+== 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) }} ||
+
+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:
+
+<div style="font-size: large; text-align: center">
+Configurability.
+</div>
+
+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/escuela_691_profesora_gudelia_cabrera/00050.jpg | maxwidth=480 || }}
+
+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 screenshot to prove it.
+
+And what was the gray color scale in our UI supposed to mean? I was explained it once, and it
+seemed to make sense, but I forgot. And, whatver the reason was, kids are unlikely to agree
+with us.
+
+Let's give them a control panel icon to customize 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]].
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 I'm very flattered ;-)
+Note: I'm not really affiliated with MIT and I'm not even an engineer, but it's a flattering mistake ;-)
projects / wiki.git / blobdiff