1 == Fri, Mar 12 - Interview with //Los Scratcheros// ==
3 || {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/caacupe/scratcheros/00008.jpg | maxwidth=480 | The "Scratcheros": Nadia, Benedicto and Alberto}} || {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/caacupe/scratcheros/00003.jpg | maxwidth=480 | A sugar "hack" (zoom in to see the ASCII art detail) }} ||
5 Today I spent some time with three siblings of Caacupe who has impressed me and the educators very
6 much with their original creations in Scratch. Scratch is not a school subject, these kids are
7 learning it on their own driven by their own passion.
9 * **What's your name?**
14 * **How old are you?**
19 * **How did you learn Scratch?**
20 * B: We tried all the functions. First, we'll try one function, and see what it does.
21 * N: Like he said, we experimented with all the functions and check the results.
22 * A: By looking at the animations of the games bundled with Scratch
24 * **What job would you like to do when you're done with school?**
25 * B: Software engineer
29 * **Do you like Turtle Art? What can you do with it?**
30 * B: Si. I can create rectangles and other geometrical shapes.
31 * N: Mostly geometric shapes
32 * A: Only basic shapes: square, triangle...
34 * **How much time do you spend with your laptop every day?**
36 * N: 6 hours, more or less.
38 * (Mother's note: they don't use the laptop enough in school!)
40 * **Nobody is teaching you, yeah? You're learning everything on your own?**
41 * B: No, with my sister. We try all activities, and when we find one we like, we spend some time on it together.
42 * N: I learned the basics of Turtle Art at the trainer's course.
43 * A: Yes, I learned it there too.
45 * **What other activities do you like besides Scatch and Turtle Art?**
46 * B: //Ablar con Sara// [Speak] and //Super Vampire Ninja Zero//, //Máquina de discos// (Jukebox).
47 * N: //eToys//, to edit photos. I need someone to teach me all the rest.
48 * A: //Grabar// (Record), to take videos, interview people...
50 * **What would you like to add to Sugar?**
54 * Mom: They need an automatic spell checker
56 * **What's the most annoying problem for you with Sugar?**
57 * B: Can't use the "robot" function in //Ablar con Sara// (
58 * N: I want bigger fonts in //Pintar// (Paint).
59 * A: //Escribir// (Write ;-)
61 * **Would you like to learn a little bit of Python with Pippy?**
64 Then Benedicto and I got started. Python is easy, you can explain the basics to a smart kid in less than 30 minutes.
65 I've shown him a few Pippy examples, describing the code briefly before running it, then making small changes to make
66 Benedicto grasp the possibilities. From his questions and comments, I'm pretty sure that he could figure out the
67 concepts despite my very poor Spanish fluency and my usual disorganized style.
69 We also updated Benedicto's and Nadia's laptops to [[http://oficina.paraguayeduca.org/~bernie/py-xo1/ | F11-XO1 Paraguay, build 65]],
70 which contains the latest release of [[http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/0.84/Notes | Sugar 0.84]]. Benedicto had been previously
71 testing my build 45, revealing some bugs in networking and activities.
73 == Mon, Mar 8 - Children like Sugar, for the wrong reasons ==
75 || {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/caacupe/cyber_nick/00001.jpg | maxwidth=480 | Cyber Nick, Fernando's XO repair lab in Caacupe }} || {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/caacupe/cyber_nick/00029.jpg | maxwidth=480 | Kids asking to install Sugar 0.84 in front of Cyber Nick's lab }} ||
77 A few days ago, Fernando the owner of the Caacupe XO support center, wrote (Google translation with some corrctions):
80 On March 8 2010 14:51, Raúl Gutiérrez Segalés wrote:
81 > How is the migration to Fedora 11 going so far? Approximate number
82 > of machines to date?
84 Raul, the truth that it's going smooth so far, the boys are very excited
85 about the new version, and the rumor is spreading fast.
