-== Fri, Mar 12 - Interview with "los scratcheros" ==
+== 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/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
* **Would you like to learn a little bit of Python with Pippy?**
* B: Very well!
-|| {{ 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 }} ||
-
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
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 | CATS, 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 }} ||
+
+The owner of **Centro de Assistencia Tecnica y Soporte (CATS)**, the XO support center of
+[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caacup%C3%A9 | Caacupé]], wrote:
+
+{{{
+On March 8 2010 14:51, Raúl Gutiérrez Segalés wrote:
+> Fernando,
+>
+> 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.
+
+FG
+}}}
+
+(Google translation with my manual corrctions)
+
+I witnessed it with my own eyes: every day, children start lining up outside of CATS' door
+early in the morning, and keep coming all day long, 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; color: red; text-align: center">
+more 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/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 ==
projects / wiki.git / blobdiff