OLPC France has deployed Samsung Galaxy Tab A 2018 tablets with Sugarizer OS at the Mendela school. For more details, see https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugarizer_Saint-Ouen_deployment

Informal online learning communities are one of the most exciting and successful ways to engage young people in technology. As the most successful example of the approach, over 40 million children from around the world have created accounts on the Scratch online community where they learn to code by creating interactive art, games, and stories. However, despite its enormous reach and its focus on inclusiveness, participation in Scratch is not as broad as one would hope. For example, reflecting a trend in the broader computing community, more boys have signed up on the Scratch website than girls.

In a recently published paper, I worked with several colleagues from the Community Data Science Collective to unpack the dynamics of unequal participation by gender in Scratch by looking at whether Scratch users choose to share the projects they create. Our analysis took advantage of the fact that less than a third of projects created in Scratch are ever shared publicly. By never sharing, creators never open themselves to the benefits associated with interaction, feedback, socialization, and learning—all things that research has shown participation in Scratch can support.

Overall, we found that boys on Scratch share their projects at a slightly higher rate than girls. Digging deeper, we found that this overall average hid an important dynamic that emerged over time. The graph below shows the proportion of Scratch projects shared for male and female Scratch users’ 1st created projects, 2nd created projects, 3rd created projects, and so on. It reflects the fact that although girls share less often initially, this trend flips over time. Experienced girls share much more than often than boys!

We unpacked this dynamic using a series of statistical models estimated using data from over 5 million projects by over a million Scratch users. This set of analyses echoed our earlier preliminary finding—while girls were less likely to share initially, more experienced girls shared projects at consistently higher rates than boys. We further found that initial differences in sharing between boys and girls could be explained by controlling for differences in project complexity and in the social connectedness of the project creator.

Another surprising finding is that users who had received more positive peer feedback, at least as measured by receipt of “love its” (similar to “likes” on Facebook), were less likely to share their subsequent projects than users who had received less. This relation was especially strong for boys and for more experienced Scratch users. We speculate that this could be due to a phenomenon known in the music industry as “sophomore album syndrome” or “second album syndrome”—a term used to describe a musician who has had a successful first album but struggles to produce a second because of increased pressure and expectations caused by their previous success

---

This blog post (first published on the Community Data Science Collective blog) and the paper are collaborative work with Emilia Gan and Benjamin Mako Hill. You can find more details about our methodology and results in the text of our paper, “Gender, Feedback, and Learners’ Decisions to Share Their Creative Computing Projects” which is freely available and published open access in the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 2 (CSCW): 54:1-54:23.

Learners at Tooraweenah Public School in outback Australia being taught how to use OLPC XO-4 with Turtle Blocks. Their task was to use the turtle to draw shapes, like squares, and hexagons.

Part of a weekly visit by a volunteer technology teacher and OLPC’s CTO.

– Subash Parajuli, Teaching Resident for Darchula 2018-19 “While I decided to go to Darchula for the ‘Teaching with Technology Residency Program’, my excitement was mostly about visiting a new place in the remote far-western corner of Nepal. The only thing I knew about Darchula was that it was a district that shared its borders with both India and China. There was not much expectation, except getting to explore a new part of our country.…

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Hi all,

We want to catch you up on what's going on with Ghana Together/Western Heritage Home efforts in the Axim area of Ghana.

We support 40 Primary level P4-P6 students at Apewosika Village School (Christ the King). The school is a private school, in a pretty isolated fishing area, with no government school within reasonable walking distance for primary school kids.

Apewosika Village School (CTK) P4-P6 scholarship students ****

We support what in the US would be 4th-6th grade students because typically, as families send younger kids into kindergarten and early grades, they can’t afford to pay tuition for all their school-age children. So, around P4, these older kids---who now know the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic---often must leave school for financial reasons. The boys go with Dad to help with fishing and the girls to the markets with Mom or help with younger siblings at home.
We want these CTK students to achieve P6 at a minimum. At that level, they are functionally literate and numerate, not only for work and general adulthood life, but also to participate as citizens in a democracy---read ballots, understand banking, communicate with family and friends via written cellphone messages, pass their skills on to their own children, etc. So, we work with leaders there to select those students who are vulnerable to dropping out because of their family's financial struggles.
We support 15 primary students at Maako School, another very isolated private school serving an ocean-side fishing community.

Students at Maako School ****

Our Western Heritage Scholars Ben and his sister Gladys Quayson continue in upper primary at Manye Academy. They are orphaned, and we provide not only tuition but room/board and basic health/hygiene necessities and small pocket money. 

