GCompris is a completely free educational software suite which contains a wide range of activities. It offers various activities aimed at covering a variety of fields such as the functioning of the computer, using the mouse and keyboard, general learning, reading, writing, foreign languages, algebra, as well as various activities such as memory and logic games, scientific experiments etc.
In GCompris you will find many individual software packages which together make up the complete GCompris suite of activities. Unfortunately, it is difficult to follow and maintain them as each one offers different graphic interfaces which vary widely in quality. The purpose of GCompris is to provide a development platform for educational activities. GCompris is part of GNU project and is placed under the GPL license.
Notes on the internationalization.
GCompris is internationalized and is available in more than 50 languages. If you want to check if your language is available, you can start GCompris and select your language in the option of configuration. Be careful, your operating system must support your language so that GCompris can use it. If you find a red cross while selecting a language in GCompris, this means that your system doesn't support it, even if a translation is available in GCompris.
On GNU/Linux, if your language is not available, select another language support on your distribution to add it. In most cases, you have to install an additional package 'locale-xx' or 'language-pack-xx' - xx is a language code such as 'En' for English –.
If your language is not supported, you can contribute to the software and add the translation of your language. If you are interested, you can contact the translation team of the Gnome project for your language.
You can check the level of translation for your language on the gnome web site.
Language learning.
You can use GCompris in a foreign language that you are learning. Select a foreign language in the configuration Menu. Don't forget to install the optional audio modules for this language in your GNU/Linux distribution. Windows' version is provided with all audio support that are available. Whilst using GCompris in another language it is possible to configure some activities more precisely using the audio set through the administration module.
Customizing activities.
Control Panels allow you to enrich the lexical content of activities to make them fit your needs.
vertical reading
missing letter
In the activities of reading or math, you can add your own lists of words or numbers, and thus adapt the content of the activity to your curriculum.
Configuration table of the activity of vertical reading:
- Default: Indicates the default language of the activity that can be changed.
- Language: selects the language of the word list.
- Level: indicates the level of difficulty and allows the display of lists that you can complete and / or modify.
Administering GCompris.
GCompris contains a very powerful administration module to assist in simplifying its use in schools. This module was designed to satisfy the many different ways of using GCompris in as simple a way as possible.
Activity selection.
Select an activity.
GCompris currently offers nearly a hundred different activities. It is not always sensible to offer all of the activities to children at once. One approach could be the introduction of the activities little by little as the children develop their skills. This will keep their curiosity alive and will avoid them losing time doing activities which may be too complex for them.
There are two different ways of selecting the activities :
Only the activities 2, 3 and 4 are selected
- By levels or intervals of levels. In this case, you use GCompris'levels (1 to 6 stars), You can choose a specific level such as 1 star, or an interval of levels - from 2 to 4 stars -.
- By activity. In this mode, you can tick or tick out each activity or all the activities of a same section.
Profile creation.
Editing profiles.
A profile permits the creation of a behaviour model of GCompris under a unique name. It is possible to create profiles without any links to users, groups or class.
If you want to use GCompris with children of different age groups, you can create a profile for each one. For each profile, you will be able to associate a set of activities.
For instance, it is possible to create a profile 'grade 1' or a profile 'grade 2'.
To launch the administration module, find the start menu on your desktop or on a command line with gcompris -a.
Using a profile.
Start GCompris with the option --profile 'my profile' :
gcompris --profile 'cycle 1'
To get the list of existing profiles :
gcompris --profile-list
Of course to simplify the start of GCompris in a particular profile, the easiest is to create a new launcher for your desktop and to associate it to a command that include the correct options.
Activity configuration.
The profiles exist mainly to specify a list of activities but you can also personalize the behaviour of each one whenever it is possible within the activity.
The activities marked with an icon 
User and class creation.
The classes and the users.
If you want to set up a personalized recording system, you can create a user profile for each pupil. This option will permit them to enter their 'user name' when they start GCompris. GCompris will then record a list of activities the pupil has attempted and show whether or not the pupil has completed it. GCompris is very flexible, you can group all the pupils in the default class if you don't use GCompris in several classes. You can also create classes without mentioning pupils. It will give you the possibility to define profiles for your classes.
Groups creation.
Creating groups.
A group is a number of pupils from different classes. It is an optional function, you can use GCompris, create users and define profiles without creating any groups.
The creation of groups will help you if your functioning mode is based on user groups which are composed of small groups of classes but also of groups of children from the same class or even of children who have not been associated to a class.
Reporting.
Trace usage for the children Jon.
Each activity lets appear a bonus image when the child has accomplished it or not. GCompris keeps in its internal base all the results for each child or for the default user.
You can display the results for all the pupils or for one in particular. A button allows you to erase all the records.
If you liked this article, subscribe to the feed by clicking the image below to keep informed about new contents of the blog:
0 comments:
Post a Comment