1 == Sun, Mar 14 - What are kids using Sugar for? ==
3 I'm finally back in Asuncíon. Over the last few days, I had the
4 opportunity to interview a dew dozen children who had been
5 using Sugar 0.82 for about one year. Perhaps the most interesting
6 and controversial finding was which activities are the most
9 {{podium.jpg|maxwidth=640|class=thumbright|The most popular Sugar activities}}
11 # [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_(video_game) | Doom]]
12 # [[http://www.pixelprospector.com/indev/2009/12/super-vampire-ninja-zero/ | Super Vampire Ninja Zero]]
13 # [[http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4024 | Navegar]] (Browse)
15 Heh, at least Browse made the third place, I thought. But when I
16 asked what websites they were visiting, the answer was invariably
19 Well, at the least I could tell they were answering honestly!
20 We often idealize our young users as being creative, passionate and
21 eager to learn just about everything. Some kids are really
22 like this, I met some in Caacupé. However, the naked truth is that the
23 vast majority would rather spend their free time playing.
26 === Those inappropriate games ===
28 {{http://diablobasher.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/doom01.jpg|class=thumbleft|The Ultimate Doom title artwork}}
30 It's no wonder kids like the game which, according to the Wikipedia, is "//widely regarded as one of
31 the most important titles in gaming history//". This is no exaggeration: the first 7 hits for the
32 common word "[[http://www.google.com/search?q=doom|doom]]" are about the game itself. Then come
33 the film adaptation and various fan sites.
34 Anyway, how can we blame kids for playing games? After all, many of us played
35 Doom and many other types of "inappropriate" video games throughout our childhood.
37 We quickly took Doom down from the OLPC wiki soon after it was uploaded,
38 yet it is still spreading fast among Sugar users worldwide. Let's look at the
39 positive sides: it shows social behavior and encourages kids to find technical
40 solutions to transfer activities directly (their old version of Sugar does not
41 allow direct sharing from the journal).
43 So, what to do now? Do we lock the entire system down so that kids could
44 only install applications that we approve? So much for the "child ownership"
47 Do we develop a couple of boring educational games, in the hope they will keep
48 our kids from playing the "//#1 game of all time//"? I'm sure that will work :-)
50 How about admitting defeat and giving them the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_WAD|level editor]]
51 too? It could redirect some of the existing passion towards learning about advanced concepts
52 of 3D graphics and game deisgn. Don't underestimate the latent creativity of gamers: over 13,000 original maps
53 were created for Doom by young artits of any age and nationality. Later games from ID Software included
54 a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuakeC | programming language]] which enabled users to create entire
55 new games with relative ease.
57 === Those inappropriate cartoons ===
59 {{http://www.shoemoney.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/blame-canada.jpg|class=thumbright|Still from South Park}}
62 What about the videos? The most popular video websites are
63 [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash | Flash]] based.
64 You Tube would work with [[http://www.gnashdev.org/ | Gnash]] as well,
65 but because the required video codecs are [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing_and_patent_issues | patent encumbered]],
66 we're not allowed to ship them in Fedora. Besides,
67 both Flash and Gnash are quite inefficient and would feel
70 So I am left wondering what solutions these kids came up with
71 in order to circumvent the technical limitations and watch
72 their favorite videos.
74 The coordinator of the education team got curious and asked questions.
75 It seems that some smart kids figured out how to rip videos from You Tube,
76 store them in the journal, and then play them back with some
77 [[http://www.olpcnews.com/software/applications/using_an_xo_laptop_a.html | clever hackery]].
78 We do not know the details of how this is done, but it is quite impressive.
80 === Passion-driven learning ===
82 Even though most kids are inclined to misuse our precious educational
83 technology for gaming and other mundane uses, in order to do what they want,
84 they seem to be acquiring pretty advanced problem-solving abilities
85 in a self-motivated and social way; in other words, the purpose for which
86 OLPC and Sugar were created.
89 == Fri, Mar 12 - Interview with //Los Scratcheros// ==
91 (photos courtesy of Carla Crosa)
93 || {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/caacupe/scratcheros/00008.jpg | maxwidth=480 | The "Scratcheros": Nadia, Benedicto and Alberto}} || {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/caacupe/scratcheros/1.00011.jpg | maxwidth=480 | Albertito, our youngest volunteer, helping one of our trainers }} ||
95 Today I spent some time with three siblings of Caacupé who has impressed me and the educators very
96 much with their original creations in Scratch. Scratch is not a school subject, these kids are
97 learning it on their own driven by their own passion.
