19 March 2009, 16:11

New version of the XO software released

Sugar Labs, the maker of the software for the XO laptop from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative, has released a new version of its open source Sugar Learning Platform. The new version of the desktop environment, designed for use by children, includes additional hardware support and new applications.

The release includes new collaborative applications, which Sugar calls "activities." An Activity named Mindmap is a critical-thinking tool that can create diagrams representing words and ideas around a central keyword. A Portfolio Activity allows teachers and parents to review a childs progress, while a Journal Activity offers automatic backup and a history of a students work which they can use to note and revisit past projects.

According to the Sugar Labs press release PDF , the Sugar computer environment is being used by nearly one million students aged five to twelve years old in over 40 countries. The software is available in 26 languages and is used as a native environment on the XO-1 laptop.

More details about the release can be found in the release notes. The new version is available to download now for the OLPC XO-1 laptop, as well as Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

(crve)

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