OOo4Kids 0.8 : new Star Center
One more time, thanks to
Ben Bois who created a new great background for the future version (0.8) of
OOo4Kids :
The
shapes of the buttons are
no longer apparent, and when you
roll over one of them, a help balloon explains you which application will open. Of course, things are not perfect, and we still have some bugs to fix, but this is very promising !! (and my children love it ;-)
More information about the
recent changes IMPORTANT : the version proposed for download (0.6) below does NOT have the feature yet. The new splashscreen should be integrated in the version : 0.8, not before. => Download.ooo4Kids.org websiteIf you want to help us, to find resource and contribute back to improve OpenOffice.org, via the OpenOffice.org Education Project,
donations are welcome OOo4Kids is
made for Educational purpose, has been thought to work with students, making them discover OpenOffice.org source code, without constraints, but just code, and having Fun.The promise is, when the code is good enough, it will be proposed for integration into OpenOffice.org.
OOo4Kids is a 7-12 years children Office suite, based on OpenOffice.org ( http://www.openoffice.org ) source code. This means OpenOffice.org has some features OOo4Kids has not (like Base and Java). And if you need those features, please use OpenOffice.org, that you can download at :
Download OpenOffice.org. Please do not forget that the software is provided as it, and that you will use it at your own risks. Do not forget to do a backup either.
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Education Project on the wiki EducOO.org blog (french) Many thanks to
Ben Bois , author of the
EducOOo logo, dedicated to the OpenOffice.org Education Project
...
Libellés : children, Education, Education Project, EducOOo, experimental, High Tech, OOo4Kids, Portable OOo4Kids
OOo4Kids call for donation
You appreciate OOo4Kids or any action the Education project does ?
So now, you have no excuse to not help us :)For that,
Ben Bois did yet another great thing, and added a
donate link on the
download websiteOther nice feature ... look at the thermometer on left ;) 
The money will help us to found other actions, and more, to really create a bridge between
OpenOffice.org Project and the Education
Thanks a lot to all the donators !! """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Education Project on the wiki EducOO.org blog (french) OOo4Kids ProjectMany thanks to
Ben Bois , author of the
EducOOo logo, dedicated to the OpenOffice.org Education Project
...
Libellés : development, Education Project, experimental, fun, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice
eraser01: final report (english version) available
This report is the fruit of the collaboration between
Ecole Centrale Nantes(aka
ECN) and
OpenOffice.org Education Project.
Thanks to
Olivier Girardot and
Aude Quintana, students at ECN who sent me the english version of
The Eraser.
* Link for downloading the
.odt en-US version* Link for downloading the
.pdf en-US version * Link for downloading the
.pdf fr versionAnother report "
the Saving Machine", who was made for save the annotations made with the Impress feature is available.
* Link for downloading the
french version of the Saving MachineMany many thanks to the students from Ecole Centrale Nantes for their great work, to
Morgan Magnin, their professor, and to
Thorsten Behrens for his enormous contribution.
My conclusion of that, is I think it really worth to see more collaboration between
OpenOffice.org Project and the
Education world, and I'm proud to manage the
Education Project, who exactly has the goal to create a strong bridge between both.
Last but not least, 2 presentations of this collaboration are scheduled at
LSM 2009, but I'll say more about that very soon ;-)
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Education Project on the wiki EducOO.org blog (french) OOo4Kids ProjectMany thanks to
Ben Bois , author of the
EducOOo logo, dedicated to the OpenOffice.org Education Project
...
Libellés : Centrale Nantes, community, Education Project, experimental, High Tech, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
New Start Center for OOo4Kids (work in progress)
The screenshot below is the most recent version of the start center we created for OOo4Kids (all ports).
As you can see, there are some remaining issues, like the white stripes on right, due to the length of the frames used for hte texts. e.g. , we could use COL_TRANSPARENT + some other hack, but anyway, this part will need more love. The other issue is the background: could be seriously improved too.
