TuxPaint is very good and a good competitor to KidPix. PLEASE make it work well on the XO and on SOAS. Anecdote: When I spent a week in a Kindergarten with my XOs, only one of the machines had TuxPaint. (All the rest had been upgraded to the build turning Rainbow on, and at the time I didn't know how to disable this.) The kids vied to use the machine with TuxPaint. They were completely uninterested in paint. <div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 12:57 PM, Caroline Meeks <<a href="mailto:caroline@solutiongrove.com">caroline@solutiongrove.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Today I visited a computer lab at a school in Boston where 3-5 year olds (the PreK class) were using the computers in the computer lab. The teacher tried to get them to use Kidspirations to look at and stamp bugs but they rebelled. All they wanted to do was use KidPix. We need a paint program that is as cool as KidPix or we will suffer the same fate. They will turn off Sugar and go back to Windows to use KidPix! In Kidpix the students learned that they need to use the mouse and not the keyboard. By the time I left all students had managed to learn to use the mouse to make something on the screen. I saw some kids make the connection that they had done something with the mouse and it had appeared on the screen. Some were painting with colors, others were stamping with images. Some kids had learned how to erase the screen and start over. Clearly learning was going on. I thought to myself, "what would take this lesson to the next level for these students". I think, based on the interactions the teachers were having as they spent individual time with the students, that it would be valuable to these students to begin to tell stories about their pictures. It would be cool if the kids could record a voice note when they saved a picture in the journal. This could help the teachers move them towards telling stories about thier pictures. I think that would in turn motivate them to want to control what they did with the picture more. Our goal with the journal is to get kids to reflect on thier work. For many of the students in the age range we serve typing that reflection is going to be a challenge and we might well get more thoughtful reflection if they could speak it. -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove Caroline@SolutionGrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) <a href="mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org">IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org</a> <a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep</a> </blockquote></div> -- "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair