Ubuntu is used in primary and secondary schools around the world. It is an excellent education tool. Edubuntu is a officially supported derivative of Ubuntu that is customised for Education use. Detailed information about the Edubuntu project can be found here.
Edubuntu contains a large number of educational applications including GCompris, KDE Edutainment Suite, and Schooltool Calendar. Edubuntu is developed to enable teachers/lecturers with limited technical knowledge and skills to set-up a computer lab, or establish an online learning environment, in an hour or less, and then administer that environment.
GNOME Desktop
A default desktop environment on Edubuntu. It provides file managers, network browsers, menus, and system tools. Edubuntu also provides three different theme set-ups, 'young', for younger users, 'plain' for a clean desktop set-up, and 'default', which is a general purpose theme set-up.
OpenOffice 2.0
OpenOffice includes word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, simple vector drawing and web authoring applications. Plus many enhancements and new features, including Base, a powerful database front-end.
KDE Edutainment Suite
A collection of fun educational software that makes use of the KDE framework. Its primary focus is schoolchildren aged 3 to 18, and the specialised user interface needs of young users. However, there are also programmes to aid teachers in planning lessons, and others that are of interest to university students and anyone else with a desire to learn.
Gcompris
GCompris offers a huge collection of activities for the children in nursery/kinder garden, gently introducing them to basic computer use, then expanding to basic math, reading activities, and more.
You can download Edubuntu, or request a free CD from Canonical.
Visit the Edubuntu website to find out more.
System Requirements:
Edubuntu is available for PC architectures.
Installation requires at least 2.5 GB of disk space, a CPU of at least 1 GHz, and 256 MB of RAM plus an additional 128 MB of RAM per thin client (e.g. a server driving two clients should have at least 512 MB RAM).