99 * **What's your name?**
104 * **How old are you?**
109 * **How did you learn Scratch?**
110 * B: We tried all the functions. First, we'll try one function, and see what it does.
111 * N: Like he said, we experimented with all the functions and check the results.
112 * A: By looking at the animations of the games bundled with Scratch
114 * **What job would you like to do when you're done with school?**
115 * B: Software engineer
119 * **Do you like Turtle Art? What can you do with it?**
120 * B: Si. I can create rectangles and other geometrical shapes.
121 * N: Mostly geometric shapes
122 * A: Only basic shapes: square, triangle...
124 * **How much time do you spend with your laptop every day?**
126 * N: 6 hours, more or less.
128 * (Mother's note: they don't use the laptop enough in school!)
130 * **Nobody is teaching you, yeah? You're learning everything on your own?**
131 * B: No, with my sister. We try all activities, and when we find one we like, we spend some time on it together.
132 * N: I learned the basics of Turtle Art at the trainer's course.
133 * A: Yes, I learned it there too.
135 * **What other activities do you like besides Scratch and Turtle Art?**
136 * B: //Hablar con Sara// [Speak] and //Super Vampire Ninja Zero//, //Máquina de discos// (Jukebox).
137 * N: //eToys//, to edit photos. I need someone to teach me all the rest.
138 * A: //Grabar// (Record), to take videos, interview people...
140 * **What would you like to add to Sugar?**
141 * B: The "Snake" game
144 * (Mom: They need an automatic spell checker... and a **screensaver**, of course).
146 * **What's the most annoying problem for you with Sugar?**
147 * B: Can't use the "robot" function in //Hablar con Sara// (
148 * N: I want bigger fonts in //Pintar// (Paint).
149 * A: //Escribir// (Write ;-)
151 * **Would you like to learn a little bit of Python with Pippy?**
154 Then Benedicto and I got started. Python is easy, you can explain the basics to a smart kid in less than 30 minutes.
155 I've shown him a few Pippy examples, describing the code briefly before running it, then making small changes to make
156 Benedicto grasp the possibilities. From his questions and comments, I'm pretty sure that he could figure out the
157 concepts despite my very poor Spanish fluency and my usual disorganized style.
159 Nadia shows plenty of design talent: she uses Sugar to create short stories featuring her friends. She
160 cookie-cuts their photos and uses Scratch to animate them on fantasy backgrounds with music, sound
161 effects and text. Recently, she started creating line-art versions of the photos using eToys, so her
162 new creations look more like cartoons. At this point, Benedicto mentioned the [[http://htf.atom.com/ | Happy Tree Friends]],
163 an innocently named Internet series which makes even South Park seem politically correct in comparison!
164 HTF is Flash-only and doesn't seem to work with Gnash -- at least, we should be above any bigot criticism
165 for conveying "inapprorpiate content" to young hack^Wchildren.
167 Nadia also created a platform videogame in which a dog needs to jump around to find the way out from
168 each level, while a bouncing arrow chases him. Technically simple, but shows sensitive use of
169 game-design principles. I'm not sure if the code is entirely new or comes in part from pre-existing
170 Scratch games. It doesn't matter: in Free Software, remixing other people's work is the rule.
172 We updated Benedicto's and Nadia's laptops to [[http://oficina.paraguayeduca.org/~bernie/py-xo1/ | F11-XO1 Paraguay, build 65]],
173 which contains the latest release of [[http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/0.84/Notes | Sugar 0.84]]. Benedicto had been previously
174 testing my build 45, revealing some bugs in networking and activities.
176 || {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/caacupe/scratcheros/00005-game-written-in-scratch.jpg | maxwidth=480 | Perro Bros }} || {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/caacupe/scratcheros/00016-nadias-work-in-etoys.jpg | maxwidth=480 | Nadia's line-art image }} ||
179 == Mon, Mar 8 - Children want Sugar 0.84, for the wrong reasons ==
181 || {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/caacupe/cats/00001.jpg | maxwidth=480 | CATS, Fernando's XO repair lab in Caacupe }} || {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/caacupe/cats/00029.jpg | maxwidth=480 | Kids waiting to install Sugar 0.84 in front of the CATS lab }} ||
183 The owner of **Centro de Assistencia Tecnica y Soporte (CATS)**, the XO support center of
184 [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caacup%C3%A9 | Caacupé]], wrote:
187 On March 8 2010 14:51, Raúl Gutiérrez Segalés wrote:
190 > How is the migration to Fedora 11 going so far? Approximate number
191 > of machines to date?
