[openoffice - 3] OOo4Kids - Open Office for 7-12 year olds

[Joe_Pineapples]

Hi Folks

 

I thought I'd mention this one here because it's only just gone v1.0 and I couldn't find anything about it on the foums when I was investigating it. The people at OpenOffice.org have released a version of OO with a cut down UI specially for the 7-12 age range, and taken steps with both teaching and technical staff to make it easily deployable and child friendly. Working in several primaries I've found Open Office to be okay with the Juniors but often a bit much for infants, so this simplified build is well received.

 

The suite includes versions of Calc, Draw, Impress, Math and Writer

and the project appears to be a well structured and considerably mature offering given it's young age. Have a look and decide for yourselves OOo4Kids

 

The installer unpacks an msi file which helps for AD GPO deployments, and the default installation drops such things like the user agreement and the registration splash familiar from the full OOo install which helps make it easier for us admins.

 

I've had a brief look at it over the weekend and I'm satisfied with it's stability and features. I just wish there was an EN localisation, but I guess we can't have everything for free... I'm going to deploy it live to 32 fizzbooks this afternoon. The school did the usual trick of spending all their money with a local boxshifter without consultation from the experts (ie., me) and then acted all surprised when they found out Microsoft charge for Office licenses... sound familiar?

 

I'll return with any problems etc if and when they occur.

 

Cheers folks, and respect to the people at ooo4kids.org :-)

[mwnci]

I have been looking at this, but not got round to deploying yet. It will be interesting to hear how you get on with this.

[GrumbleDook]

Good to see it is out. I'll pass this onto a few primary teachers in the area and see where it fits in with the local SoW.

[PiqueABoo]

and taken steps with both teaching and technical staff to make it easily deployable and child friendly.

 

This has cheered me up.

 

I'll return with any problems etc if and when they occur.

 

 

Yes please.

[GrumbleDook]

Just been told Green Park School Year Four Blog have been using it for a bit and love it.

[SimpleSi]

the local SoW

 

manglement - edugeek translation please

 

Si

[localzuk]

Schemes of Work I'd guess.

[GrumbleDook]

Not manglement ... EduLish ... for Scheme of Work. If you are going to look at this in schools (especially primary) then ask the teachers if it fits in with their scheme of work.

[SimpleSi]

Just tried out the portable version - gave sligh error when I tried to save an impress file

 

(and then carried on - but maybe not a V1 after all )

 

Si

[SimpleSi]

ask the teachers

ask the teachers????

 

ASK the teachers?????

 

I'm an edugeek - we TELL teachers - we don't ASK

 

Si

 

PS thanks for translation

 

And on serious note if it makes its easier to use "proper" word processing/presentations at an earlier age then it will be a winner (if school is already OpenOffice - would still have the MS factor to overcome in the others )

 

And with my quick 2 min look at OO4Kids version of impress - its the same prog with just bigger icons which might just do the trick - we'll have to see

 

Also re SoW - in primaries, office suites are used as cross-curricular tools and not really part of any SoW (although I've used Impress to implement the old QCA Y5 Graphical Modelling unit)

 

See - I'm bi-lingual

[PiqueABoo]

And on serious note if it makes its easier to use "proper" word processing/presentations at an earlier age then it will be a winner

 

Maybe. Sprogette's new Y3 class have been doing things with MS Word in a CCx school that decided against using RM's TFW, so it's the same one I use just with all the extraneous stuff locked out. No doubt some could use it earlier, but do they really need to learn do this in KS1 where they're a bit pre-occupied with teaching them to a) stop fidgeting, b) read and write the old-fashioned way?

 

if school is already OpenOffice - would still have the MS factor to overcome in the others

 

You don't have to replace the MSO they already have (everywhere here at least and typically 2003), perhaps just put it on the start menu as an alternative and see what happens. But in that scenario I would want it defaulting, maybe even restricted to MSO file formats so, as ever, how do you centrally configure it in a domain?

Edited September 28, 2010 by PiqueABoo

[Joe_Pineapples]

Well it's deployed to my Fizzbooks (v1's) over my 54g wireless pretty quickly, without any transforms or other tweakery; I didn't have the time to test more than the most basic installation because this school wants it done yesterday.

 

The software works fine without errors for both limited and admin users and installed cleanly. As mentioned previously, there's no splash screen or registration wizard by default, and this version of OOo works without the Java Runtime environment too which is nice.

 

There are mst files available for the standard version of OOo which set microsoft office file format associations to OOo, and I'm going to have a look at porting that mst file over to OOo4kids over the next few days.

 

To summarise, this stuff is basically OOo with larger icons and less by default as SimpleSi said earlier. This in itself is a useful thing as until the classic MSO layout was "improved" to the ribbon it was always a similar, but more useable interface than OOo's.

 

The other main advantage is the ease of deployment - it just works out of the box in a hassle free configuration and deploys quickly without error if you need it to work fast as I did. More like this please people.

 

Given the depth of material on the OOo4kids page, and the commitment to learning specific values they obviously have, I imagine that we'll see more value added in this prject for our schools over the next few increments.

 

 

@Jinnantonix: I'm not sure, and haven't had much time to look so I could be wrong but I think those are localisations for the standard OOo package only.

 

@PiqueaABoo: Apologies if I'm telling you what you already know... You can customise the .msi file by applying .mst "transforms" then deploy through Active Directory Group Policy for automatic installation. Alternatively you can script the install through startup scripts. These "transforms" change default settings in the msi file and alter the properties of the installation. Also possible is registry changes made after installation centrally managed through custom Administrative Templates (.adm files) also applied through group policy - these allow after - install changes and can target any registry setting you care to add to them. These are a standard feature of AD / Group Policy and not specific to OOo though. I'm going to have alook at making some of these if I need them, If I do I'll put them up on here.

