GCompris in the media

Find also references in French

• 2013/08 GCompris Braille in a school for blind people (At the 10th minute we can see GCompris)
• 2012/01 (EN) GCompris teaches basic computer skills such using the mouse and keyboard, reading, memory training, all kinds of science, geography, math, reading, how to tell time, how to draw cartoons, puzzles, understanding money, games, and even Braille training. (Linux, Mac, Windows.)
• 2011/11 (EN) In a unique initiative, the IT@School project will introduce specific ICT training programme based on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) for students who require special attention. This training programme is being developed entirely on FOSS based application, GCompris.

• 2011/11 (EN) The site educational-freeware mentions that one of the most important things for new parents is to make sure that their children have the best advantage when it comes to education:

That usually means offering the young child a nurturing environment that includes the sort of educational tools that child needs to foster strong mental development. Some of those tools include toys that encourage problem solving and analytical skills, but in other cases the tools can actually include software that you run on a computer.

At a very young age, children can learn to use a computer. There are reports of toddlers as young as 2 to 3 years old using a computer in a productive and educational way. Sometimes the accessories, like the keyboard or mouse, have to be modified to accommodate the needs of a toddler, but it is more than possible to use the computer as a learning tool, even at that age.

There is one free educational software package called GCompris, that seeks to train very young children in subject areas like puzzles, using the computer, word and object recognition and even mathematics.

• 2011/07 (EN) The 10 best open source apps you never heard of: The GCompris suite of teaching games is designed for children, but it is also fun and useful for adult beginners. It has activities that teach computer basics such as typing and using a mouse, brain trainers, arithmetic, math, and geometry, geography, puzzles, and many more that exercise the brain in fun, challenging ways. This is a first-class suite of activities that continues to grow and expand. (GPL, Linux, Mac, Windows.)
• 2011/06 (EN) GCompris: A software for specially-abled child:

KOCHI: The parents of specially-abled children can now heave a sigh of relief. In what could be called as a highly-innovative approach through the cyber platform, a Thiruvananthapuram-based free software group, has come up with a collaborative tool - ‘GCompris’ - which can improve the holistic development of specially-abled children. “GCompris is basically a free and open source based software, which is an educational tool for the children. We could successfully extract another innovative use of the tool. We have found that it can be adapted a bit more to support the development of cognitive and motor skills of the autistic and specially-abled children,” said Arun M of the Society of Promotion of Alternate Computing and Employment. It has been pointed out that computer-based education for training and development of autistic children has already been accepted. “Use of G compris for the same may be an innovation. This program allows them to gain social skills and develop communicative ability,” officials said.The Kerala State IT Mission with the support of SPACE has been implementing a programme called ‘Insight’ to bring the benefits of ICT to mentally-challenged students. The tool G Compris is available as part of this mission. Already SPACE has begun making use of the tool for the development of differently-abled children. “We have been using the tool G Compris, developed by a French team under Bruno Coudoin, for the Insight programme. “Based on the feedback that we received from implementing the tool for specially-abled children, we prepared a handbook called ‘Breaking free’.” The handbook speaks in detail about how the tool can be used, the method of implementation and the time frame. The manual further says how the educational tool can be effectively used for the autistic children,” said James P Mathew, project coordinator, Insight. He also pointed out that the software could be used for similar purposes by other institutions for which Insight would provide free technical assistance. Although it is a free and open source software, the same tool has been made for Windows platform also. As part of the Insight programme 44 differently-abled students are taught using the tool.

• 2010/12 (EN) An article about choosing Computer Tools. Tiny Geeks mentions:

  Kids are exposed early to computers nowadays, and those who carry the geek gene soon show their true colors. What are some good tools and approaches to nurture their interests? I have not seen anything better than GCompris for the younger children," blogger Robert Pogson suggested. "Once they have learned a few uses for a mouse, they are good for many hours of entertainment."

