[ubuntu-uk] Porting educational software, was serious advice

[Rob Beard]

Alan Pope wrote:
> Hi Rob,
> 
> On Wed, 2007-11-14 at 22:14 +0000, Rob Beard wrote:
>> Alan Pope wrote:
>>> I have ordered a couple of Asus Eee PCs, one for my wife to use and one
>>> for Sophie. I wanted to get something small and lightweight which runs
>>> "normal" software. I have just called the school to get a list of all
>>> the software that Sophie uses, and if it's any good I'll see if I can
>>> get it working under WINE, or get someone to write an alternative in
>>> python so everyone can benefit :)
>> I'd certainly be interested in getting involved with porting some of the 
>> old classic educational software to Linux.  I dare say some of the old 
>> BBC Micro educational software would be simple enough to re-create.  I'd 
>> like to have a go at porting Number Painter 
>> (http://www.bioeddie.co.uk/Spectrum/pnumpainter.htm) which I remember 
>> from school  have a go but I'm not very good with graphics.
> 
> I have received the list from the school and the first one I took a look
> at has an online demo. It's called "Smart Learning ICT (foundation)".
> 
> http://www.smartlearning.co.uk/catalog/samples-eyict.php
> 
> The demo is a flash based effort. I wouldn't be surprised if the full
> product was the same but with more content. If that's the case then of
> course it will be easy to get it running under Linux either using the
> non-free flash player, or test it under free players like gnash and
> swfdec.
> 
> Cheers,
> Al.

At least Flash and Java are multi platform.  I was talking to my other 
half about education games from when we were younger (when the BBC Micro 
was in just about every school) and she mentioned a game with a raven. 
Turns out it's Granny's Garden.  I did a google search and they still 
make it for Windows and Mac!  Not sure if they could port it to Linux 
(of course it won't be free, the Windows version is about £35 for one 
copy).  They're based in Barnstaple so the next time I'm up there I'll 
see if I can find out where they are.

I'm actually tempted to setup a BBC Micro emulator on my PC and let my 
kids have a play with the games that I used to play at school.  Maybe it 
might be an idea for a separate thread of what games everyone on the 
list can remember.  I vaguely remember one with a sunflower where if you 
got questions right (maths questions I think) the sunflower grew.

Rob