Software for education

The user interface and applications are based on a didactic concept that relies on Seymour Papert's and Alan Kay's later theories of constructive learning. Negroponte's ideas, which he has described in his bestseller "Being Digital", have also been implemented. Only open source software will be used on the XO both in terms of drivers and file formats. But the OLPC had to make one exception: the firmware for the WLAN controller is currently only available as a binary image. Otherwise, schoolchildren are to be allowed to change their system as much as possible. And that requires open code.

The BIOS is a LinuxBIOS with OpenFirmware. LinuxBIOS is licensed under the GNU GPL; the source code is therefore in principle open to everyone and can be edited. A streamlined version of Red Hat's Fedora Linux (kernel 2.6.19) is installed on the computers along with a graphical interface called Sugar developed especially for the OLPC. The language and fonts in the user interface and applications will be localized, as will the keyboard.

The Sugar user interface: the symbols at the bottom left open applications, while the circle in the middle shows which applications are already open, and the symbols at the top indicate modes of operation (solo or in the mesh network).

After booting, the project's X-shaped logo appears in the middle of Sugar. Once the mouse is moved towards the edge of the screen or a special key is pressed, a wide frame containing various symbols appears. At the top left, there is a circle with eight dots that stands for the group of all users currently in the mesh network. A circle with three dots symbolizes a group of people individually chosen. And if you click on a circle with only one dot, you can work alone with your own applications.

At the bottom left, the Sugar interface contains symbols that launch preinstalled programs. BTest-1 contains Mozilla as a browser, the drawing and experimenting environment called eToys, AbiWord for word processing, a type of memory game, and TamTam to experiment with sounds, melodies, and rhythms [2]. As soon as you have clicked on the image of a musical instrument, you can use the keyboard as though it were a piano to create sounds. This well designed music program also provides percussion accompaniment for your own compositions. In the future, the software package will also include a flash player and a multimedia/e-book reader.

The final version of the OLPC will probably also contain a variant of the Logo programming language developed by Seymour Papert. This concept is designed to allow young children to experiment and gather their first programming experience. The eToys environment is better for older pupils, while teenagers can work with Python.

EToys is closely linked to Squeak, a dialect of the object-oriented programming language called Smalltalk. Teachers, psychologists, and education theorists not only in the US, but in numerous projects in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria are looking into the possibilities that this open-source development environment offers in math and natural science classes. The name eToys, which is often used as synonymously with Squeak, designates an interface designed especially for children to allow elementary school pupils access to this programming language. It is very easy for them to animate objects they have drawn themselves and observe how the objects behave on the screen. In the process, they begin dealing with physics concepts of velocity and acceleration while they are playing.

Currently, the developers are working on a journal function they later want to integrate in AbiWord as an editor. Pupils would then be able to track their own steps in the journal. They would be able to find, for instance, a text they were working on yesterday morning by looking through their journal for that time. The journal would thereby make it unnecessary for users to select a folder for files to be stored in. Furthermore, the XO will also contain a chat and e-mail client.

The developers have uploaded numerous videos to such video stream websites as YouTube to present the look and feel of Sugar and the currently available applications. If you have VMware or QEMU on Windows, Mac OS, or Linux computer, you can even test drive Sugar yourself. The developers also offer free images of the current stock of software including instruction manuals [3].