• 2010/07 (EN) June 2010 DistroWatch.com donation: GCompris receives €275.00
• 2010/06 (EN) GCompris in a school in Asia. Not sure in which country it is exactly.
• 2010/06 (Thai) [1]. A description of GCompris with pictures of children using it.
• 2009/11 (EN) Learning with Gcompris. A very nice review of GCompris. The author Mike Diehl concludes with: "When I set out to write a review of Gcompris, I sorely underestimated just how much material there was to write about. I actually intended to cover each activity, even if it was covered only briefly. However, Gcompris has a LOT of learning activities for children. Most of the activities are very well done. Many of the individual activities are written by different authors, but they all integrate into a seamless whole. Having more fully explored this program, I'm anxious to get my younger children started with it and I highly recommend it to any parent of young children.".
• 2009/09 (EN) An [2] article talking about GCompris usage in the Indian state of Kerala. The article mention that Educational software such as GCompris and programming interfaces such as Scratch have been found to be very useful in building the learning capabilities and communication skills of autistic children.
• 2009/09 (EN) I always thought that choosing GCompris after the French sentence "j'ai compris" which means "I got it" was a bad choice. Given the international audience an English based named would have probably easier for all to remember. So that was a shock to see GCompris being listed in the article Five Cleverly Named Ubuntu Applications. After all the GCompris name was no a so bad choice.
• 2009/09 (Thailand) Nice pictures of children using GCompris in Thailand
• 2009/01 (EN) Alton Convent - low-cost computer suite. Using Edubunu Linux and thin client workstations, Alton Convent Prep rejuvenated its ICT provision by providing an 18 seat computer room with an impressive range of desktop applications for under £3000.
• 2008/11 (EN) Child’s Play: Linux Conversion Through Education. One of the most intriguing games in this suite is Canal Lock. In this game, shown in Figure 4, you help Tux navigate his way through a series of Canal Locks. This teaches the child how Canal Locks, like Suez and Panama, work by raising or lowering a ship on one side of the canal to the ocean on the other side.
• 2008/10 (EN) Foresight Kid's can inspire young minds. In this review of the Foresight GNU/Linux distribution, the reviewer tester GCompris with his daughter and report: With GCompris, kids aren't aware they are learning -- they are just having loads of fun. I saw improvement in my granddaughter's understanding of color shading relationships, keyboard letter and number placement, addition concepts, elementary physics, and more in just one weekend.
• 2008/08 (EN) Software for kids... tutorial from Aren: Aren (5) explains the goodies that come with the GNU/Linux operating sytem, from a kids point of view… specially Gcompris, some games and more. [3] or [4]
• 2008/08 (EN) 25 killer Linux apps, The very best software for your Linux machine. It's very exiting to see GCompris being listed in their top 25.
• 2008/08 (EN) iTWire said: There are a rich suite of components making up Edubuntu. For me the standout was GCompris which consists of many fun activities involving mathematics, science, geography, reading and spelling, memory development and more.
• 2008/05 (EN) 42 More of the Best Free Linux Games. This is a compilation of the Best Linux Games and we are proud to see GCompris is included in this second list: In response to our request for users' thoughts on their favorite Linux games, we received, as anticipated, a flood of emails. Hundreds of games were recommended for inclusion in this compilation, with a few people eulogizing at great length why a particular title could not be omitted. To say that strong emotions were stirred by our previous '42 of the Best Linux Games' feature is an understatement! After careful deliberation, we have whittled down the recommendations to a list of 42 more highly compelling Linux games, trying not to focus unduly on any one particular type of computer game genre. Hopefully, there should be something of interest here for all types of gamers! All of these games are great fun to play.
