Kids Educational Laptop
 

Hey mates,
Been thinking of taking my old Dell Latitude C800 laptop and making it a machine for the kids to use. Here are my specs

• CPU: 866MHz
• RAM: Maxed at 512MB
• Video: 32MB Rage Mobility
• HDD: 20GB
• Network: Linksys WPC54GS v2. PCMCIA Wireless Card (Atheros)

I was thinking about putting DSL on it. I was gonna get the wireless working and then add a GUI, all plugins (Flash, PDF reader, etc.), Open Office and Educational Software for the kids. I was thinking of adding Gcompris but not sure what else to add. I looked into the Sugar platform but not so sure that is good.

Also I have 2 kids that will be using this, one is 5 and the other is 9. So I need 2 different levels of education software here. Also I would like to setup the machine to have a larger mouse cursor for the 5 year old.

What is everyone's thoughts on this?

The new LinuxJournal just did a cover story on this actually. If you can check out their ideas: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/learning-childsplay. They at least provide a good starting point for doing a project like this.

Regards,

Alunduil

Hi,

I'd have a look at this site. Under the 'Educational Tools' section there are various programs for children. I'm planning to put a system together for my 8 year old son and in my search came across this site that looks interesting.

Kind regards,

Eric

alundil,
I have been toying with the idea for quite some time. I was trying to find another PC that was better than this laptop, but since I lost my job a while back I can't buy one. This will have to do for now. I like the idea of using a net nanny type package to restrict what websites they can visit. I am actually a subscriber to Linux Journal and I saw that article this month. That is what made me finally say I am just gonna do it. I am giving up my old development laptop for the kids.

Eric,
Thanks for the link. I will definitely check it out. Last night I was googling and came across schoolforge.net which is kinda cool. Not all of the software they list is educational though.They mix in OpenOffice.org, truecrypt, PDF readers, etc. in with stuff like Sugar, gcompris, etc. Also not all of the software is Linux, some is Windows or MAC only, so it takes quite a bit of reading to find something on that site.

DSL install would hang up on my when probing PCMCIA. I ended up installing Puppy Linux instead.