+== Sun, Mar 14 - What are kids using Sugar for? ==
+
+I'm finally back in Asuncíon. Over the last few days, I had the
+opportunity to interview a dew dozen children who had been
+using Sugar 0.82 for about one year. Perhaps the most interesting
+and controversial finding was which activities are the most
+popular among them:
+
+ # [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_(video_game) | Doom II]]
+ # [[http://www.pixelprospector.com/indev/2009/12/super-vampire-ninja-zero/ | Super Vampire Ninja Zero]]
+ # [[http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4024 | Navegar]] (Browse)
+
+{{podium.jpg|maxwidth=640|class=thumbright|What are kids doing with Sugar?}}
+
+Heh, at least Browse made the third place, I thought. But when I
+asked what websites they were visiting, the answer was invariably
+"videos".
+
+Well, at the least I could tell they were answering honestly!
+We often idealize our young users as being creative, passionate and
+eager to learn just about everything. Some kids are really
+like this, I met some in Caacupé. However, the naked truth is that the
+vast majority would rather spend their free time playing.
+
+
+=== Those inappropriate games ===
+
+It's no wonder kids would like a game which is "//widely regarded as one of
+the most important titles in gaming history//", according to the Wikipedia.
+The first 7 hits for the common word "[[http://www.google.com/search?q=doom|doom]]"
+are about the game itself. Then come the film adaptation and various fan sites.
+Anyway, how can we blame kids for playing games? After all, many of us played
+Doom and many other types of "inappropriate" video games throughout our childhood.
+
+We quickly took Doom down from the OLPC wiki soon after it was uploaded,
+yet it is still spreading fast among Sugar users worldwide. Let's look at the
+positive sides: it shows social behavior and encourages kids to find technical
+solutions to transfer activities directly (their old version of Sugar does not
+allow direct sharing from the journal).
+
+So, what we going to do about it? Do we lock the system down so kids could
+only install signed applications? So much for the "child ownership" principle.
+
+Do we develop a couple boring educational games, in the hope they will keep
+our kids from playing the "//#1 game of all time//"? I'm sure it will work :-)
+
+No, we give them the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_WAD|level editor]] too,
+channelling some of this passion to learn the concepts of 3D graphics and game
+deisgn. Over 13,000 maps were created for Doom by young artits of any age and
+nationality. Newer games from ID Software enabled users to create entire new games
+through an embedded [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuakeC | programming language]].
+
+
+=== Those inappropriate videos ===
+
+What about the videos? The most popular video websites are
+[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash | Flash]] based.
+You Tube would work with [[http://www.gnashdev.org/ | Gnash]] as well,
+but because the required video codecs are [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing_and_patent_issues | patent encumbered]],
+we're not allowed to ship them in Fedora. Besides,
+both Flash and Gnash are quite inefficient and would feel
+sluggish on the XO-1.
+
+So I am left wondering what solutions these kids came up with
+in order to circumvent the technical limitations and watch
+their favorite videos.
+
+The coordinator of the education team got curious and asked questions.
+It seems that some smart kids figured out how to rip videos from You Tube,
+store them in the journal, and then play them back with some
+[[http://www.olpcnews.com/software/applications/using_an_xo_laptop_a.html | clever hackery]].
+We do not know the details of how this is done, but it is quite impressive.
+
+=== Passion-driven learning ===
+
+Even though most kids are inclined to misuse our precious educational
+technology for gaming and other mundane uses, in order to do what they want,
+they seem to be acquiring pretty advanced problem-solving abilities
+in a self-motivated and social way; in other words, the purpose for which
+OLPC and Sugar were created.
+
+
+== Fri, Mar 12 - Interview with //Los Scratcheros// ==
+
+(photos courtesy of Carla Crosa)
+
+|| {{ 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 Caacupé 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 Scratch and Turtle Art?**
+ * B: //Hablar 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... and a **screensaver**, of course).
+
+ * **What's the most annoying problem for you with Sugar?**
+ * B: Can't use the "robot" function in //Hablar 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.
+
+Nadia shows plenty of design talent: she uses Sugar to create short stories featuring her friends. She
+cookie-cuts their photos and uses Scratch to animate them on fantasy backgrounds with music, sound
+effects and text. Recently, she started creating line-art versions of the photos using eToys, so her
+new creations look more like cartoons. At this point, Benedicto mentioned the [[http://htf.atom.com/ | Happy Tree Friends]],
+an innocently named Internet series which makes even South Park seem politically correct in comparison!
+HTF is Flash-only and doesn't seem to work with Gnash -- at least, we should be above any bigot criticism
+for conveying "inapprorpiate content" to young hack^Wchildren.
+
+Nadia also created a platform videogame in which a dog needs to jump around to find the way out from
+each level, while a bouncing arrow chases him. Technically simple, but shows sensitive use of
+game-design principles. I'm not sure if the code is entirely new or comes in part from pre-existing
+Scratch games. It doesn't matter: in Free Software, remixing other people's work is the rule.
+
+We 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.
+
+|| {{ 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 }} ||
+
+
+== Mon, Mar 8 - Children want Sugar 0.84, for the wrong reasons ==
+
+|| {{ 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 }} ||
+
+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 to install 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 Windows.
+
+Power of brand. It doesn't rmatter if it's the actual Windows, or even if it really does
+anything useful at all. It's new, it's colored and it's what adults are using. Oh, and it
+also comes with a screensaver which makes it irresistible.
+
+So, what do we do? Quick! Let's add a cool screensaver to Sugar! :-)
+
+Of course not, but could we do anything to appeal to kids more than a traditional desktop?
+I don't claim to be a pedagogist, but by now 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 ==
Today I gave an opening talk at the [[http://www.pol.una.py/ | Facultad Politecnica de la Universidad Nacional de Asuncion]].
* [[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 }}
+|| {{ 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 }} ||
+|| {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/facultad_politecnica/00043.jpg | maxwidth=500 }} || {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/facultad_politecnica/00048.jpg | maxwidth=500 }} ||
See [[pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/facultad_politecnica | all the photos ]] in my Codew'z photostream.
projects / wiki.git / blobdiff