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 # [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_(video_game) | Doom II]]
10 # [[http://www.pixelprospector.com/indev/2009/12/super-vampire-ninja-zero/ | Super Vampire Ninja Zero]]
11 # [[http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4024 | Navegar]] (Browse)
13 {{podium.jpg|maxwidth=640|class=thumbright|What are kids doing with Sugar?}}
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 It's no wonder kids would like a game which is "//widely regarded as one of
29 the most important titles in gaming history//", according to the Wikipedia.
30 The first 7 hits for the common word "[[http://www.google.com/search?q=doom|doom]]"
31 are about the game itself. Then come the film adaptation and various fan sites.
32 Anyway, how can we blame kids for playing games? After all, many of us played
33 Doom and many other types of "inappropriate" video games throughout our childhood.
35 We quickly took Doom down from the OLPC wiki soon after it was uploaded,
36 yet it is still spreading fast among Sugar users worldwide. Let's look at the
37 positive sides: it shows social behavior and encourages kids to find technical
38 solutions to transfer activities directly (their old version of Sugar does not
39 allow direct sharing from the journal).
41 So, what we going to do about it? Do we lock the system down so kids could
42 only install signed applications? So much for the "child ownership" principle.
44 Do we develop a couple boring educational games, in the hope they will keep
45 our kids from playing the "//#1 game of all time//"? I'm sure it will work :-)
47 No, we give them the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_WAD|level editor]] too,
48 channelling some of this passion to learn the concepts of 3D graphics and game
49 deisgn. Over 13,000 maps were created for Doom by young artits of any age and
50 nationality. Newer games from ID Software enabled users to create entire new games
51 through an embedded [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuakeC | programming language]].
54 === Those inappropriate videos ===
56 What about the videos? The most popular video websites are
57 [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash | Flash]] based.
58 You Tube would work with [[http://www.gnashdev.org/ | Gnash]] as well,
59 but because the required video codecs are [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing_and_patent_issues | patent encumbered]],
60 we're not allowed to ship them in Fedora. Besides,
61 both Flash and Gnash are quite inefficient and would feel
64 So I am left wondering what solutions these kids came up with
65 in order to circumvent the technical limitations and watch
66 their favorite videos.
68 The coordinator of the education team got curious and asked questions.
69 It seems that some smart kids figured out how to rip videos from You Tube,
70 store them in the journal, and then play them back with some
71 [[http://www.olpcnews.com/software/applications/using_an_xo_laptop_a.html | clever hackery]].
72 We do not know the details of how this is done, but it is quite impressive.
74 === Passion-driven learning ===
76 Even though most kids are inclined to misuse our precious educational
77 technology for gaming and other mundane uses, in order to do what they want,
78 they seem to be acquiring pretty advanced problem-solving abilities
79 in a self-motivated and social way; in other words, the purpose for which
80 OLPC and Sugar were created.
83 == Fri, Mar 12 - Interview with //Los Scratcheros// ==
85 (photos courtesy of Carla Crosa)
87 || {{ 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 }} ||
89 Today I spent some time with three siblings of Caacupé who has impressed me and the educators very
90 much with their original creations in Scratch. Scratch is not a school subject, these kids are
91 learning it on their own driven by their own passion.
93 * **What's your name?**
98 * **How old are you?**
103 * **How did you learn Scratch?**
104 * B: We tried all the functions. First, we'll try one function, and see what it does.
105 * N: Like he said, we experimented with all the functions and check the results.
106 * A: By looking at the animations of the games bundled with Scratch
108 * **What job would you like to do when you're done with school?**
109 * B: Software engineer
113 * **Do you like Turtle Art? What can you do with it?**
114 * B: Si. I can create rectangles and other geometrical shapes.
115 * N: Mostly geometric shapes
116 * A: Only basic shapes: square, triangle...
118 * **How much time do you spend with your laptop every day?**
120 * N: 6 hours, more or less.
122 * (Mother's note: they don't use the laptop enough in school!)
124 * **Nobody is teaching you, yeah? You're learning everything on your own?**
125 * B: No, with my sister. We try all activities, and when we find one we like, we spend some time on it together.
126 * N: I learned the basics of Turtle Art at the trainer's course.
127 * A: Yes, I learned it there too.
129 * **What other activities do you like besides Scratch and Turtle Art?**
130 * B: //Hablar con Sara// [Speak] and //Super Vampire Ninja Zero//, //Máquina de discos// (Jukebox).
131 * N: //eToys//, to edit photos. I need someone to teach me all the rest.
132 * A: //Grabar// (Record), to take videos, interview people...
134 * **What would you like to add to Sugar?**
135 * B: The "Snake" game
138 * (Mom: They need an automatic spell checker... and a **screensaver**, of course).
140 * **What's the most annoying problem for you with Sugar?**
141 * B: Can't use the "robot" function in //Hablar con Sara// (
142 * N: I want bigger fonts in //Pintar// (Paint).
143 * A: //Escribir// (Write ;-)
145 * **Would you like to learn a little bit of Python with Pippy?**
148 Then Benedicto and I got started. Python is easy, you can explain the basics to a smart kid in less than 30 minutes.
149 I've shown him a few Pippy examples, describing the code briefly before running it, then making small changes to make
150 Benedicto grasp the possibilities. From his questions and comments, I'm pretty sure that he could figure out the
151 concepts despite my very poor Spanish fluency and my usual disorganized style.
