I am a researcher at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). My main work in software automation and educational tools. The project I coordinate is LABASE(Laboratory for Software Automation and Engineering) (mainly in portuguese). My country (Brazil) is participating in OLPC initiative that has adopted Python as its main development language. I think this is a major opportunity to Python language to get known and get widespread within honourable cause. So I have started Pyndorama, a project to develop educational programs. One important thing to understand in OLPC development is that it is not just Python in Education but also Education in Python. The big challenge is to develop software that a teenager can read, understand and modify. Children will be educated in programming through Python. Keep this in mind and be gentle and welcoming while programming. Show it to your little brother or sister and see if they can figure out what are you doing.

You can contact me, my username is carlo, the domain ufrj.br

Some ideas below:

• Live Book - A book that can be edited interactively and turn into a live adventure - You can look in:

  • P.A.W.S. http://members.nuvox.net/~zt.wolf/PAWS.htm

• Game editors - Game creation software to turn educational content into a pleasant adventure. Many flavours can be developed, textual, graphics, collaborative, etc. you can search in:

  • Authoring Systems - http://www.alcyone.com/max/links/if.html#Authoring__authoring_systems

  • discussion - http://www.thescripts.com/forum/thread27164.html

  • list (choose and port) - http://members.tripod.com/~virtual_cat/games/complete.html

• Clever content editor - Content editor integrated with Google and other web resource engines to provide searches, pictures, definitions, semantic sets, thesaurus etc.

  • something like GMail + AdSense but instead ContentSense, it picks the words from the text and put suggestions by the sidebar

• Mind map editor - Children can be taught to express their ideas in an orderly way.

  • Gimini - http://gimini.sourceforge.net/ (must port to gtk for OLPC)

  • Labyrinth - http://www.gnome.org/%7Edscorgie/labyrinth.html (integrate into Pyndorama + web)

  • Bubblus - http://bubbl.us/ (nice web one. Can be done with pyjamas?)

• A python IDE for children - Current IDE may be frightening to children, they need a more friendly one.

  • A porting of http://bluej.org should be great

  • Rur-Ple (http://rur-ple.sourceforge.net/). (more phocus on OO + bluej diagrams)

• Artificial Life Word - An artificial life simulator that can be played with to create new lifeforms and see them interact with the world

  • Cage http://www.alcyone.com/software/cage/ - (needs an authoring system to create the agents + GTK)

• RPG module for Pyndorama - A module to introduce role playing facilities to Pyndorama Live Book

  • https://eduforge.org/projects/gameflashobjs/ (porting)

• Dynamic Systems Modeller - An editor that can model dynamic systems and help children understand the dynamic nature of our world
  • JLinkit (UFRJ) - needs porting from Java
• Simple natural language parser - A constrained dictionary/grammatics to use in Life Book adventures

  • Py-Universe http://py-universe.sourceforge.net/ (integrate with others above)

  • Hugo - http://www.generalcoffee.com/hugo.html (porting?)

• Class assistant - A tool to help generate educational contents like lectures, texts, hypertexts, videos or animations
  • Pii, Acadia (UFRJ), needs porting form .NET and JAVA

  • Fle3 - https://eduforge.org/projects/fle3/ (remove bloat for OLPC)

• Animation assistant - help to create illustrative animations for educational texts

  • VPython - http://vpython.org/ (needs authoring tools)

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