Windows-Linux Compatibility

There's a lot more Open Source Educational Packages available free and i would have to recommend using these instead where possible.

Assuming we are talking about children rather than advanced programming or other stuff for grown-ups ... There are even different distros aimed at making the computer safe, friendly, usable and educational for kids of different ages

Qimo for the very young
http://www.qimo4kids.com/
http://www.opensourcereleasefeed.com/interview/show/michelle-hall-on-qimo---linux-for-kids

Edubuntu for
http://www.ubuntu.com/products/WhatIsUbuntu/edubuntu

I would recommend installing these as a dual-boot (or multi-boot) alongside the existing Ubuntu and/or Windows. In addition there are many packages and even just from the standard repositories in Ubuntu (vanilla, not even Edu) try using Synaptic Package Manager (or Add/Remove Applications) from

System - Administration - Synaptic Package Manager

it asks for your normal user password, not your SuperUser/Root one. I prefer the search button in here because it searches in the 'descriptions' as well as in the titles so it allows me to be a lot more vague about what i am looking for.

However, sometimes you just have to use something made for Windows which shouldn't run in Linux but there are 2 main ways to run these easily. I tend to keep a dual-boot system so that i can go back into Windows when i switch my machine on
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot

But running stuff inside Linux is usually quite easy using "Wine" (stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator, as it uses a much more sophisticated approach to run stuff faster by avoiding adding an extra layer between your machine and the program) usually this is easy to use. Just put your Cd that's been made for Windows in the cd-drive and it should just work. However sometimes you need to put a bit of work into using the established Wine Tricks and they have a database of how other people have managed to get a huge list of different Windows programs to work in Wine. So just search their website using the tool at the top right
http://appdb.winehq.org/

Increasingly people are installing a virtual machine such as "Virtual Box" in order to install Windows onto that and have Windows completely contained within Ubuntu (or other distro) but this method seems to me to add at least 2 layers between the program you want to run and the machine so although much easier to use once setup it must surely be a lot slower than Wine. I haven't tried it tho and everyone i know that has thinks its fantastic lol

Both Wine and VirtualBox are easy to install through Synaptic :)
Hope this helps!
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Lol, i stayed well within the Ubuntu family for my last posting but there are many other distros aimed at providing educational and training environments. Most distros use Wine and VirtualBox if you really need to have Windows applications running :)