• 2008/05 (EN) How to Make Open-Source Work for Education. Just compare the large number of individuals that contribute to the GNU utilities, the Linux kernel, Perl, Python, etc. Emacs has 119 core contributors while the fantastic GCompris has only two core developers, a program that I believe is even more important than the world's second greatest code editor/operating system. There are WikiJunior, Simple Wiki, and Schools Wikipedia but these projects are tiny compared to the Wikipedias of many languages. This is a crying shame.
• 2008/02 (EN) A Child's Experience With the OLPC XO. A nice review of a little girl discovering the OLPC XO laptop. One remark on GCompris: "I do have one complaint about the GCompris puzzles. Once the child finishes the puzzle, it almost immediately disappears, and there is no chance for them to appreciate some of the world's great paintings that comprise the puzzles.". It's true, we need to fix that.
• 2008/02 (EN) GCompris demoed at south california Linux expo. An eclective collection of learning games. Some games are strange. Online help is not good for children. By far the nicest suite. It could use help from educators to improve some things. Lets you to turn off the irritating music, which Steve likes.
• 2008/01 (ES) Presentation of GCompris on colegios on line colombia. GCompris Software Libre para Uso de los Colegios.
• 2008/01 (EN) GCompris is not specifically mentioned but they probably use it. 23,000 Linux PCs forge education revolution in Philippines
• 2008/01 (AR) Buanzo from Argentina posted a video of his 4-year-old son playing and learning with gcompris for the first time.
• 2008/01 (EL) Yannis talks about GCompris in Greek in his blog. There are other free software useful in education being mentioned.
• 2008/01 (EN) We are informed from this blog that the homeschooler paper magazine presented GCompris in it's column. The blogger reports: "The software that caught my eye was 'Gcompris.net', the free educational software package that features activities for children 2 - 10. There are hundreds of games available to teach your child math, science, geography, reading, time, and even chess. This full featured software was created to be used on the Linux platform and although the Windows version is stripped down, it is still worth a look!".
• 2007/11 (EN) 49 Open Source Projects in the Spotlight. Glag to see GCompris listed in the educational section.
• 2007/10 (RU) GCompris in a classroom in russia
• 2007/10 (PT/Brazil) GCompris usage presented in the Parana area.
• 2007/10 (ES/Chile) GCompris is referenced on a site dedicated to education in Chile.
• 2007/10 (EN) Progress report for deployment of the KDE based mEDUXa distribution in the Canary Island in spain. Of course, they also provide GCompris.
• 2007/09 (EN) An interview of Bruno on Blue Gnu. It talks about the 8.4 release and the project history.
• 2007/08 (EN) Sirius Corporation explain why its better to run your school network and your computers with Free Software. Of course, they do mention GCompris for primary schools.
• 2007/08 (EN) An interview of Bruno by Ars Technica
• 2007/07 (EN) The Center for Quality Teaching and Learning of the Colombus State University references GCompris and mention it as a high quality educational software suite.
• 2007/07 (EN) 35 Cool Applications to install on Ubuntu 7.04. It's nice to see GCompris being listed in these 35 applications.
• 2007/06 (IT) A GCompris presentation.
• 2007/06 (EN/UK) Kids say "Thanks Edubuntu!". If you look carefully, you will see that the 2 computers are running GCompris.
• 2007/05 (EN) openSUSE to compete with Edubuntu?.Like Edubuntu, the openSUSE initiative also has a standalone desktop component and desktop feature set geared towards a wide range of educational needs. Specific applications to be included are the usual suspects (Gcompris and KDEedu).
• 2007/04 (EN) H I T - Hokanson’s Instructional Technology mentions: "I have been fiddling around with an Edubuntu 6.10 install for the past few months. Edubuntu comes with a superior educational program with applications for young children called GCompris."
• 2007/02 (ES) Software abierto, libre y gratuito en la escuela de Sahún, in Aragon Spain.
• 2007/02 (EN/Indi) Ravishankar Shrivastava's Blog presents GCompris as 'The best free edutainment software for your kids'. We also learn from his blog that Ravishankar does a lot to localize free software in Hindi.
• 2006/11 (ES) mEDUXa is a Free Software GNU/Linux distribution developed for educational purposes that is part of the MEDUSA project. It will be deployed in 35,000 computers distributed in 1100 schools, which represents 325,000 possible users (25,000 teachers and 300,000 students).the Canary Islands state schools. The project includes GCompris.
