Suburban (in)Sanity

One Laptop Per Child and Kids

This was originally a comment to another blog over here, but thought I would save it  for my personal OLPC stash too. Enjoy!

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Kids get the XO. They get it in ways that I think most of those critical of the program would be surprised by. I don't have a huge sample size, but I do have two of the little buggers (XOs. I'm not calling my kids buggers, really I'm not.) and I've spent some time with other kids we come in contact with on a regular basis, ranging in age from 18 mos old to about 8.

Kids get this machine.

They get that it's for them. They are drawn to it. They think it's the neatest thing in the room. They put down their Nintendo DSs and drop the xbox remotes and ignore the fast computers in the room. I'm not using hyperbole, this has actually happened.

They can't use the XO completely alone. They are fearless explorers and will try anything, but they typically hit a wall a few minutes in. However, a few gentle pointers from an adult or more experienced kid, suggestions for things to try, explanations for activities ("try that one - it's like a memory game where you match up letters") generally gets the kids going in the right direction. No learning experience for a child should take place in a complete vacuum. There is always a role for a more experienced coach/mentor/teacher/adult/student when a child is learning.

The 18 month old couldn't keep her hands off it, when she learned that pressing the keys made the baby giggle in TamTamMini. (this turned out to be a challenge as she didn't want to stop banging on the keys. While I believe the XO is solidly constructed and unlikely to break, I did end up putting it away after 10 minutes.) The 3 year olds crowded around the camera to mug for a shot and take turns making the alien sounds on TamTamMini. The 4.5 year old boy wanted to put a puzzle together after posing with his cousins for a photo (he needed some assistance in loading the picture into the puzzle activity, and yes - I had preinstalled puzzle.) My 6 year old son regularly makes videos (yes, short ones) featuring his playmobil action figures or the little green army men. His 4 year old sister does same with barbies or stuffed animals. She also plays the maze activity in tablet mode, using the gamepad keys to move the cursor around.

We're a technology family. My kids have access to five or six computers with fast internet connections, a few video game consoles, several hand held gaming systems, etc. They have each been using a computer since about age 2, unless you call accidentally emailing mommy's boss by banging on the keys before age 2 as "using a computer." They enjoy their XOs as much, or more than their other systems. They can do far more with their XOs. It's much more open. They haven't even used it much for web browsing, they are content with the activities available (or that we have downloaded.)

The 8 year old used the Write activity to copy info from his favorite Pokemon cards. The 5 year old girl played with TamTamEdit, figuring out things with it that I hadn't yet. My 6 year old son has learned how to make drawings with Turtle Art (yes, with coaching from me although the last time I saw a turtle program it was on an Apple II+ and was white on a black screen.) We've also dabbled in Pippy, and he was very excited to learn about etoys and scratch from some meetups we attended together (I've blogged about meetups with my son here on OLPCNews.com in the past.) He really wants to learn to program lego robots, and I've explained that he needs a grounding in basic computer skills first - understanding the way a computer takes instructions from you and follows them exactly, for instance. The computer is as stupid as you are, the saying goes in our family.

With mesh and two machines, we are able to play connect four against each other, use a chat room, use the acoustic tape measure (although I'm not sure we have it figured out yet) and otherwise collaborate via the mesh network. This feature set is significant, but somewhat unobservable when you only have one XO.

Have I mentioned the part where my kids teach other kids stuff via the XO? That part is pretty cool. To really learn something, try teaching it.

The machines are not without their limits. I agree that the file management metaphor isn't quite there yet. My children, who as young people have fewer ingrained metaphors for file systems in their heads, have trouble finding things they have worked on in the past. I think it's partly due to the different metaphor, partly because the journal page is somewhat slow, and because they aren't actively tagging their things even though that is a natural child behavior (I haven't encouraged them to do that because we aren't using the XOs for regular work, but rather for exploration and learning new things.) I think some improvements can be made in this area.

The speed of the computer requires patience, particularly on bootup and launch of activities. While we can debate the need for speed (and I find it hard to argue with a desire for zippy performance) - patience is not a bad thing for my children to learn when interacting with technology, no matter what the technology may be (the automated check-out system at the library works equally slow, and patience is required when withdrawing money from the automated teller, using the remote on the TV, etc. Things that may not be commonplace in developing nations, but are here.)

So, in closing, I'll mention this again. Kids get this computer, even western kids who have access to other technology. They get it, and are excited about it - even months later when many other Christmas presents are forgotten on the shelves.

I am sorry it didn't meet the needs of the original poster, but suggest we not extrapolate a failure of the goal of the project based on a mismatch in needs/features between an adult and the laptop. There are other adults who have experienced a similar mismatch. And still other adults who are completely satisfied with their friendly green machines and find they are able to meet their needs.

But I'll say it one more time - kids get it.

Geek Giving

Geek Giving

It’s a new year. We've made resolutions to do more, do more with less, do less, give of ourselves more, and give ourselves less. It can be hard to find innovative ways to contribute to the community with busy schedules and limited financial resources.

While Flash Fiction Online publishes a variety of genres, many of us come from a speculative fiction background or are geeky-like. Now, don’t go wagging your head at that. You might think you don’t know your left click from your left foot, but you used some type of technology device to get here today. Embrace your inner geek and let’s do the technology two-step for a bit.

For us geek-like folk, it can be hard to find a satisfying way to give back. It’s important to me to do more than fling money at the nearest good cause. I’d also like to find ways to connect with others who share my interests.

What struck me about both of the programs below is the importance of communication – specifically the written word via the web (hmm, sound familiar?) To be successful, these programs have to grab both the imaginations and the time of potential volunteers.

Volunteer Computing:
You can help scientists around the world by allowing your computer to work on itsy bitsy parts of their massive problems at times when you aren’t using it. Talk about embracing your inner geek – you can participate in projects as diverse as the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, climate prediction, or protein folding research. With many more projects coming on-line in the near future, there’s something for every style of geek.

The most widespread platform for these distributed volunteer computing projects is the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. You download software from the BOINC site and choose projects to get involved with. Because life has no meaning unless you are competing, you earn points for the calculations your computer performs. In true geek fashion, you only win bragging rights, but hey – those are worth something. In a great Chicago Tribune article about volunteer computing, one reporter describes the communication challenge faced by these programs so well I’ll just quote it:

"This is democratic computing, so it's based on the goodwill of a bunch of people from all walks of life, all backgrounds," Wandelt [U. of I. physics professor and director of Cosmology@home] said. "If as a researcher you cannot communicate what's interesting about your problem to the general public, this sort of thing probably isn't for you."

One Laptop Per Child:
This project is also known as the XO laptop, and previously known as the $100 laptop. Due to a mustard stain on the original design spec, it’s now the $200 laptop. Headlined by current and former Smart Folk from the MIT Media Lab, the program has lofty goals.

The premise of One Laptop Per Child, beside the obviousness of the name, is that computers are powerful learning tools. When scaled and built for children, computers can be a leveler; reducing or eliminating disparities in income, socio-economic status, geographic location and hundreds of other challenges faced by children in developing nations today.

The laptop is packed with features – standard computer fare like writing and painting programs, and innovative applications like an acoustic tape measure that can factor in the current air temperature to accurately calculate the speed of sound (getting these figures wrong by a few significant digits really honks off the true geek), and a journal program that records each activity a child does on their computer.

In addition, children can click to see the source code for any activity. They can tinker with it. If they make a mistake, they can revert to the original. As the program states in their Mission:

“We want the child to interact with the laptop on as deep a level as he or she desires. Children program the machine, not the other way around.”

This embraces a new way of thinking about children and technology, and in my view ends some of this silly business of assuming that a child can’t comprehend (or doesn’t need to) the inner workings of a computer, particularly not a child in the developing nation. Why not? Everyone could benefit from a more intimate view of technology, even you people who shook your head at the beginning of this and said you don’t know diddly or squat.

As the OPLC folks say here:

“Starting from the premise that we want to make use of what people already know in order to make connections to new knowledge, our approach focuses on thinking, expressing, and communicating with technology. The laptop is a “thing to think with”; we hope to make the primary activity of the children one of creative expression, in whatever form that might take.”

A thing to think with. Wow. They had me with think.

In the fall of 2007 the OLPC project offered the $200 laptops for sale to the general public for $400 through the Give 1 Get 1 program. You bought one computer, and another was donated to a child in the XO deployment areas. Full disclosure – my family bought two. (That's my 6 year-old working on his in the photo.)

One of the goals of the G1G1 program was to create a user base in the US and Canada that would act as a virtual support network for the recipients of the laptops in developing nations.

The online communities for the XO project are growing at a rapid clip. Opportunities to volunteer exist in supporting the deployment (communications, tech support, help desk, logistics, translation), writing manuals, developing software for the XO, supporting the teachers who will be using them in the classroom, and countless others.

This program has caught the imagination of people in the US and around the world. And I can see why -- children empowered with technology from their earliest years in education. To loosely paraphrase one of my favorite authors: Just think of the thinks they can think.

This laptop is so simple even a six-year-old can show you

My six-year-old son, Liam, and I recently attended a One Laptop Per Child networking event at the Marie Murphy school in Wilmette, IL. The event was put on by Chris Brown as part of a teacher professional development day. He invited area XO owners to come talk about our computers as well as have the opportunity to network with others in the community. One blogged about it here.

About 10-15 laptops were present at peak. We gathered around a large conference table in the resource room and quickly got to work. Liam was beyond excited to have so many “friends” show up on his neighborhood view.

We quickly “friended” everyone (by hovering on their icons and selecting “add as friend”) we could from the neighborhood view, then looked at the Group view to see all the colorful XOs on our screens. Shh, don’t tell Anastasia I had her laptop out while she was at school.

Initially, I wasn’t sure about bringing Liam. He’s only 6, it was a regular school day for him that he would miss, he’s bound to get bored, etc. etc. However, I thought it would be a good opportunity for him to share what he’s been learning and doing with his laptop. I figured a community of teachers would like to see what first graders might do with this technology. Plus, he was excited about the idea of coming, even though it meant missing school (and, of all things, library day!)

To be on the safe side, though, the night before I had him pick out a few books, games, and other activities and packed those into his backpack next to his friendly green laptop. You know, just in case.

What was I worried about?

Within the first twenty minutes, Liam turned to me and said “Mommy – can we make this a long meeting?”

Confused, I asked for clarification. “You know, a long meeting. Can we stay a while? I don’t want to go!”

To bookend that comment, he asked me at least a dozen times on the car ride home and later that day if we could “set up another meeting, just like that. I want to do another meeting.”

What was so fun? Well, for starters, everyone else had the same machine. Adding friends to the network was neat. Then, as teachers are so excellent at doing – everyone who talked to Liam treated him as though the things he had to say were interesting and important. And last, lucky for them and us -- what he had to say was interesting and important, and he was able to contribute in a positive way to the dialogue at the table about ways to use the XO with school children.

He showed the principal of the school how he can test himself on his spelling words using the Memorize activity. I had programmed in his spelling list, with one half of a pair jumbled. He had to match the jumbled word with its correctly spelled counterpart. He played with the various tamtams for a while, composing music on the fly with tamtam edit, something we hadn’t played with at home before.

He also showed one of the teachers a few things we’d been exploring with Pippy. Pippy is a front end to the Python programming language that includes some mini sample programs. Liam and I spent about 20 minutes a few nights before playing with Pippy, talking about how the ordered lines of instructions tell the computer exactly what to do, and if you edit the instructions – well, the computer is only as stupid as you are. It’ll do exactly what you tell it to do. While I don’t have any expectations that he’ll be programming at age 6 and 7, all of these activities like pippy and turtle are beginning to expose him to the concepts that underlie all computer systems – a series of instructions, executed in a specific order, with different types of commands. Heck, there are many grownups who don’t know this much about how computers work.

Liam also had fun working with George on the Acoustic Tape Measure activity. They had to work together to figure out the right order of events – who would launch the activity, who would invite the other participant, when to start the measuring, etc. Liam would scurry between his computer and George’s, evaluating settings and trying to determine the right way to do things. While we’re not positive we ever got an accurate reading, they were both very excited when the machines bzzt’d at each other and numbers appeared on screen. We decided to read up more about the activity and try it again at home.

What made the entire day worth it for me was the moment when I suddenly saw my child the way others see him. You know how usually you view your child(ren) in your own cloud of love and pride mixed up with an awareness of all his/her strengths and weaknesses and the baggage you carry from how they pestered you non-stop yesterday for a second lollipop/more time on the xbox/another drink of water before bed?

For a beautiful moment at Marie Murphy school that cold, wet day in February, it all fell away and I saw an excited little guy talking with no fear or hesitation to a group of adults gathered behind him, answering their questions and eagerly pointing out features or components to explore with them.

My six-year-old was demoing.

These laptops are magic. Put a child in front of them and watch it flow.

XO on the go

My daughter's XO laptop, all tricked out for an adult. That's a Targus brand USB folding keyboard (works great, just the right size for my hands, although I am still going through the learning curve with it as there are subtle spacing differences when compared to my other primary keyboard.)

I swiveled the screen 180 degrees to make the USB keyboard feel more naturally connected to the screen.

There's also a Crayola USB mouse, which causes Anastasia all sorts of consternation. "Mommy, I thought you said we couldn't have water by the computers, but this mouse has WATER in it!!" Naturally there's some caffeine in the picture, and those friendly ears perked up for the T-Mobile wifi at Starbucks.

World domination by a bunch of Geeks

On Tuesday January 22, 2008 at 6:45 PM I was in Heaven. Geek heaven, to be accurate. Google’s Chicago office. The smell of…was that fresh salsa and flauta’s… wafted through the room. Friendly green computers were tucked under numerous arms. A group of exuberant (there really is no better word) high school students from the Illinois Math and Science Academy (IMSA) twittered in a corner. Men with scruffy facial hair (I found the developers!) were scattered among the attendees. I was surprised to find a wide range of ages, interests, hair lengths, and body art in the room. I thought we geek-folk all looked alike. Then again, I’m a suburban mom and think all suburban moms look alike, and the suburban mom-type is quite different from the geek-type, so perhaps I’m not the best judge.

The Chicago OLPC meet-up was an unqualified success. There were about 50 attendees, including a few (but not many, it was a school night) children. 5-10 of the attendees had never seen an XO laptop before. They were in luck, I spotted at least 20 of the green machines roving the room, being passed from hand to hand. Much credit and thanks goes to Mel Chua who coordinated the evening, and her hosts from Google who I never did quite catch the names of. They smiled benevolently from near the chafing dishes. They even gave us some nifty swag .

The evening opened with some presentations by the IMSA students. The thing you need to know about them is that they are scary smart. In a good way. Whatever you do, don’t underestimate them. Students at IMSA are proud to hold the distinction of the only OLPC High School interest group.

They are working on a variety of projects from the ambitious (building an EKG device to plug into the microphone jack) to the seemingly simple (clock.) The EKG team was geeky-excited to have talked to the developer of the Measure activity about the nuances of instrumental amplifier hardware. They haven’t sustained any permanent damage from their experiments, though that left-leaning limp looked a little suspicious, and are proud to report they now know how to solder. How many 16 year olds do YOU know who have soldering skills? If their educational dreams crumble, they can always work an assembly line.

Their work with the acoustic tape measure activity led them to believe that the OLPC is a good tool for conducting experiments. From here, they decided to work on a module to present the scientific method. This led them to do research on the societies where OLPC laptops are targeted for, so as to understand social constraints around manner of dress and gestures for video-based content.

The seemingly simple clock activity is much more than that. The two students working on this activity came upon the idea by reading the bug reports in the OLPC system. They decided to work on an activity to not just provide a report of current time, but allow children to explore the idea of time. A bar with a draggable sun and a simple hand-drawn graphic of a tree with a sun behind it led to much discussion among the audience about ways to cause a shadow to be cast by the tree, sundial-esque, and the possibility of using celestial charts, which I see has come up on OLPCNews before.

One thing most of the students could use is programming/technical mentors for their work. The clock team mentioned the code they have available right now is too embarrassing to post anywhere, yet I predict an hour on the phone or IRC with a python guru would change that. Please consider visiting their wiki page and volunteer to help.

Afterwards, we heard from other OLPC enthusiasts about their pet projects and efforts. Francisco Athens from the Chicago Linux User Group is busy testing alternate operating systems on the XO. He points to the wiki for his latest information about getting XFCE working, as well as ubuntu.

Chaz (missed his last name) from the University of Chicago talked about efforts to assist the Chicago Public Schools with integrating technology in the classroom. One hurdle will be the CPS system does not formally support Linux, but a pilot program in the 3^rd/4^th grade level is a possibility. They have a curricular group convening on Feb 12 for anyone interested.

Carl Karston mentioned the Chicago Python Conference in March, and made a pointed remark in the direction of the IMSA students that there were financial aid opportunities available for those who couldn’t afford the conference fees. Vehan from the Python users group mentioned that the illustrious Mike Fletcher will be leading at least one workshop during the con.

Gabriel Burt talked about what he’s been doing with his XO. Turns out he wants to alter the space-time continuum. More or less. As he details on his blog, he has been working out ways to get Pippy talking to the camera built into the XO laptops. He wrote a script to create a time-lapse photo sequence, which is not the coolest part. He also discovered a way to have the computer display a videostream that is delayed, via a setdelay command of some sort. He’s going to have to elaborate because all I know is that it creeped me out to hold a laptop that showed me what I did 5 seconds before.

 

The rest of the evening was spent in small groups sharing ideas, passing laptops around, and exchanging business cards. Note to those attending meetups – bring something with your name/email/preferred way of reaching you, even if it’s one of those freebie St. Jude’s Hospital name and address stickers on an index card. It’ll save you time so you can meet more fabulous people involved with the OLPC project.

Day 3 - still thinks laptop is fun

Liam and Anastasia got to open their laptops on Saturday when Uncle Mike was visiting, since he was the impetus and partial funder of the gift.

They love them. They've been walking around with them a lot since then. The laptops are VERY durable. Both kids have figured out plenty of things to do with them. Anastasia has mostly played with the paint application. I believe, but am not sure, that she finds the touchpad a little tricky to use (hard to coordinate clicking and moving w/the touchpad, but she can manage somewhat.) I may hook up an external mouse for her at some point. Just realized there are two USB ports on the side (under the righthand bunny ear.) Not sure why but I thought I remembered there was only going to be one USB port. I was wrong.

Liam, meanwhile, has figured out the tutle application. I worked with him for a little while, setting the way way back machine a good 28ish years to my first exposure to a turtle-drawing application - Apple's Logo. I was able to tell KC in an IM chat last night that it's nice because now the turtle commands are done via drag-and-drop instead of command line. I'll have to "uphill both ways in the snow" Liam later and show him how much harder it was for us.

Anyway, all day yesterday he was running up to tell me about a new color he had figured out  - "Mom, mom, color 533 is blue!" I finally got him to start a chart to keep track of all these beautiful color permutations. Phew.

They've been distracted with their other new stuff for Christmas since last night, but we'll be digging into the laptops more tomorrow. I'm thinking about starting a new blog just for the One Laptop projects we're doing, partly to show off what it is that kids can do with these things. So far what I've read on the blogs and things like this site sound mostly like people having obtained the laptops for their own personal use and/or as a curiousity thing or to donate the free one. That's neat and all, but WOW this is really cool to see kids playing and learning from them. Liam learned within 5 mins how to reboot the machine (Mike has since showed us how to restart the GUI, which is different than in windows. Don't need to reboot the whole machine when something is acting flaky, usually you can restart the GUI and get there.)

Haven't had the keyboard issues since that first night or two, but I need to spend more time with Liam's to make sure it's not an ongoing issue. Won't be very useful if he can't type on it consistently.

Oh, and we came in from the doctor the other day to find Liam and Daddy creating movies with Playmobil figures on the counter. That was hilarious. I'll have to post one. The quality of the image is fine while the movie is filming, but on playback looks really terrible. I'm going to have to try with better indoor lighting (a challenge in our north-facing house) and see if it's a lighting issue, or what. Of course tinkering with settings will help too. Oh, and I'll have more pictures of the XO in action. It's so very cool, and I really love having the kids come up to me excited about something they learned or figured out. Liam's been carrying to every room of the house to "work" there. ;) My little man.

The coolest new toy

Received our one laptop per child laptops today, just in the nick of
time for xmas. I had one out of the box to play as soon as the kids
were asleep (or feigning well enough to fool me.)

Initial reactions:

1. Wow this is cool

2. Wow. Really damn cool.

3. Wow I don't know a thing about open source sw.

4. The keyboard seems a little flaky (recalibrated the touchpad and it
helped at least on the touchpad.)

5. I already trouble-shot one thing (see aforementioned recalibration)
- yay me. www.laptop.org/gettingstarted helped a lot.

6. Did I mention that they're kind of tiny? In an "aww, that's so
cute" kind of way, but also in a "gives your hand a cramp" kind of way.

Here's a pic of the little beauty, currently called "liaa" (see
aforementioned point about flaky keyboard.)