We give heartfelt thanks especially to Headmistress Felicia Attah for all her help for so many years with so many WHH Scholars, especially these two.

Western Heritage Scholars Ben (P-5) and Gladys (P-4)  ****

We support 12 students at the Community Development Vocational/Technical Institute in Axim. CDVTI trains young men and women of high school age and older in various vocational trades, such as hairdressing, catering, home management, business skills, computer tech, electrical, welding, construction, etc. They recently added these last three programs which appeal more to guys, so to encourage that program, we've sponsored a few more guys than gals this year.

Sponsored students at CDVTI, in various technical/vocational training programs ****

Two of our Western Heritage Home Scholars---Charlotte Armah and Philomena Mensah---are in their second year of nurses training at Asanta Nursing/Midwifery College.

Charlotte Armah left) and Philomena Mensah

And two of our WHH guys are at Takoradi Technical University---Larmine in welding, and Peter in computer science.

Kingsley Larmine (left) and Peter Assuah

Emmanuella Dein is now in her final year of Ghana National College's special senior high school program for functionally blind students, such as Emmanuella.

Queen Mother Nana Adjou Sika and Emmanuella Dein

Education is a basic human right and it is at the core of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, according to the UN chief, as the world celebrated the International Day of Education on January 24, 2019.

“Education transforms lives”, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said, recounting his personal story of teaching in “the slums of Lisbon” where he saw first-hand that “education is an engine for poverty eradication and a force for peace”.

Education is the foundation upon which all of the other development goals are based. It is critical that every child has an equal opportunity for a quality education. Read more about the UN Secretary-General’s remarks and other world leaders celebrating the International Day of Education HERE.

Education is a basic human right of every child. Today, we celebrate the role education plays in peace, development and the creation of a better future for all.

According to a recent report from UNESCO, more than 262 million children and young people do not attend school. More than 617 million children and youth cannot read and do not possess basic math skills.

Education is the only way we can break the cycle of poverty and empower children to create a better future for themselves and for their families. Today, we invite you to support OLPC and help us empower children through education.

Thank you for supporting education!

City-designed schooling can be difficult to implement in rural areas, which is not always evident to those who design national educational systems and curriculum. See National curriculums don’t always work for rural and regional schools by Alison Willis, Lecturer, School of Education, University of the Sunshine Coast, in Australia.

An open one to one device program such as One Laptop per Child can help rural and regional schools by;

• including devices in local learning lessons,
• supporting local research or content curation by learners,
• creating projects, programs and curriculum that addresses local concerns and issues,
• enabling custom content or software installed by teachers or volunteers to meet local needs.

OLPC is committed to the creation of learning environments which foster the greatest development of all children. OLPC’s experience has shown children learn best when they are engaged in learning that is meaningful and active. For help with custom content or software, contact us.

A recent blog post from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD), UNESCO and UNICEF makes excellent recommendations for providing quality early childhood learning opportunities to every child. According to the article, 50% of preschool-aged children do not participate in early childhood educational opportunities. In low income countries, the percent of children without access to early childhood education increases to 85%. These children are missing critical opportunities for learning and development.

One of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) is to provide quality preschool learning opportunities to every child. In order to meet this goal, experts from the OECD, UNESCO and UNICEF met in December 2018 to discuss this crisis and to make recommendations for providing quality early childhood learning experiences to every child. The experts urged governments to increase funding and to work across sectors to achieve universal preschool education for every child.

You can read more about the recommendations HERE.

OLPC applauds this effort to join forces across sectors in order to ensure that every child has access to a quality early childhood education. Together, we can ensure that every child has an equal opportunity for learning in order to create a brighter future for all.

Scratch 3.0 has arrived and the Scratch team announced an updated Creative Computing Curriculum Guide! The Guide will share ideas and suggestions for facilitating creative learning and computing. It will be available in the next couple of months. We’ll be sure to post it as soon as it is complete! In the meantime, the Scratch Ed Team has updated the second version of the Guide which reflects many of the updates to Scratch 3.0.

Every OLPC Laptop comes with Scratch as part of the Sugar Learning Software. It is a wonderful way for children to learn animation and programming in a fun and engaging way.

You can access the guide HERE.

Happy Creative Learning!

Get updated activities for our XO-1, XO-1.5, XO-1.75 and XO-4 laptops. Use the Software Update icon in My Settings.

Or to install afresh, see the release notes for OLPC OS 13.2.10.

Some of the updates are a mirror mode for hairstyling with Record, use an external USB microscope or camera for Record, a ticking Clock, a samples button for Physics, paste unformatted and grid creator with Write, and new keyboard shortcuts for Jukebox and Record.

Our thanks to Sugar Labs developers; Yash Agrawal, Walter Bender, Rahul Bothra, Ibiam Chihurumnaya, Sanatan Kumar, Emily Ong, Sam Parkinson, Ezequiel Pereira, Lubomir Rintel, and Zeeshan Khan.

Our thanks also to translators; Chris Leonard, Berend, Božidar Putanec, Mariana, Besnik Bleta, Paulo Francisco, Yaron, nabil509, Mariana, juanpabl, MIkusan, and scootergrisen.

On behalf of the OLPC team and the communities we serve, we wish you a wonderful 2019! Thank you for supporting the OLPC mission to provide every child with a quality, innovative education.

Christmas Eve 2008. I hurried down to the Oregon store in Shatin to collect my XO laptops. At the cost of HK$3,380 (the price of two XOs) I was able to own one, while donating another XO to a child somewhere in the world.  OLPC Asia  has come to town recently as a registered charity organization to raise fund with this Give 1 Get 1 (G1G1) laptop ownership program.


I remember two months earlier I made a birthday wish to own this little green laptop after discovering it on the web.  My hope was to kick a little joy back to my life with a new toy. Now I have one!
Back home, I unpacked and taught myself how to use it while instructing my mother-in-law how to operate it . She was my main donor and her first encounter with the XO was captured in video on Christmas Eve,2008.



Ten years later today, I am in a reflective mood. It has been quite a 10 years journey for me with the XO especially in my professional  life as a Clinical Psychologist, since I could breakout the 4 walls of therapy room into the world of child development and technology.



Today with the widespread availability of smartphones and tablets, the XO relevance as rugged and low powered computing for children is unique for me and children. Since our last Basecamp2013@Malacca where we discussed the XO future, there has yet to be another innovative one in all solutions as in the XO.


 
I recently came back from Malaysia after 2 weeks of followups on small deployments in various settings. The first generation XOs-1 that are 10+ years old are still functioning and recycled into the field.



XOs that are deployed in harsh environment like are still operating despite missing screws and broken screens. I retrieved a number of SD cards that has 2 years history usage and digital portfolio of children to study. As I demo the XO for urban parent with children,  they still see a role to counteract the mindless digital play of children growing up in the Apps world. The right screen time with the right tools matter today since there is a backlash from issues of devices common today.

 What's next? It may still follow me for another decade. The XO will still provide the dLEAP for learning in an upside down world.

If I outlived the XO, I  will reflect in a Christmas Eve 2028 blog entry. However in the present, the XO is like the King of Fruits, Durian -  either a +1 or -1 for your senses.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

To help us in 2019...go here!

Several hundred nursing students have up-to-date medical information, thanks to the Wiki-Med “internet-in-a-box” type devices installed in two nursing schools.

I now see what Saint Matthew may have meant when he wrote about the promise of miracles when good people gather together. As a younger man I thought I understood anything I read in a book, including the Scriptures, and that this purely imaginative knowledge was the ultimate truth. How foolish and overblown this seems today. I feel like a child, learning all over again, looking at the world with fresh eyes. Perhaps this explains some of the deep joy I feel in these quite humble schools in Honduras. I’m supposed to be the teacher, but in truth I am the student. I trace the wonder and excitement not only on faces of these beautiful students, but on those of Natalia, Thong, Kaelin, Brian, Presley, Brooke and Hannah as well.

Enough of this wordy introduction to what everyone wants to see- pictures. Enjoy!

Well I don’t have those pictures so I’ll post this long after I wrote it.

With Christmas wishes,

Mark

 

In the past few decades scholars have reassessed the reputations of buccaneers and pirates in the Caribbean islands. In addition to being cutthroats they were also involved in small experiments in freedom and democracy. Long before the American Revolution these adventurous spirits longed to live free or die. Next year the Owen Project will be deploying XOs in Nevis. Nevis is the island next to Saint Kitts and was named by Columbus, who thought the mist clinging to its dominating volcano was snow. The devastating hurricane last summer in the Caribbean left Nevis relatively intact, though its schools and infrastructure are primitive and basic. Schools there are similar to those in Honduras and Guatemala, built out of cinder blocks with windows open to the elements. We hope to join with an association of homeowners to purchase enough XOs to cover an entire grade level throughout the entire island. This is the kind of deployment favored by One Laptop Per Child because it maximizes the educational impact of introducing computers into the national curriculum.