86 I think so far my team updated 120 laptops, more or less.
89 I witnessed it with my own eyes: every day, children are lining up in front of Cyber Nick's
90 door early in the morning, and keep coming all day until the evening.
92 All of them ask for the new version, bui in interesting ways: a little boy said:
93 "Quiero poner ventanas coloradas" (I want colored windows). They're obviously referring
94 to the Gnome desktop, also known as "salva pantallas" (screensaver).
96 Another kid admired his freshly installed Gnome desktop and proudly declared: "Ahora tienen Windows!"
97 (now I have Windows). In Spanish, therre's no ambiguity on the meaning of the word Windoews.
99 Power of brand. It doesn't rmatter if it's the actual Windows, or even if it really does
100 something useful. It's new, it's colored and it's what adults are using. Oh, and it also comes
101 with a really cool screensaver.
103 Quick! Let's add all this crap to Sugar! :-)
105 Of course not, but could we do anything to appeal more to kids? By now, I think I've observed
106 our young users closely enough to be able to guess what they're really missing in Sugar:
108 <div style="font-size: large; color: red; text-align: center">
109 more configurability.
112 Yeah, dozen of scientific studies showed how users almost never customize the desktops beyond
113 setting a background image. Kids, however, are a lot more passionate about their precious
114 laptop than the average office clerk using Windows. They //do// cover the exterior of
115 their laptops with colorful stickers.
117 || {{pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/caacupe/escuela_691_profesora_gudelia_cabrera/00048.jpg | maxwidth=480 | Shy girls hide behind their Barbie-fashioned laptops }} || {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/caacupe/scratcheros/00003.jpg | maxwidth=480 | A sugar "hack" (zoom in to see the ASCII art detail) }} ||
119 Believe it or not, many of these kids also set their Home View with the random icon layout
120 (aka "the Negroponte layout"), because it lets them drag icons around and arrange them in
121 clever ways. I could take many screenshot to prove it, but I particulatily like this one
122 abusing Sugar's user name field to create a drawing on three lines. These kids do not live
123 in the middle of Silicon Valley; it is very likely that they rediscovered the technique
124 of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII_art | ASCII art]] completely on their own.
125 The original idea was passed along and successively refined by several anonymous artists.
127 Finally, what was the gray-scale palette supposed to mean in our UI? I was explained it once,
128 and it seemed to make some sense, but now I forgot. And, whatver the reason was, kids are
129 unlikely to agree with us.
131 Let's give our users a control panel applet for customizing colors as they wish, or they'll
132 switch to Gnome //en masse//. I can't blame them, either. What would you have done when
136 == Tue, Mar 02 - Charla @ Facultad Politecnica ==
138 Today I gave an opening talk at the [[http://www.pol.una.py/ | Facultad Politecnica de la Universidad Nacional de Asuncion]].
139 The title was "//Empoderar a los estudiantes con el Software Libre//" (//Empowering students with Free Software//).
141 * [[http://people.sugarlabs.org/bernie/sugar/slides/sugar-paraguay-v6-es.odp | Spanish, OpenDocument]]
142 * [[http://people.sugarlabs.org/bernie/sugar/slides/sugar-paraguay-v6-es.pdf | Spanish, PDF]]
143 * [[http://people.sugarlabs.org/bernie/sugar/slides/sugar-paraguay-v5-en.odp | English, OpenDocument]] (older version with fewer slides and some factual errors)
145 {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/facultad_politecnica/00043.jpg | maxwidth=640 }}
146 {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/facultad_politecnica/todos-son-maestros-y-alumnos.jpg | maxwidth=640 | Everyone is a learner and a techer}}
147 {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/facultad_politecnica/la-base-pedagogica-de-sugar.jpg | maxwidth=640 | The pedagogical base of Sugar}}
148 {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/facultad_politecnica/00048.jpg | maxwidth=640 }}
150 See [[pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/facultad_politecnica | all the photos ]] in my Codew'z photostream.
152 Note: I'm not really affiliated with MIT and I'm not even an engineer, but it's a flattering mistake ;-)