LWN: Comments on "Desperate times call for Tux Paint (opensource.com)"

Tux Paint

bawjaws — Sun, 30 Jun 2013 11:15:28 +0000

I intended to introduce Tux Paint to my son and his school (in the UK) beat me to it. Was pleasantly surprised when he came home singing its praises.

One thing that it seems to lack is more "stamps". CC licensed sound and imagery has exploded in the last few years but despite searching I couldn't find anyone working to provide a central source of this type of specialised clip art.

I made my own in The Gimp, mostly from copyrighted material e.g. Toy Story, and it's a fairly simple process. I'd love it if there was a central place to find and donate free culture equivalents.

A pack of the display fonts that have appeared recently in places like Google Web fonts would be good too.

Desperate times call for Tux Paint (opensource.com)

dgm — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 11:16:39 +0000

It's clear that RM is as much a tool for teachers as a means for learning. Any such tool for teachers, specially public school teachers, is to be subject to concrete, local, and mostly arbitrary requirements.

Even if the subject is the same, tools for learning and tools for teaching are essentially different. The difference is analogue to that of a video player and a video editor.

Desperate times call for Tux Paint (opensource.com)

dlang — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 19:32:25 +0000

> The "holy grail" of computing education is/was the RPi this year,

management of all types (not just in education) looks for a silver bullet that they can just spend budget on and buy that will solve all their problems

They are very reluctant to acknowledge that whatever they buy is going to need support and expertise to use properly

so this doesn't really surprise me.

Desperate times call for Tux Paint (opensource.com)

ledow — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 15:50:36 +0000

I agree (and it was CDT in my day too - but not any longer).

However, that's not what they are being advertised, sold or bought for. Hell, Raspberry Pi is UK-based and they didn't even bother to grab a stall at BETT this year, just let suppliers push them out from their own stalls (and I saw precisely nothing of them on the second day). There's no support for teachers beyond some "community" support that is mostly geeks and hobbyists making their own projects out of them.

The "holy grail" of computing education is/was the RPi this year, even down to comments from the Prime Minister. And yet, it does nothing special and has no real decent educational support behind it. There are schools using them, the same way some schools use 3D printers or lathes. But the fact is that they are sold on almost a "magic" basis of improving student's computing skills (like interactive whiteboard, tablet computers, netbooks, touchscreens, digital microscopes, etc. before that).

And with IT in every corner of the curriculum now (so, yes, you do have to find a way to teach maths and even RE using IT in some way at some point), and the new IT curriculum pushing even more use of such fads, it's a slippery slope. But that's another problem entirely.

Desperate times call for Tux Paint (opensource.com)

ledow — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 15:44:28 +0000

I reckon it would take a lot more than you might think. Probably a couple of years of development with a programmer and maybe even an artist / design / human interface specialist to bring it all together, not to mention the acting on feedback from teaching staff.

If I was starting a business, I'd aim to sink about £100,000 into the first version of it. But, I'd probably make most of that back at the very minimum if I could sell it. To quote the RM Maths page (notice the 's', which is yet-another-problem with educational content - anything with an American "misspelling" is next-to-useless in the UK as most schools wouldn't want to risk deploying it and having parents complain):

"A single user licence costs just £299 or £284.05 if you buy online. Additional licences can be purchased at £159 or £151.05 when purchased online. Discounts are available for multiple purchases."

This is for a single maths program that school pay for, usually across their entire sites. But if you were to create one yourself, the problem is tying into the curriculum, and writing the program in such a way that it's not just a "maths test" / "maths game" kind of quiz (those are ubiquitous and pretty useless in an educational context - hell I've written a couple myself when schools asked).

What you're paying for is really, to quote the RM Maths pages again:

"Maths activities are matched exactly to each pupil's ability.

Each pupil spends 10-15 minutes a day working through activities matched to their ability, helping to build their confidence with Maths. Activities provide comprehensive coverage of Number, Shape and Space and Handling Data. No reading ability is assumed as full audio support is given.

The skills taught and practised in RM Maths are linked to the key objectives of the National Numeracy Framework and Scottish 5-14 Guidelines."

and

"At a glance progress reporting is available.

RM Maths provides comprehensive teacher reports of easily accessible information on individuals, as well as whole classes; hence it is easy to see at a glance, which objectives individual pupils have obtained.

A variety of reports and easy-to-read graphs allow you to monitor pupil progress and identify problem areas for both individuals and groups."

That's the bit that EVERY open-source educational software I've ever seen misses. Even things like GCompris.

Desperate times call for Tux Paint (opensource.com)

ewan — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 15:36:48 +0000

The point with the Pi though isn't that you're supposed to use it for teaching maths, you're supposed to use it for teaching computing. It fills the same sort of niche that a lathe does in a CDT[1] department, not that a textbook does - it's a thing you teach people about, not a thing that teaches.

[1] Given how rapidly educational terminology changes, I suspect that use of that term dates me pretty precisely.

Desperate times call for Tux Paint (opensource.com)

tzafrir — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 15:27:16 +0000

Can you give an estimated cost for writing a minimal version of such a RM Math clone that would be "self-sustained" (writing from scratch or adapting an existing free software package)?

And no, I don't think your right arm would get you much on eBay.

Desperate times call for Tux Paint (opensource.com)

ledow — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 14:30:13 +0000

As an IT Manager for schools in the UK, TuxPaint is primarily used to replace "RM Colour Magic" - a very expensive and ultimately quite similar commercial product from Research Machines who supply a LOT of UK school networks.

However, aside from that, TuxPaint is seriously lacking in curricular links, so any effort in that direction is very welcome.

Educational software does not mean "stuff that you or I could probably think of a use for that you could occupy kids with for 10 minutes" - it needs to specifically address stated curricular needs, as many as possible, as much as possible, with as much instruction as possible (and the UK ICT curriculum is being overhauled this year).

Almost all failings of open-source software in educational circles can be attributed to not understanding this (my latest bugbear is the Raspberry Pi which has turned into a hobbyist device with little educational use). Yes, I can use LibreOffice. Yes, I can use TuxPaint. But I'd give my right-arm for a decent, open-source equivalent of, say, RM Maths.

(Disclaimer: I've spent almost my entire working life throwing RM junk out of English schools. I have absolutely no need whatsoever to defend their products in anyway and can tell you horror stories about them. But the fact is, that's what you are competing with in a UK school).

Desperate times call for Tux Paint (opensource.com)

dskoll — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 14:19:29 +0000

Tux Paint is awesome! Another classic from Bill Kendrick is Circus Linux... check it out.

Desperate times call for Tux Paint (opensource.com)

ballombe — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 13:56:04 +0000

I like to thanks Bill Kendrick for all the nice free software games he wrote.