__/ [ Darth Chaos ] on Monday 31 July 2006 18:13 \__
> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>> __/ [ Mark Kent ] on Monday 31 July 2006 11:37 \__
>>
>> > begin oe_protect.scr
>> > Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
>> >> ,----[ Quote ]
>> >>| The oldest child is seven years old and the youngest is four and a
>> >>| recent class had children learning how to input data into an Microsoft
>> >>| Excel spreadsheet.
>> >>|
>> >>| The young age of the participants and the complexity of the tasks they
>> >>| are performing raises questions about the use of computers by
>> >>| children.
>> >>|
>> >>| Teacher Mike Ryde says: "We have children as young as 18 months on
>> >>| the courses..."
>> >> `----
>> >>
>> >> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/5223192.stm
>> >
>> >
>> > ChiCI's Janet Read says: "My own opinion is that 18 months
>> > isn't a good age." "It's a little bit ridiculous to think of an
>> > 18-month-old marriage bid child sat in front of a traditional
>> > computer."
>> >
>> >
>> > Why? My no1 kid used to sit on my knee and press some of the keys
>> > during games; nothing ridiculous about this at all. I despair of such
>> > people and their lack of imagination.
>>
>> My sister began with some Teletubby game if I recall
>> correctly. She was very young at the time and could barely
>> walk, if at all. There were all sorts of simplified
>> keyboards for children, which unsurprisingly, had been
>> designed to run with Windows software. Igorasmus (I assume
>> you have come across him -- Igor Chudov of algebra.com)
>> recently asked for a distribution to suit his baby-toddler
>> and Edubuntu was the perfect match as far as I can recall.
>> This showed why the so-called 'fragmentation' is actually a
>> positive thing. How long before distrowatch features a Linux
>> distribution which is specifically targatted at toddlers?
>> There are many educational variants, but nothing that suit
>> exceptionally young ages.
>
> It may not be geared towards toddlers, but the release of Edubuntu gets
> closer to that point. Maybe a toddler's version of Ubuntu could be
> called "Gugubuntu, Ga-Ga Gopher". :)
I came across the following yesterday:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Classroom
The name, however, may be somewhat deceiving. Looking at the actual
description:
,----[ Quote ]
| The Classroom is a project sponsored by the NewUserNetwork. It is
| co-managed by RyanKavanagh and KevinGailey. The idea of The Classroom
| is to host a biweekly tutorial session on the Freenode IRC server in
| the #ubuntu-classroom channel. The tutorials will cover information
| for Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu users. The Classroom will attempt
| to have sessions for all levels of expertise, from beginner to advanced.
`----
Either way, it has for long been argued that Open Source and education (as in
child's education, school, high-level, etc.) benefit from a symbiotic
relationship.
Best wishes,
Roy
--
GNU/Linux is beautiful. < http://youtube.com/watch?v=lawkc3jH3ws >
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