
need to assume portability, stability, and even more. Third, we do
all that with students (real engineers schools students), whom we
explain how it works, how to trace. In fact, we teach them
OpenOffice.org, and more generally Open Source way of life, but
without disturbing the upstream process.
Last but not least, our contacts with schools participating to the
effort are extremely promising.
As example, the last two days, we started to play with OpenOffice.org
+ Valgrind with two students from Epitech Paris. Starting from
nothing one month ago, both know already the basics of gdb, build OOo
and OOo4Kids on Linux and Windows. Believe me or not, but a lot of
engineers schools would like to have such alive courses or their
students.
Do I need to tell you more, to convince you there is nothing
distracting he OOo4Kids from it's original goal ?
Of course, we are far from something perfect, and what is missing, is
volunteers (including people taking responsabilities), money, and a
better involvement from the OpenOffice.org developers (more would
really help), to help the Education Project. A good track could be to
continue the ClassRooms, and so on, but that's another debate ..
Regards,
Eric Bachard
Lead,
OpenOffice.org Education Project
--
qɔᴉɹə