• 2006/11 (EN US) Knox Community Elementary uses GCompris with their Kindergarten classroom. Find here and here the classroom in action.
• 2006/10 (EN) A CDROM compilation of free software for windows that include GCompris.
• 2006/10 (CA Catalonia) lafarga informs us that a pilot of a new school GNU/Linux distribution will start with 20 schools. The distribution includes GCompris, the distribution is named LinKat.
• 2006/10 (EN UK) A non profit organisation organised a fest around a school. They provided recycled computers to the school. The computer are installed with Edubuntu which includes GCompris. Kids say "Thank you (Ed)Ubuntu Team".
• 2006/10 (EN US) The cape organisation propose GCompris in their guide "Helping teachers and students learn the cutting-edge skills that power an information economy.".
• 2006/10 (IT Italy) GCompris is presented on the Indire web site. Indire is the official institute for innovation and educational research in Italy.
• 2006/10 (PT_BR Brazil) The site DICAS-L has an article presenting free educational applications, including GCompris.
• 2006/10 (CL Chili) Educalibre project provide LTSP GNU/Linux based solution for schools in Chili.
• 2006/10 (CA Quebec French) MILLE, Modèle d’Infrastructure de Logiciel Libre en Éducation, a pour but de réduire les coûts d’acquisition et de maintenance des infrastructures matérielles et logicielles. GCompris est proposé.
• 2006/10 (EN US) The six branches of the Howard County Library system in Maryland provide 300 computers to their clients. This week, every computer has been upgraded from a "homegrown" Linux kernel, to Groovix, an Ubuntu Linux derivative. Guess what educational software they propose.
• 2006/09 (EN/India) The southern Indian state of Kerela is in the process of migrating all computers in its 12,500 high schools from Windows to Linux. Of course, they use GCompris.
• 2006/09 (ES) GCompris is referenced on the official web site of the Education and Cultural concil of the Spain Region of Murcia. They mention us in the list of available Educational software.
• 2006/09 (Turkish) Description of some activity on this Turkish portal.
• 2006 (EN) Ordissimo, a French computer maker who claim to have built the simplest computer on earth includes Tuxpaint and GCompris. The computer runs GNU/Linux and has a very simplified user interface. They target seniors not willing to learn how to fight windows viruses.
• 2006/09 (PT_BR Brazil) Gcompris is an excellent program, not only for educators but also for the parents who want to use its potential with their children, stimulating them in the efficient use of the computer in house. See the full post on the Jenny Horta blog.
• 2006/09 The article intro is "Demonstrating that learning is best when it is fun, the GCompris educational suite offers a wide variety of pleasurable activities for children everywhere.". A very complete article in Tux Magazine Issue #17.
• 2006 (ES Colombia) Within a slide presentation of different software used by the Gimnasio Fidel Cano, there is an introduction to GCompris.
• 2006 (Flemish) On a web site supported by the Flemish Department of Education, there is an instruction on how to use GCompris in a classroom.
• 2006/08 (EN Mali) Geekcorps did set up a Skolelinux system and they conclude: After some initial skepticism people realized the solution worked and that the system could perform like a modern computer. The most appreciated software installed included a local Wikipedia mirror, and the computer learning game “gcompris.”.
• 2006/08 (EN South African) In tectonic online magazine: Easing kids into free software. I really want to discuss my daughter's favourite, GCompris. I came across this comprehensive educational package on a magazine coverdisk, and tried it out. What a bundle of fun learning games in one package! GCompris caters for children from ages three and up (to about 14 I would say)...
• 2006/06 (EN Egypt) A report of GCompris being used in Upper-Egypt. We really need an updated Arabic translation.
• 2006/06 (CS Czech) A very complete overview.
• 2006/03 (BR Brazil) A computer training using GCompris
• 2006/01 (EN) A presentation given by the Morris Brandon teachers. They explain how Free Software and GCompris is used in their school.
• 2005: A GCompris booth during a LUG event in Germany