We plan to invite graduating seniors from the high school where I teach to join us. Visiting the island last year we noticed a strange phenomenon. Though a tropical paradise, complete with beaches and palm trees, there is a sense of fragility, of quiet calm before some violence- violence here being frequent storms. This was the inspiration for our decision to bring the Owen Project to this island. Following in Captain Blood’s footsteps, we hope to be a modern experiment in intellectual freedom and democracy.

With holiday wishes,

Mark

With the holiday season now here, we’d like to take a moment to ask for your support for the OLPC education program. Each donation received helps support education for children around the world. As you make your holiday preparations, please consider a gift to support the education of a child through the One Laptop Per Child education program.

Thank you for supporting OLPC around the world!

 

 

US Side Participant Ellen: The girls on the call this morning were very clear about the many challenges young girls in Kenya face in school and in their social lives. They voiced the problems on topics such as self esteem, peer pressure, the challenges they face when they have their period, teen pregnancy and STDs and being separated from boys because they could be seen as a threat from the parents and society. I was very  interested in the later. To me the current situation of boys vs girls social environment can pit them against each other. Boys should be girl’s allies! They should work together, play together and be there for each other for their mutual benefit. Boys should be their friends, their protector and most important learn to be equals. I believe the parents are the ones enforcing this social rule on their girls and boys and we need them to get involved to create change. Maybe by meeting the boys and their families and creating a community around them.

Sandra;

Good Morning Friends of Small Solutions Bukokholo Kenya Education Center

 

We apologize if you were not able to connect to our call this morning. We had issues with the tools for sharing conversations online.  We tried Zoom, but the sound on the Kenya side, and the faces and voices of the girls from four different schools could not be heard. I will send the teacher some funds to try some new plug in microphones.

Then we tried Skype.  We had a video, but the sound feedback and buzzing was too much. This happens, but we moved ahead with WhatsApp.

So we had a clear voice connection with Whatsapp.  Ellen Reis joined us while girls shared the discussions they have been holding in small groups at their schools.

 

It is very moving to hear the voices of these girls talk about the social and cultural issues that make their life difficult, and become barriers to school attendance and make their daily life challenging.

 

I was most moved by their desire to have normal friendships with boys.  They described the attitudes of adults that prevent them from developing friendships with boys.  In school, in their classrooms, playgrounds, and walking to and from school or doing errands in their village, they are discouraged from talking to or walking with boys.  Parents and others believe that if they are with a boy and are of the age to be sexually active that they are putting themselves in harms way. They are likely to accuse them of having a sexual relationship with these boys.

 

The girls seem to  long for normal friendships with boys who are their own age.  They know they are good smart boys who can help them with their school work, or possibly protect them from more dangerous older men who are looking for girls for sex. They want to be friends with them.

They talked about the attitude of parents.  Sometimes it is not providing materials so that they can manage their menstrual flow, or their parents’ fear of friendships with boys, their belief in FGM as a necessary procedure for girls. One girl mentioned parents who push their daughters into prostitution for the money.  They also mentioned that many men do not believe in the necessity of using medicine to control STIs. Most girls use pills to protect themselves from pregnancy, not condoms as I had thought. So they are afraid of contracting STIs.

 

I was impressed at their awareness of the need to understand their emotions.  They said that often they don’t recognize or understand the strong feeling they have when they are attracted to a boy, and understand that it is a normal feeling and don’t have to act on it.   The said that they know that boys like sex. But they would like to be just friends with them, not a girlfriend. They know that they can understand and learn to manage their feelings.

OLE Nepal’s Teaching in Technology Residency program has been receiving rave reviews from school teachers, local communities and children. Each year, OLE Nepal trains young graduates to support the newly launched laptop program schools in the far western districts of Nepal. Ever since it was introduced 5 years ago, many young graduates have travelled to remote communities in these districts where they live for months working with schools and communities so that they can use…

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Wow! She DID it! 

This very morning, in Takoradi, Ghana, Western Heritage Home Scholar Dorothy Armoo formally went through her graduation from Asanta Nursing/Midwifery College and her induction ceremony into the Ghana National Health Service.

She is now a certified professional nurse!

