Grab Tux Paint, make a cool drawing, win one of 3 OLPC laptops, one of 10 Sugar-on-a-stick and other awesome prizes! The 2011 Tux Paint Summer Drawing Contest is sponsored by Worldlabel.com and is open to all children aged 3 to 12 who live anywhere in the World!

Lately, the trend of "Anyone can contribute" is taking a turn for the better as established developers and teams are looking at ways to help make it easier for kids to not only program, but contribute to the Free Software community at large.

Today, I'm going to discuss the Gcompris education suite. Gcompris is meant for younger children from 2 to 10 years old, though it seems to focus on the younger part of this range.

The Linux operating system offers an excellent learning opportunity for children, whether for educational software and games, programming, or general computer skills. Charles Profitt, a K-12 systems administrator, shares with SmartBean the nuts and bolts of introducing kids to Linux.

Looking for a wonderful image program for your children (or inner child)? Tux Paint makes a terrific addition to your family’s computer whether you are using Windows, Linux, or Mac.

As a parent of three young boys, I often think about what it's going to take to be competitive in the job market of the future. Obviously, they'll need solid reading, writing, math and science skills, with history, literature and art thrown in to make them well-rounded. Being a computer nerd myself, I recognize the value of even basic computer skills.

Many Windows users, for example, have spent decades learning and using the operating system: they don't want to be bothered with learning another. Those are fogies like you and me. Kids, however, are a tabula rosa.

The past couple of years have seen an explosion of open source programming languages and utilities that are geared toward children. Many of these efforts are based around the idea that, since the days of BASIC, programming environments have become far too complex for untrained minds to wrap themselves around.