 

I'll keep you all posted with any developments but I'm in other places for the rest of the week now. Cheers :-)

[glennda]

as its designed for 7-12 year olds i might deploy here for the teachers to use!!

[PiqueABoo]

Apologies if I'm telling you what you already know.

 

Just a bit, but explaining is good because someone else may not know.

 

To zoom in it looks to me like most (all?) of the config is in user Application Data folder XCU files which makes it a teensy bit of a pain i.e. want to change something and you've got to get updates into there. The only ADM mentions I can find googling are from "Open Office Technology" who appear to sell some kind of client that run on workstations at some point and presumably reads ADM settings and turns them into config file modifications for you (free for personal, otherwise not free). I suppose it's not the end of the world. I guess you can set some the initial config pre-installation with MSTs and thereafter can update it with a logon script or have user GPP copy over updated files, but when there is a well-known long standing standard native mechanism (registry/GPOs) having to deal with special cases is irksome.

 

--

 

I've only glanced so far but can't obviously see any piles of graphic resource's (Sprogette at least is very keen on dropping pictures of pink dolphins or whatever into their efforts). Am I missing something? If not is there somewhere you can go to get this kind of stuff?

[ericb2]

Hi,

 

First, thanks for your kind words

 

In fact, we do the changes following teachers recommandations.

 

Some features you could test :

 

- the cursive font "Ecolier", and "Ecolier court" shipped with OOo4Kids

- the annotation mode with Impress : you can write, change the Pen color, its size, select the Eraser, its size in presentation mode (we'll improve this feature early 2011)

- did you test the user level ?

Create an empty Writer document, Open the preferences ( Tools -> Options ) and change the user level -> the toolbars are modified instantaneously

- the prefs can be protected (prof is the default password), to avoid children doing mistakes

- the Wizard in Calc, proposes functions depending on the user level.

 

And so on (currently working on the new Writer Wizard -see our wiki)

 

Don't forget there is a portable version, and since a little while, an "adult" version named OOoLight ( see educoo dot us site).

 

 

 

--

ericb

[Joe_Pineapples]

Hi All

 

As discussed previously, I had a look at the .msi file in Orca and it's actually quite a simple job to associate MS Office file types - Go to the property table and set 'REGISTER_ALL_MSO_TYPES' to value '1' to enable the registration of file types and then further down in the property table there are switches for each individual file type (.doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx etc etc) ; set each of these to '1' to associate the file type.

 

I've attached a copy of my .mst file here; I haven't done much testing of it myself yet (so test before deployment, I take no repsonsibility etc etc) but it's based on the one supplied (and tested) for OpenOffice.Org 3.2.1 and all the entries targetted in the .msi database are identical in this version so I can't see any reason why it wouldn't work.

 

I agree with PiqueABoo, that the settings structure could be brought into band alot more easily through standardised registry / adm settings; I guess this is one of the limitations of the OOo parentage although we can hope for more development in this direction... although the OOBE is so close to readiness for use that this isn't as much a problem as it could be.

 

OpenOfficeTechnology are the actual reason I found OOo4Kids, I needed an office suite in a hurry and had no money for MSO. I deployed OOo3.2.1 and thought the add ons from OpenOffice Technology were a part of the OOo Stack for making life easier on weary sysadmins like myself - It turns out that OOT and their management and deployment tools are actually an attempt by Oracle to monetise their stake in Open Office after their acquisition of Sun Microsystems, and involves a not insignificant licensing cost. This wasn't made clear until I installed their product and found it popping up 'unlicesed software' messages on launch! I read their FAQ, wasn't best pleased, and then went back to the drawing board with OOo and found OOo4Kids.

 

EricB2, I assume you're part of the OOo4Kids team - if so then thank you for your time and efforts in this project. I have deployed this software in one school already and the response from staff that have used it has been overwhelmingly positive. I intend to deploy this both alopgside and as an MSO replacement in several schools that I support, with OOo321 for teaching laptops. I'm also writing a paper on OOo4Kids' suitability for widespread use within our Education Authority both as an improvement in provision and as a cost saving measure for schools which is a pretty hot topic atm (and might keep me in a job next year if they can still afford me ;-)

 

The Ecolier font is a great addition, and I presume it will be welcomed by many schools currently using licensed fonts (or even unlicensed ones..) to support their handwriting schemes.

 

I liked the user level changing, and the general functionality is still powerful despite the simplification of the UI. I have to say that some of the drawing functions are a bit hard to work out how to get to on a 1024*600 screen, as the menu goes off the bottom of the screen, but I don't think netbooks and tablets will be using this resolution for much longer anyway... shame my school didnt listen to me about choosing when to invest. Considering they're education institutions schools often seem reluctant to do any learning themselves :-)

 

Another point raised by PiqueABoo, which I thought myself upon installation could be a stumbling block to mass adoption - integrated Graphic/Clipart etc. I'm not that bothered for it myself but it's a bit of a sacred cow in primary school office apps and although it's not a dealbreaker I can see people complaining about a lack of it.

 

Eric, are there any plans to include an education specific image / clipart set for use with OOoKids?

 

TLDR: So far I've had no problems other than minor issues discussed here and am happy to consider this software suitable for mass deployment.

 

For those interested, please find attached .mst file for association of Microsoft Office file formats with OOo4Kids.

 

OpenMSOfficeFileTypes.mst

Edited October 5, 2010 by Joe_Pineapples