Nov 12, 2018

Dorothy has been "one of ours" since 2006. She was a child who needed a home. Western Heritage Home Chairman James Kainyiah found her and brought to live at their Children's Home. She became a "Western Heritage Home Scholar".

She learned to spell her name! She attended nearby Manye Academy. She graduated from Nsein Senior High School. Her dream from when she was a small child was to become a nurse. And she has achieved her dream! 

James Kainyiah and Dorothy after her graduation ceremony. He is the proud "father," having provided overall care for her for so many years!

Western Heritage Home's motto is: "Making Leaders of the Least." And Dorothy is a prime example!

Ghana Together has worked hand-in-hand with WHH to support Dorothy for many years. We especially thank her "special sponsor" who has been so faithful. 

Dorothy herself worked as a kindergarten teacher for one year, while she waited acceptance into nursing school after graduating senior high. And she's been supporting herself as part of the Lou Moon Lodge cleaning staff for a few months between end of classes and today's formal induction. Now she awaits assignment to her national service post. 

Congratulations Dorothy! We are proud!

To help: http://ghanatogether.org/HTML/Donations.html

808 Addison Place

Mount Vernon, WA 98273

Website: http://ghanatogether.org

Email: info@ghanatogether.org

We sadly say good-bye to Queen Mother Nana Adjow-Sika, who passed away last week.  What a loss to the Axim community! 

Nana served on the Western Heritage Board since its first day. She was a co-signer on all WHH bank checks. Because of her knowledge of the Axim community and families, she was crucial in helping select our scholarship students. 

Nana, second from left in rose-colored dress, with James' arm affectionately on her shoulder. She was part of the Western Heritage Home NGO team from the beginning.

Nana with her beloved Nyame quilt, made for her by Ghana Together's Jerome Chandler. The symbol in the middle is the traditional Ghanaian Adinkra symbol for God. It is revered and found widely on buildings, windows, clothing, etc.

Nana and Ghana Together's Maryanne Ward having a nice conversation in May, 2018 in her home. Good friends!

Peter (left) and Kingsley just a couple of days ago. They are "brothers", both having lived in the Children's Home in their early years and Axim boys forever

Beginning work on sea defense. They first had to build a road so they can get the heavy equipment to the area

Unpacking the boxes of books, readying them for delivery to 17 primary schools, via the tricycle-mobile library. And that's it for this time! Thanks to all for helping with scholarship funds, AND for donating, packing, shipping, and delivering the books to the Axim Library! Whew!  And thanks to the Western Heritage Home folks for all the work involved in turning the Heritage building into a hostel for construction workers. Not so easy and a real community service! Ghana Together 808 Addison Place Mount Vernon, WA 98273 Website: http://ghanatogether.org Email: info@ghanatogether.org

OK, you guys, time to get to work…

Oh yes, it’s been fun playing on the beach for the past 3 weeks or so... 

Lots of drumming, with guys in funny costumes!

And so much DANCING...

 BUT, now it’s time for school. Time for you students to do your part, yes! And you will LOVE it!

Methodist JHS in Axim, in classroom renovated by Western Heritage Home & Ghana Together

Maako Preparatory School

Male students at Community Development Vocational/Technical Institute who helped build their school's urine diversification/dehydration toilet

• 2 pupils in Manye Academy
• 2 students in Asanta Nursing
• 1 student in Ghana National College Senior High for the Blind
• 10 students in Axim Community Development Vocational Technical Institute
• 40 pupils in Axim Christ the King Academy
• 15 pupils in Esiama Maako Future Leaders Preparatory School
• 1 student in Takoradi Technical University

Verschlüsselter E-Mail-Service Tutonata testet Kryptowährung für Zahlungen Tutanota akzeptiert nun Bitmünze und einige Altmünzen. Anzeige Tutanota, ein Anbieter eines verschlüsselten E-Mail-Dienstes, hat damit begonnen, Spenden in bitcoin, ether, bitcoin cash und monero entgegenzunehmen, um die Zahlungsabwicklung mit Krypto-Währungen zu testen, … Continue reading →

Dies ist der erste in einer Reihe von Beiträgen, die die Quellen von Werten in Krypto-Währungen identifizieren. Der jüngste Trend bei den Münzangeboten, einschließlich des massiven Anstiegs von Tezos, hat die Krypto-Währungen ins Rampenlicht gerückt. Die Bewertung der weltweit führenden … Continue reading →

