[IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Teaching typing and basic math on the XO (was: Re: How to Make Activity Designers Happy , Parts I and II)

[Edward Cherlin]

On Fri, Jan 2, 2009 at 4:20 PM, Wade Brainerd <wadetb at gmail.com> wrote:
> If you have used TuxType, you will know that it's a simplistic typing
> *practice game* and in no way teaches the user how to type.
>
> That said, there are typing programs out there that could work.  I just
> wanted to make a nice one for Sugar.

Learning to type in Indic writing systems, including Devanagari for
Nepali, is much easier than learning any Latin-alphabet keyboard. It
took me a month to switch from QWERTY to Dvorak, but only two days to
be able to type in Sanskrit (though not as fast).

The consonants are laid out in a logical order based on the work of
the ancient Sanskrit grammarians, with each of labial, dental,
retroflex, palatal, and velar consonant families having its own
column. Almost all vowels are under the left hand, and consonants
under the right hand. Orthography is extremely regular. Some of the
rules of English may not apply, such as word division. There is no
capitalization. Each of the Indic keyboard layouts is very similar to
all of the others.

I would like to get hold of Omar Khayyam Moore's Edison Talking
Typewriter program and rewrite it in a modern programming language. It
ran on an IBM 360 and taught three-year-olds to read and write on a
Selectric terminal with very little human intervention required.

> -Wade
>
> On Fri, Jan 2, 2009 at 6:55 PM, Sascha Silbe
> <sascha-ml-ui-sugar-devel at silbe.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 02, 2009 at 12:10:09PM -0800, Bryan Berry wrote:
>>
>>> The Typing Turtle will be immensely useful and immensely popular in
>>> Nepal. A typing tutor is one of the most frequently requested programs
>>> by the Nepali kids and teachers alike. Thanks alot to Wade for working
>>> on it.
>>
>> Have you tried TuxType/TuxTyping [1] and (a recent version of) TuxMath?
>> There's no XO bundle for them yet, but if they fit your needs, you might
>> try asking Albert Calahan. He seems to have done the TuxPaint [2] bundle
>> [3,5] (all three programs are from the same project - Tux4Kids [4]).
>>
>>
>> [1] http://tuxtype.sourceforge.net/
>> [2] http://www.tuxpaint.org/
>> [3] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Tux_Paint
>> [4] http://tux4kids.alioth.debian.org/
>> [5] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities/All
>>
>> CU Sascha
>>
>> --
>> http://sascha.silbe.org/
>> http://www.infra-silbe.de/
>>
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>
>
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