History

This page explains the history behind Childsplay and Schoolsplay.

Past

Stas started working on Childsplay around October 2002.
Purely based on Python and PyGame it was very portable while still allowing nice activities.
In the beginning of 2006 Chris joined the project by making a new Windows installer.
This was followed at the end of 2006 by an OSX application bundle.

After some input from Markus Klein, who is treating people with Alzheimer, we noticed better data logging was needed. That could also be very useful for school activities.
This was not possible to incorporate into Childsplay, so a redesign of 'Childsplay' was started as 'Schoolsplay'.
From now on Childsplay was in maintenance mode, no new development was done anymore…

At the FOSDEM 2007 we noticed teachers wanted other tools to work with in their classes.
So the focus of the Schoolsplay project was changed again a bit: from providing dynamic activities like the ones found in Childsplay to more static activities in Schoolsplay.

April 15 marks the announcement of Stas that Schoolsplay was running on the OLPC laptop called XO olpc website
And since then a GTK frontend for schoolsplay is in development as OLPC uses GTK as it's toolkit.

Present

The XO runs Linux and uses a GTK based GUI. While working with it Stas noticed it was much easier to create static activities with GTK rather than PyGame, which is the toolkit used in Childsplay. Since the main purpose of Schoolsplay was (and is) making activities for schools we decided we would drop PyGame support in Schoolsplay!

But what about all those children using Childsplay with the PyGame activities? Would we leave them in the cold?

Of course not!

We decided to revive the Childsplay project and update it with the code of Schoolsplay.
So what do we have now?
We have a back end that allows data logging and for which we will make extra tools in OpenOffice Base.
We have two frontends, Schoolsplay and Childsplay_sp.
One frontend based on GTK in which we will write static activities in a toned down look. Combined with the back end this gives the Schoolsplay application suitable for use in classrooms.
And we have a frontend based on PyGame in which we will write dynamic 'fun and games' activities in a colourful look.
Combined with the back end this gives the Childsplay_sp application.
We are now working on a 1.0 release for Childsplay_sp and we expect to release it
before 25 December.

Future

After we have made a 1.0 release of Childsplay, we will start adding activities to Schoolsplay.

Other languages

DE

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