Thanks to Ben Bois, doing most of the new Design for the OOo4Kids StartCenter=> Further information on
OOo4Kids wikiTo be continued ...Libellés : Education Project, EducOOo, experimental, High Tech, OpenOffice, screenshots, splashscreen, Teaching OpenSource
Use a .png for the SplashScreen (i.e. no longer use .bmp)
A bit less than two month ago, I modified OOo source code, to be able to load a .png splashscreen (same story for the about too). I received a nice help from
Thorsten Behrens,
Philipp Lohmann and
Herbert Duerr, who explained me what do (the most clean way to do), how to remove the transparent places and more.
After fixing a bug on Linux (the renderer not correctly initialized), it works nicely on both Mac OS X and Windows since end of April, and on Linux (all ports) since early May (because of the bug).
Design of the OOo4Kids logo : Ben BoisAs you can see, I added the possibility to play with transparency. One other reason to choose .png was that the .png are lighter than .bmp. Finally
the gain was around 360 kB, compared to the .bmp
This is not perfect (some little white pixels due to rounding in the corners ), but gives IMHO a better User Experience, and opens the door to Funky Splashscreens :)
Of course, if one ask me, I'd be glad to backport that into OpenOffice.org source code (not sure because one told me there was something else in progress ... so, I don't know).
Important: we do not distribute anything publically, and will replace the OpenOffice.org application icon in the dock (and provide our own) asap .
To be continued ...Libellés : EducOOo, experimental, fun, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice
Next Education Project IRC meeting : "Introduction to a hybrid approach to software engineering and open source"
Please note there will be an
IRC meeting on Monday 26th of January 2009, 16:00 UTC or 17:00 CET (Paris, Hamburg), 19.00 Greek time, 11:00 (Toronto)
Location : Server :
irc.freenode.net , Channel :
#education.openoffice.orgContent :
The meeting will provide an overview and room for discussion on a hybrid approach to software engineering piloted at
Aristotle University’s course ‘Introduction to Software Engineering’. This approach aims, amongst others, to bring together the various involved stakeholders in a semi-structured way: own & fellow students, free learners outside of formal education & open source practitioners / projects.
The chat will be attended by
Andreas Meiszner from The Open University UK, who is taking care about design and organizational aspects and the course team from Aristotle presented by
Katerina Moustaka and
Eleni Konstantinou.
To get a better understanding on the hybrid approach in question please see a paper and presentation at:
breaking the silence Hybrid approach to computer science EducationSee you !""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Education Project on the wiki EducOO.org blog (french) Many thanks to
Ben Bois , author of the Education Project Logo
Libellés : Aristotle University, Education, events, experimental, High Tech, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
Experimental : local contact and Education Project
Last friday, I had a rendez vous with UTBM Communication Dept people.
The idea was: how talk about Open Source initiatives like OpenOffice.org Education Project, to show they are good for the school itself.The starting point is, UTBM employees (that's true for other schools of course), are unaware of Education Project existence, what exactly OpenOffice.org Project is, what is going on, and/or what has been done (means inside the school), or who contact, where find information ... etc.
Under the conditions the content does concern Education Project, has a pedagogical interest, and/or does concern UTBM, I'll be able to propose two types of news.
Every article will be 4 or 5 lines max + links, and can be refused if ever the content does not conform to UTBM chart.The first type does concern Internal communication. e.g. talk about a coming event like
13eme Rencontres de l'Orme ( Marseille, France 1-3 April ), where I'll talk about my contributions since several for free software ( Linux room of 15 machines, Maxima, OpenOffice.org ) , representing UTBM and the interactions with my courses.
The second one is about External Communication, means here an electronic newspaper, who does concern a group of schools, and more, like some companies (to be confirmed).
Again,
only Pedagogical information are awaited. No pub nor propaganda will be accepted, but
existing actions, involving people and resources.
e.g. a description of
the Education Project Effort (if ever I can find enough volunteers ) is a good candidate ;-)
I hope this will give ideas to other schools, and if you have other ideas/actions ..etc, please suggest them at dev@education project mailing list :-)=> Education Project on the WikiLibellés : Education, experimental
