Inside the OLPC XO: Software
In Peter Norton manner
Goals
- One Laptop Per Child, of course
Our goal: To provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves.
Most of the nearly two–billion children in the developing world are inadequately educated, or receive no education at all. One in three does not complete the fifth grade.
The individual and societal consequences of this chronic global crisis are profound. Children are consigned to poverty and isolation—just like their parents—never knowing what the light of learning could mean in their lives. At the same time, their governments struggle to compete in a rapidly evolving, global information economy, hobbled by a vast and increasingly urban underclass that cannot support itself, much less contribute to the commonweal, because it lacks the tools to do so.
It is time to rethink this equation.
- Educational software based on Constructivism
- No proprietary software
- Free textbooks and content
Overview
Open Firmware
XO Linux
See also Software_components#Operating_system
- Linux kernel 2.6.22. Current stable version is 2.6.23.8.
- Red Hat Fedora Rawhide 7 Current release is version 8.
Sugar
Computer languages
- FORTH for Open Firmware
- Python in Pippy and activities
- Turtle Art turtle graphics
- Squeak Smalltalk in Etoys
- CSound in TamTam
- Javascript
- Gnash Free implementation of Adobe Flash
Human languages
- Writing systems: keyboard layouts, input method editors, rendering, printing
- Localization
- Language learning
Activities
See also Software_components#Applications.
In current build
- Text Chat Activity, instant messenger
- Browse Activity (based on Mozilla Gecko Xulrunner, the Firefox Web engine)
- Write Activity (based on AbiWord)
- Record Activity still and video camera
- Paint Activity
- TamTamJam Activity Collaborative music
- Etoys Activity Smalltalk
- TurtleArt Activity Logo subset
- Pippy Activity Python examples
- Calculator Activity Plain, scientific, elementary financial. No RPN. See also Physics_Calculator.
- Measure Activity Data cquisition and display
- Measure_/_Oscilloscope
- TamTamEdit Activity MIDI editor
- TamTamSynthLab Activity Instrument creation
- Memorize Activity Game
- Connect Activity Game
- TamTamMini Activity Music
- RSS News Reader Activity
- Journal Activity
In development
- MikMik Activity Wiki with WYSIWIG editing
- Spreadsheet Activity
- Develop Activity, an activity editor
- Debugger Activity
- Shell Activity
- Remote Desktop Activity
- Other game activities
- OLPCities, a virtual world programming environment
- FACIL, a webpage editor developed to be used by children. (In English at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/EASE)
- Musical Editor, a music composition toolkit
- Drawing Workshop, a shared graphics space
- Tux Paint, a paint program with extreme ease-of-use
- BlockParty, a Tetris-like game that exploits the mesh
- A simple document viewer based upon evince (including the ability to view PDF);
- Multimedia playback using gstreamer (the Real Networks Helix™ platform has been ported to the laptop and is available for download but is not part of the base distribution)
More to come.
Content
Console
- Press Ctl-Alt-F1 to access bash command line.
- Log in as root (no password).
- Press Alt-F3 to return to Sugar.
See also Terminal.
Desktop
Using the XO in education
Collaboration
All activities share a common data store accessible through the Journal. Most activities, including reading, writing, recording, and browsing, allow for collaboration through the network, child-to-child and teacher-to-child.
See Activity Sharing, Shared Sugar Activities and Tubes Tutorial.
See also
Discovery
See also
- Muska Mosston, Teaching from Command to Discovery
- Georg Polya, How to Solve It