tux4kids.github.io

Tux Typing

About

Tux the penguin is hungry, and loves to eat fish. But Tux can only catch the fish if you type the right letters in time! Can you help Tux?

In Fish Cascade you control Tux as he searches for fish to eat. Fish fall from the top of the screen. These fish have letters on them. Unfortunately for Tux, eating a fish with a letter on it will cause his stomach to become ill, so it is up to you to help Tux eat fish! By typing the letters, it will cause them to disappear so Tux can chow down on the fish.

In Comet Zap you control Tux as he defends the cities from comets. To protect a city from a comet, type the letter on the comet and it will cause Tux to destroy it with a laser! (In case you wondered, Comet Zap is an adaptation of the great math drill game, “Tux, of Math Command”).

Additional activities

“Lessons” and “Phrase Typing” are additional typing activities. These features are not yet completed, but represent ways to add additional “content” without requiring more programming per se.

“Phrase Typing” involves typing of phrases or complete sentences, with measurment of accuracy and typing speed. The current phrases in the default (English) theme are a collection of pangrams (sentences with all 26 letters) as well as some well-known quotes from public domain literature. At some point we will make this easy for teachers to modify, so sentences related to a current study topic might be used.

“Lessons” uses XML-based scripting to run various other parts of the program in a specified order, including the “Practice” activity. As of version 1.8.0, the default theme for Tux Typing now has a substantial collection of finger exercises (“basic_lesson_01” to “basic_lesson_43”) that progressively introduce the keys on the keyboard.

You can read the full README on GitHub.

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