On Sat, 2007-03-03 at 16:41 +0000, John McCreesh wrote: > On Sat, 2007-03-03 at 11:21 +0000, Ian Lynch wrote: > [snip] > > What would be useful is versions of the documentation targeted on > > younger age groups. If at some point a version of OOo that had a user > > interface designed for young children - fewer and larger icons, default > > font that was large and the type script kids use to learn to read there > > would be a massive market since many of these use specialist tools other > > than MS Office for this in any case. > > None of this sounds particularly difficult to do: > > Tools->Options->OpenOffice.org->View->Scaling > Tools->Options->OpenOffice.org->View->Icon > View->Toolbars->Customise > > And then prepare some simple documentation with screenshots from this > 'KidzOOo' > > Sounds like a good schools project to me?
Indeed. I'll ask around and see if I can get some of the Gold INGOT kids to do it as a project. > John > (totally ignorant of the education market) Some things that seem simple can be more difficult. In essence we could certainly get part of the way to KidzOOo by the approach above but we could hit unforeseen snags that only a specialist in teaching little kids would spot (I'm more 11-18 age group). But its worth trying and if I can get some of the INGOT students doing it, at worst it raises their awareness that OOo exists. I just heard unofficially that the INGOT certificates are going to be approved for school use from April which means that schools will be a lot more willing to do Gold INGOT projects in mainstream time as the certificates will count towards a school's position in the national school league tables. We need older more able kids to do these sort of projects and while we have had a good take up of the Bronze and Silver they are not designed to support community projects just to build capability in getting to that point. Eventually we will do a Platinum INGOT suitable for university entrance and these projects will then realistically tackle coding and give more flexibility but that is probably a couple of years off. One thing I can suggest students do is contribute to learning materials for OOo, eg devise a Moodle course for using OOo Writer. Moodle has around 1 million teacher users who are not by any means all users of OOo so Moodle would be a good vector for OOo marketing since it at least has got the idea of Open Source to a lot of people. So contributing to the Moodle community and the OOo community is good for both. Ian -- www.theINGOTS.org www.schoolforge.org.uk www.opendocumentfellowship.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
