+== 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:
+
+{{podium.jpg|maxwidth=640|class=thumbright|The most popular Sugar activities}}
+
+ # [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_(video_game) | Doom]]
+ # [[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)
+
+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 ===
+
+{{http://diablobasher.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/doom01.jpg|class=thumbleft|The Ultimate Doom title artwork}}
+
+It's no wonder kids like the game which, according to the Wikipedia, is "//widely regarded as one of
+the most important titles in gaming history//". This is no exaggeration: 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 to do now? Do we lock the entire system down so that kids could
+only install applications that we approve? So much for the "child ownership"
+principle.
+
+Do we develop a couple of boring educational games, in the hope they will keep
+our kids from playing the "//#1 game of all time//"? I'm sure that will work :-)
+
+How about admitting defeat and giving them the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_WAD|level editor]]
+too? It could redirect some of the existing passion towards learning about advanced concepts
+of 3D graphics and game deisgn. Don't underestimate the latent creativity of gamers: over 13,000 original maps
+were created for Doom by young artits of any age and nationality. Later games from ID Software included
+a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuakeC | programming language]] which enabled users to create entire
+new games with relative ease.
+
+ **Update**: [[http://selfdotblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/selfpresentation.html | Marten Abente]],
+ my Paraguay Educa colleague who added 3G broadband support to Sugar, noted that he used his first
+ computer to play [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake | Quake]] when he was 12, and by the age of
+ 16 he was creating [[http://selfdotblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/selfshowoffgamemodifications.html | many maps]]
+ for it. Later on, he worked with a friend at the university to create an entire 3D game engine
+ from scratch with [[http://www.libsdl.org/ | SDL]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL | OpenGL]].
+
+
+=== Those inappropriate cartoons ===
+
+{{http://www.shoemoney.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/blame-canada.jpg|class=thumbright|Still from South Park}}
+
+
+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// ==
-|| {{ 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 }} ||
+(photos courtesy of Carla Crosa)
+
+|| {{ pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/caacupe/scratcheros/00008.jpg | maxwidth=480 | The "Scratcheros": Sofia, Jose and Aldo}} || {{ 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
+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
+ * J: Jose
+ * S: Sofia
+ * A: Aldo
* **How old are you?**
- * B: 12
- * N: 11
+ * J: 12
+ * S: 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.
+ * J: We tried all the functions. First, we'll try one function, and see what it does.
+ * S: 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
+ * J: Software engineer
+ * S: 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
+ * J: Si. I can create rectangles and other geometrical shapes.
+ * S: 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.
+ * J: A few hours.
+ * S: 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.
+ * J: No, with my sister. We try all activities, and when we find one we like, we spend some time on it together.
+ * S: 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.
+ * **What other activities do you like besides Scratch and Turtle Art?**
+ * J: //Hablar con Sara// [Speak] and //Super Vampire Ninja Zero//, //Máquina de discos// (Jukebox).
+ * S: //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
+ * J: The "Snake" game
+ * S: 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 //Ablar con Sara// (
- * N: I want bigger fonts in //Pintar// (Paint).
+ * J: Can't use the "robot" function in //Hablar con Sara// (
+ * S: 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!
+ * J: 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.
+Then Jose 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
+Jose 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
+Sofia 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]],
+new creations look more like cartoons. At this point, Jose 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
+Sofia 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
+We updated Jose's and Sofia'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]]. Jose 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 }} ||
+|| {{ 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 | Sofia'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 asking to install Sugar 0.84 in front of Cyber Nick's lab }} ||
+|| {{ 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:
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).
+ "//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!//"
So, what do we do? Quick! Let's add a cool screensaver 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:
+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.
projects / wiki.git / blobdiff