== 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/00003.jpg | maxwidth=480 | A sugar "hack" (zoom in to see the ASCII art detail) }} || || {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/caacupe/cyber_nick/00001.jpg | maxwidth=480 | Cyber Nick, the 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 }} || 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. == 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 ;-)