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