GPL Edutainment Software

haxot writes "I'm the technologist at a local library. In our lab, I've managed to get some recognition for tools such as GIMP and Open Office, and even such toys as Bomberman and BZFlag. Now I'm turning towards the children's computers, which are mostly filled with ancient, buggy, rather boring games that try to be interactive TV shows rather than something entertaining. I'm looking for good OSS games and education suites (preferably multi-platform — I want to be ready for an OS switch to Linux). I'm not picky about the license; I'd just like the software to actually have that 'neat' appeal. Some examples I've found already are Gcompris and Tux Paint. My focus is the 2-year-old to 8-year-old range, but I'm happy to hear teen-oriented suggestions too. Since it's a public library, however, I can't have any software on the computers that is risqué, gory, or violent."

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Mindrover

[khayman80]

I highly recommend "Mindrover". In this game, you build and program a little robot that goes through obstacle courses, fights other robots, etc. It's got an intuitive graphical programming language (though you can edit the files directly for a more hands on approach). You get to program the robot's default behavior, define how it responds to threats, program "hunting" strategies, etc.

There's a demo available online, I recommend at least trying it out: http://www.mindrover.com/

Oh, and there's a Linux version too.

Take a look at MIT Scratch

[Anonymous Coward]

Website is here. It's a different approach to teaching programming fundamentals to kids, somewhat akin to the concept behind LOGO.

Going back to my youth

[joeflies]

It seems that there are modern day ports of LOGO and Robot Odyssey, both of which were pretty influential in my early education and gravitated me towards computer science ever since.

Disclaimer, I haven't actually tried the software in the links above.

Physics and Software

[macneib]

Phun is an educational, entertaining and somewhat addictive piece of software for designing and exploring 2D multi-physics simulations in a cartoony fashion.

http://www.vrlab.umu.se/research/phun/

Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience.

http://www.alice.org/

OpenDisc and OpenEducationDisc

[PineHall]

Check out OpenEducationDisc and OpenDisc.

Re:Media production for Linux (And OSX, And Window

[Narishma]

Yeah but Blender wasn't always open source.

For astronomy

[SlowDancing]

Stellarium for star charts and constellations. Windows, Mac, Linux versions. Highly recommended.

Re:Media production for Linux (And OSX, And Window

[Daengbo]

Bender and OpenOffice.org are both formerly closed source programs. OO.o (then StarOffice) was purchased by Sun and released so that they would have a viable alternative to MS Office on their platform, while Blender wwent under and was purchased through donations from the FOSS community.