153 Nadia shows plenty of design talent: she uses Sugar to create short stories featuring her friends. She
154 cookie-cuts their photos and uses Scratch to animate them on fantasy backgrounds with music, sound
155 effects and text. Recently, she started creating line-art versions of the photos using eToys, so her
156 new creations look more like cartoons. At this point, Benedicto mentioned the [[http://htf.atom.com/ | Happy Tree Friends]],
157 an innocently named Internet series which makes even South Park seem politically correct in comparison!
158 HTF is Flash-only and doesn't seem to work with Gnash -- at least, we should be above any bigot criticism
159 for conveying "inapprorpiate content" to young hack^Wchildren.
161 Nadia also created a platform videogame in which a dog needs to jump around to find the way out from
162 each level, while a bouncing arrow chases him. Technically simple, but shows sensitive use of
163 game-design principles. I'm not sure if the code is entirely new or comes in part from pre-existing
164 Scratch games. It doesn't matter: in Free Software, remixing other people's work is the rule.
166 We updated Benedicto's and Nadia's laptops to [[http://oficina.paraguayeduca.org/~bernie/py-xo1/ | F11-XO1 Paraguay, build 65]],
167 which contains the latest release of [[http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/0.84/Notes | Sugar 0.84]]. Benedicto had been previously
168 testing my build 45, revealing some bugs in networking and activities.
170 || {{ 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 }} ||
173 == Mon, Mar 8 - Children want Sugar 0.84, for the wrong reasons ==
175 || {{ 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 }} ||
177 The owner of **Centro de Assistencia Tecnica y Soporte (CATS)**, the XO support center of
178 [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caacup%C3%A9 | Caacupé]], wrote:
181 On March 8 2010 14:51, Raúl Gutiérrez Segalés wrote:
184 > How is the migration to Fedora 11 going so far? Approximate number
185 > of machines to date?
187 Raul, the truth that it's going smooth so far, the boys are very excited
188 about the new version, and the rumor is spreading fast.
189 I think so far my team updated 120 laptops, more or less.
194 (Google translation with my manual corrctions)
196 I witnessed it with my own eyes: every day, children start lining up outside of CATS' door
197 early in the morning, and keep coming all day long, until the evening. All of them ask
198 for the new version, bui in interesting ways: a little boy said:
200 "//Quiero poner ventanas coloradas//" (I want to install colored windows).
202 They're obviously referring to the Gnome desktop, also known as "//salva pantallas//" (screensaver).
203 Another kid admired his freshly installed Gnome desktop and proudly declared: "//Ahora tienen Windows!//"
204 (now I have Windows). In Spanish, therre's no ambiguity on the meaning of the word Windows.
206 Power of brand. It doesn't rmatter if it's the actual Windows, or even if it really does
207 anything useful at all. It's new, it's colored and it's what adults are using. Oh, and it
208 also comes with a screensaver which makes it irresistible.
210 So, what do we do? Quick! Let's add a cool screensaver to Sugar! :-)
212 Of course not, but could we do anything to appeal to kids more than a traditional desktop?
213 I don't claim to be a pedagogist, but by now I've observed our young users closely enough
214 to be able to guess what they're really missing in Sugar:
216 <div style="font-size: large; color: red; text-align: center">
217 more configurability.
220 Yeah, dozen of scientific studies showed how users almost never customize the desktops beyond
221 setting a background image. Kids, however, are a lot more passionate about their precious
222 laptop than the average office clerk using Windows. They //do// cover the exterior of
223 their laptops with colorful stickers.
225 || {{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) }} ||
227 Believe it or not, many of these kids also set their Home View with the random icon layout
228 (aka "the Negroponte layout"), because it lets them drag icons around and arrange them in
229 clever ways. I could take many screenshot to prove it, but I particulatily like this one
230 abusing Sugar's user name field to create a drawing on three lines. These kids do not live
231 in the middle of Silicon Valley; it is very likely that they rediscovered the technique
232 of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII_art | ASCII art]] completely on their own.
233 The original idea was passed along and successively refined by several anonymous artists.
235 Finally, what was the gray-scale palette supposed to mean in our UI? I was explained it once,
236 and it seemed to make some sense, but now I forgot. And, whatver the reason was, kids are
237 unlikely to agree with us.
239 Let's give our users a control panel applet for customizing colors as they wish, or they'll
240 switch to Gnome //en masse//. I can't blame them, either. What would you have done when
244 == Tue, Mar 02 - Charla @ Facultad Politecnica ==
246 Today I gave an opening talk at the [[http://www.pol.una.py/ | Facultad Politecnica de la Universidad Nacional de Asuncion]].
247 The title was "//Empoderar a los estudiantes con el Software Libre//" (//Empowering students with Free Software//).
249 * [[http://people.sugarlabs.org/bernie/sugar/slides/sugar-paraguay-v6-es.odp | Spanish, OpenDocument]]
250 * [[http://people.sugarlabs.org/bernie/sugar/slides/sugar-paraguay-v6-es.pdf | Spanish, PDF]]
251 * [[http://people.sugarlabs.org/bernie/sugar/slides/sugar-paraguay-v5-en.odp | English, OpenDocument]] (older version with fewer slides and some factual errors)
253 || {{ 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 }} ||
254 || {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/facultad_politecnica/00043.jpg | maxwidth=500 }} || {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/facultad_politecnica/00048.jpg | maxwidth=500 }} ||
256 See [[pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/facultad_politecnica | all the photos ]] in my Codew'z photostream.
258 Note: I'm not really affiliated with MIT and I'm not even an engineer, but it's a flattering mistake ;-)