Educational Software

Here are some links to educational software that I find interesting.

Please contact me if you know educational software that I forgot to mention and that is "approved" by the kiddies! ;-). This review does not intent to reference all the educational available in Linux. I present here only software I managed to install and run and that the kids like.
A nice place to find more such programs is the Linux For Kids website.

I was told that most of the applications I speak about are from the Gnome side. Well, that's true. So, KDE developers, go to work, there is a big need. In fact, I have plenty of ideas (having 4 kids and owning quite a lot of Windows eduware) and I develop some small games. What I want to achieve with that page is to be practical: my child is x years old, which program can I find for her/him that works (it is really annoying to install several apps before one wants to compile) and that may interest her/him.

This intends to target the 2-18 group of age.

Age 2 to 10

In GCompris, the child should either click on an animal falling or type on a keybord letter or a number. That game installs easily with the rpm package but requires the gnome-libs package.

Kard is a memory-like game for children aged 2 to 7.

Age 10 and above

Sciences
KMol is a simple chemical calculator, which calculates molecular weights and elemental composition of compounds given their chemical formula. Easy to use.

Dr Geo is an interactive geometry software, a GTK+ based dynamic geometry constructor and manipulator. Easy to install. Not very intuitive and still in development. The user guide is available only in French.

Astronomy

HitchHicker2000 is an interesting astronomical software that allows you to see the sky and Easy to install with the RPM packages. Gtkglarea required, RPM provided.

Music

Solfege is an eartraining program. Requires gnome-libs, python and pygnome. GNU Solfege is a very good program for children who want to improve their musical skills.

Parental assistance required

Keduca is an educational project that allows the creation of forms to help revision for an exam for example. The down side is that you have to create your forms before your child can use the program. What would be really great is to build a database of such forms that would be available with the program.

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