[kde-edu]: Re: Educational games for kids

[Bruno Coudoin]

Le jeudi 25 novembre 2010 à 20:21 +0200, simion ploscariu a écrit :
> To clarify something about the work i am dong vs GCompris. I have a 4
> and a half years old son. We use gcompris but just a few of the games
> there he can play.
> As an example the mazes game it is keyboard controled it is not a
> mouse  version. The problem with the keyboard is that he can control
> the penguin on the maze, the problem appears when he has to move  a
> number of steps but must stop before reaching a wall. He can't do
> it,he always stops at the wall. He can press the button to do say just
> one step. I designed an algorithm where all the corners are in fron of
> a wall bt the game sis not over.

The maze is here to learn the keyboard arrow. If your children can't use
it, maybe wait a couple of month. Sadly, even in GCompris games for
children tend to be mouse focused and forgot to learn the keyboard.


> Now i want to implement a game to help my son learn english but i will
> make it more general to be used in more ways. It will have a screen
> with a grid of images and the kid will have to click the corect image.
> The corect image will be pointed by one of the methods:
> -speacjing the name of the object in the image (ex cat)
> -playng the sound of the object in the image(a cat noise "miau")
> -displayng the first leter of the object (letter C for cat

We don't have this in GCompris, a contribution is welcome.

> -speacking(showing) the color and he must select the correct object

We already have this.

> Other idea would be to make the game structure so simple so we(or I)
> could write a online version, I want to make the games accessible for
> all kids on any platform,Os.

I think HTML 5 is a good candidate to make GCompris like activities. But
now GCompris is there, whatever the toolkit it is in the chidren don't
care.

> P.S. I respect GCompris project I use it for my son i want to make new
> games and Qt is my preference(over gtk)  I made some c++ games and
> applications using Qt but i am not a c++ master(so my code could be
> bugy with memory leaks and strange stuff but i am still learning) I am
> more experienced in managed languages.
> For the other games i made i am still thinking at a framework to
> integrate them,something like gcompris has

I don't care about GTK+ or Qt. Is GTK any better than other toolkit,
probably not. Does it do the job, probably yes.

At some point we have to think about our users. Do they need two half
baked educational framework in 2 toolkits ?

I spent 10 years working on GCompris, its a lot of work and I do my best
to keep this project alive. Good luck with your project but think ahead,
are you going to maintain your software even after your children have
grown. Mine don't use GCompris anymore but I am still there ...

-- 
Bruno Coudoin
http://gcompris.net  Free educational software for kids
http://toulibre.org  Logiciel Libre à Toulouse
http://april.org     Promouvoir et défendre le Logiciel Libre