193 Raul, the truth that it's going smooth so far, the boys are very excited
194 about the new version, and the rumor is spreading fast.
195 I think so far my team updated 120 laptops, more or less.
200 (Google translation with my manual corrctions)
202 I witnessed it with my own eyes: every day, children start lining up outside of CATS' door
203 early in the morning, and keep coming all day long, until the evening. All of them ask
204 for the new version, bui in interesting ways: a little boy said:
206 "//Quiero poner ventanas coloradas//" (I want to install colored windows).
208 They're obviously referring to the Gnome desktop, also known as "//salva pantallas//" (screensaver).
209 Another kid admired his freshly installed Gnome desktop and proudly declared: "//Ahora tienen Windows!//"
210 (now I have Windows). In Spanish, therre's no ambiguity on the meaning of the word Windows.
212 Power of brand. It doesn't rmatter if it's the actual Windows, or even if it really does
213 anything useful at all. It's new, it's colored and it's what adults are using. Oh, and it
214 also comes with a screensaver which makes it irresistible.
216 So, what do we do? Quick! Let's add a cool screensaver to Sugar! :-)
218 Of course not, but could we do anything to appeal to kids more than a traditional desktop?
219 I don't claim to be a pedagogist, but by now I've observed our young users closely enough
220 to be able to guess what they're really missing in Sugar:
222 <div style="font-size: large; color: red; text-align: center">
223 more configurability.
226 Yeah, dozen of scientific studies showed how users almost never customize the desktops beyond
227 setting a background image. Kids, however, are a lot more passionate about their precious
228 laptop than the average office clerk using Windows. They //do// cover the exterior of
229 their laptops with colorful stickers.
231 || {{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) }} ||
233 Believe it or not, many of these kids also set their Home View with the random icon layout
234 (aka "the Negroponte layout"), because it lets them drag icons around and arrange them in
235 clever ways. I could take many screenshot to prove it, but I particulatily like this one
236 abusing Sugar's user name field to create a drawing on three lines. These kids do not live
237 in the middle of Silicon Valley; it is very likely that they rediscovered the technique
238 of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII_art | ASCII art]] completely on their own.
239 The original idea was passed along and successively refined by several anonymous artists.
241 Finally, what was the gray-scale palette supposed to mean in our UI? I was explained it once,
242 and it seemed to make some sense, but now I forgot. And, whatver the reason was, kids are
243 unlikely to agree with us.
245 Let's give our users a control panel applet for customizing colors as they wish, or they'll
246 switch to Gnome //en masse//. I can't blame them, either. What would you have done when
250 == Tue, Mar 02 - Charla @ Facultad Politecnica ==
252 Today I gave an opening talk at the [[http://www.pol.una.py/ | Facultad Politecnica de la Universidad Nacional de Asuncion]].
253 The title was "//Empoderar a los estudiantes con el Software Libre//" (//Empowering students with Free Software//).
255 * [[http://people.sugarlabs.org/bernie/sugar/slides/sugar-paraguay-v6-es.odp | Spanish, OpenDocument]]
256 * [[http://people.sugarlabs.org/bernie/sugar/slides/sugar-paraguay-v6-es.pdf | Spanish, PDF]]
257 * [[http://people.sugarlabs.org/bernie/sugar/slides/sugar-paraguay-v5-en.odp | English, OpenDocument]] (older version with fewer slides and some factual errors)
259 || {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/facultad_politecnica/la-base-pedagogica-de-sugar.jpg | maxwidth=500 }} || {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/facultad_politecnica/todos-son-maestros-y-alumnos.jpg | maxwidth=500 }} ||
260 || {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/facultad_politecnica/00043.jpg | maxwidth=500 }} || {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/facultad_politecnica/00048.jpg | maxwidth=500 }} ||
262 See [[pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/facultad_politecnica | all the photos ]] in my Codew'z photostream.
264 Note: I'm not really affiliated with MIT and I'm not even an engineer, but it's a flattering mistake ;-)