Projects/Plasma/Education

See this blog entry for what this page is all about. In short: design concepts and requirements for a Plasma layout for educational needs.

Try and keep thoughts in logical groups, and if there is discussion be sure to include your name with your thoughts.

Desktop Activity

Because computers in schools are scarse, most of them are shared by several students at several moments. It would be nice if the desktop recognizes the user that is logged in, see to what group the user belongs (6year old, 7year old etc) and then shows a desktop that is best suited for this student. One can think of the following changes in the desktop:

-application icons for this student/group to start applications with one click (touch?). Only the applications are visible that are needed for this specific student/group

-wallpaper adapted to this student

-font sizes (6 year old need bigger fonts then 12 year olds)

-number of desktops (one desktop for a 6year old, 12year can have multiple)

For this to work there should be a possibility for a teacher to set the application per group (or even per student). As a teacher you can prepare the lessons in the evening by installing the icons and the only thing the students needs to do next morning is login and click the applications that are available.

Panel

as stated before the panel complexity should be adaptable to the capabilities of a student/group. Think of:

-number of available desktops

-shortcut buttons to common applications (firefox, or a browser targeted to small children)

-font sizes

Problems with Current Desktop

- KDE menu is very long and complicated looking, especially having 2x system and 2x settings. Try to find Konsole in one shot!

- Some Edu apps are buried under incomprehensible menu entries for younger kids (eg. edutainment/miscellaneous/)

- Kids very easily "damage" the panel - delete or move K button, move the whole panel to the side. I see this a lot.

- Minimised apps are too faint on the panel, and kids log out leaving them open. This leads to problems with OOo or Iceweasel "already running" errors.

- The open/save dialogues of non-KDE apps are different, using double-click, "browse for more folders", and other Gnome-isms that cause confusion.