For people with English as a second language

[aglon 0]

Hi there!

I've been following the development of KerbalEDU with great interest, and I have some suggestions as to how to make it suitable for schools outside of countries where English is the first language children learn.

The first problem I imagine my students would run into are the difficult terms/expressions/concepts that are needed to understand the game (like thrust, aerodynamics etc.)

Now, you could just use a dictionary, or spend some time during one of their English-classes to learn the necessary words. The problem with this however, is that it'll take more time, which teachers are always pressed on, and some children might go "meh, i don't need this."

My suggestion: Highlight difficult words, and if you are to hover over them a tooltip will appear - explaining as easily as possible what it means. Another way could be to include an in-game dictionary of sorts, where clicking on any highlighted word would bring up a window with an explanation, both in text and (if needed) pictures.

To build further on this, you could allow individual teachers to edit (and share) this database or in-game dictionary - writing their own explanations in their own language for classes where the students are not particularly fluent readers of English.

I have no doubt the children will be able to build a rocket and fly it without fully grasping the different concepts, but to ensure a higher learning outcome I would want my students to understand why. In KerabalEdu language is the first barrier they would meet, and some will need more help getting past it than others.

I apologize if such a feature or something similar already exists. I have not yet tried KerbalEDU, I have only logged extensive hours in KSP.

[tutrakan4e 12]

I'd love to help on a Bulgarian language pack, to be honest. I do feel like that would be the better solution.

[FreemanLowell 0]

I would agree, language packs would be the end-all solution. But that's a hefty undertaking. I teach IT at an International school, so we're always struggling with challenging technical vocab. Moodle's glassary module behaves much like a wiki: students define words in their native language, and over time, the courses' most challenging words get translated. I wonder if there's an external wiki that could be "bolted in" or an inline translator that the programmers could connect to, as a mod? Users right-click a word and the chosen language definition loads.

[Gaarst 3,100]

Unofficial patches made by the community are already available for the full game in several languages and I know that Squad plans to add official language patches to KSP for the next releases (maybe as soon as 1.1). It is then likely that KerbalEDU will follow shorly after.

[Dafni 850]

Hit me up if you want a german speaker

[FreemanLowell 0]

Unofficial patches made by the community are already available for the full game in several languages and I know that Squad plans to add official language patches to KSP for the next releases (maybe as soon as 1.1). It is then likely that KerbalEDU will follow shorly after.

Wow! This community rocks!

[CaLVin-K 43]

SQUAD is adding additional language support to the base game in version 1.1 which should be out in the next 6 to 8 weeks, and out for the Edu version shortly thereafter.

[rodrigoelp 11]

I can contribute a bit with Spanish translations