ericb's place: OOo4Kids proposed as part of OpenOffice.org Project

jeudi, août 06, 2009

OOo4Kids proposed as part of OpenOffice.org Project

Today, I proposed OOo4Kids to become a part of OpenOffice.org Project.

Below, the content of the proposal, where you'll retrieve the important points :

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Hi all,

Proposal :

The OpenOffice.org Education Project proposes to drive the following experimentation :

- create a dedicated branch in the OOo source code repository (means hosted by OOo Project) for a 7-12 years software, derivated from OpenOffice.org, and made and maintained by OpenOffice.org project.
Formally : create a new branch, completely independent of , including milestones, like OOo does
- work with schools and students to improve the software
- innovate about performances and cooperate with the performance project in this area
- (add your idea)

Resources : to be defined, but the non profit association EducOOo) is already candidate to manage that (e.g.receive sponsoring for the software, machines for students, and so on).

Facts that brought us to work on this plan:

- OpenOffice.org is not well adapted to Educational world, nor to children (7-12 there)
- OpenOffice.org has too much of features for children, and is too complicated for them
- Performance issues : OpenOffice.org is slow on a lot of machines
(mainly the one who have 512MB of ram or less, and procs 1,5GHZ or less we can find in most of schools)
- Lot of schools, all around the world, are poor, and will have to wait several years before to buy new hardware
- to fit the new emergent market (netbooks, eeepc like, gdium, future tablets (including the probable Apple one) .. and so on), OpenOffice.org needs to provide a light version, adapted to such machines ( poor in ram and powerless)

The ideas :

- simplify OOo and propose a light version of OOo, for example removing Base and providing a simplified Writer and Calc versions
- experiment new features, new UI and so on, including experiment whatever
- work with students to write the code, with the goal to integrate only the best features in OOo,
- prepare children to use OpenOffice.org
- adapt OOo for children will help to work on performance issues
- use a name adapted to children : OOo4Kids, trademarked by one or several non profit association, to keep the project out of companies control
- there is no risk for OOo, and avoids to disturb the OOo process

Thanks in advance for your opinion

Eric Bachard
Lead,
OpenOffice.org Education Project

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Below, the link of the announcement ( dev@openoffice.org mailing list) : archived proposal

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Education Project on the wiki

EducOO.org blog (french)

OOo4Kids Project

Many thanks to Ben Bois , author of the EducOOo logo, dedicated to the OpenOffice.org Education Project
...

Libellés : EducOOo, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource