Thanks for hosting Nicco! I had a great time. Let me know if any of the kids report that their stick died. I'm on a crusade to improve stick durability and I want to know what the failure modes in the wild are.
Thanks! Caroline On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 9:09 AM, Nicco Eneidi <[email protected]> wrote: > Recently I just had a summer technology camp at an elementary school in > Shaftsbury, Vermont. It was a week long camp consisting of fourteen children > from surrounding schools (Shaftsbury, North Bennington, Bennington) in > grades 4/5/6-into-7th. Students learned how to install and configure Ubuntu > on their laptops early in the week along with going on a geocaching treasure > hunting trip and learning how to solder and make contact mics and create > experimental electronic instruments. > The highlight of the week was when on Friday July 24th Caroline Meeks came > up to do a workshop with the children on using SoaS. The students were given > 2GB Patriot ruggedized usb drives to run Sugar on Nexlink rebranded Compal > EL81 laptops (fairly new). > > A good chunk of the time on Sugar was on using Turtle Art which some of the > kids were somewhat familiar with since I had shown them KTurtle last year. > All of the children picked up Turtle Art though and really flew with it! It > was really incredible to see so many children just completely engrossed on a > computer operating system and it's software! I had children from a very wide > demographic with varying interests. Some of the kids were you're typical > techy-gamer types while most were not at all. > > One particular child was actually coming from a local private school and > had been very nervous to be at this camp where she knew no one and had never > done anything like this before in her life. She is a very shy individual, > though highly intelligent and very advanced for her age (she can beat me in > chess!) and is more likely to be found drawing or painting, gardening, or > building a fairy home out in the woods. Before this camp she has never had > much to do with computers and never had much of a reason to. > > Well on Friday July 24th she was really taking off with Sugar! After the > camp had ended she immediately went home and figured out how to boot her > parents laptop from the USB drive and spent the rest of the day playing with > Turtle Art and making really neat designs. > > I want to thank the team at Sugar Labs for putting all of their time, > effort, and energy into creating this wonderful platform for young children > to use. It is so obvious to me that the "traditional" platforms that we > currently use in our buildings are just completely un-child oriented and > something needs to be changed. > > Thank you Caroline for coming up here and presenting this to the children > of Southern Vermont, you have definitely made a few converts and the > comments and things they wrote on the wiki later on were super positive > about Sugar! > > -Nicco > > -- > Niccolo Botticelli Eneidi > > _______________________________________________ > IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) > [email protected] > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep > -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove [email protected] 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax
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