Krypto-Münzen, auch Krypto-Währung oder Krypto genannt, sind eine Form der digitalen Währung, die durch Blockchain-Technologie angetrieben wird. Cryptocoins haben kein physisches, reales Äquivalent. Es gibt keine echten Münzen, die den Krypto-Währungswert repräsentieren, jedoch wurden einige Repliken für Werbezwecke oder als … Continue reading →

Als erste und älteste Kryptowährung ist Bitcoin oft das erste Blockchain-Projekt, von dem Neulinge hören. Wenn Sie neu in dieser Technologie sind, sind Bitcoin-Ressourcen ein großartiger Ort, um Informationen über das Bitcoin-Protokoll und das Netzwerk zu erhalten. Von hier aus … Continue reading →

– Deepa Thapa, Senior Officer: Curriculum and Training, OLE Nepal. Dharma Raj Joshi is a tall man with amazing personality. He is kind-hearted and quite expressive. He loves sharing his ideas along with some personal stuffs without any hesitation,  even with a new group of people. He has a great esteem towards what he is doing for his livelihood. He can easily open up with concerned persons, and speaks very naturally, His tone of Doteli language…

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Blockketten und Kryptowährungen begannen mit dem Debüt der digitalen Währung Bitcoin im Jahr 2008. Heute gibt es so viele verschiedene Arten von Kryptowährungen, dass es schwierig sein kann, mit allen Projekten Schritt zu halten! Litecoin und Ethereum waren die nächsten … Continue reading →

Using Math and Design Based Thinking to Create: Classes for children, learning to create projects in Scratch Junior or Scratch, using MakeyMakey.  These projects can be animations, games, puzzles, simulations. Our approach to learning is design based knowledge construction, and thinking about thinking process.  These classes will be tailored to those who are interested. We like working with small. If you are interested in these classes, now or in 2018 please contact us. Susan McPhee, Alan Papert and Sandra Thaxter are the instructors.

Small Solutions has held taught Scratch classes at FRS in previous years.  We would like to solicit interest before scheduling. We donate 25% of all church members class fees to FRS.  This year we are working on the theme of Re-Imagining the future. Children in Kenya thought about the homes they wanted, how their city should look.  These projects could range from imagining the cars of the future, to simulating sea rise or species extinction, to creating games to meet future environmental challenges.

 

Sandra Thaxter has been working with Scratch for 7 years, Alan Papert had a career as a design engineer and was part of the Turtle Seymour Papert children’s programming research. Susan McPhee is a programmer and enthusiast of Scratch Junior.  Contact sandra@smallsolutionsbigideas.org  or go to our website for more information http://smallsolutionsbigideas.org

 

Makey Makey is an invention kit for the 21st century. Turn everyday objects into touchpads and combine them with the internet. It’s a simple Invention Kit for Beginners and Experts doing art, engineering, and everything inbetween:

 

Scratch and Scratch Junior are a child friendly programming environment developed at the MIT Media Lab. Scratch is an expanding set of tools and programs that  connects to MakeyMakey, Lego Robotics, Arduino and Music streaming.

 

Small Solutions Big Ideas is dedicated to providing children with learning opportunities that expand their thinking and awareness. We are enthusiasts of after-school informal learning environments.  We structure each class to adapt to the children signed up. Classes are small 8 to 10 students, and students receive individual attention.  We use Scratch programming as an environment for children to build programming skills, but learn how to design complex tasks, such as designing a game, or animating a narrative story, or simulating a natural process.  We also use hands on materials and activities to create and design. 3D design is available for students who are interested in that medium.

 

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The last blog I  wrote  was in January, 2017.It has the title "dLEAP into 2017". A year and half later I am updating this blog with an entry "dLEAP in 2018". Happy to say that no news is good news - there has been progress over the year.

Volunteers and I was back in July 2017 to follow-up the CheWong kids who lives in the surrounding areas of the Elephant Sanctuary. In my last 2017 blog I reported that we replaced all the older XO in the hands of the CheWong's children to XO4. Bags were purchased and they were reminded to keep it clean. Our surprise visit confirmed that they were indeed keeping it real clean and using it regularly to our delight.

Thanks to the good public relation by a local volunteer we were offered a newly painted room in Elephant Centre (EC) as resource centre for the children. It is also an educational public space for visitors to EC. On August 12, 2017 last year we had the children of dLEAP to participate in the World Elephant Day. A simple Scratch game written by a Hong Kong 12 year old kid and downloaded to their XO4 were shown to visitors.

Kids from a surrounding school was entertained to what they could do with the XO4. These students envied what the CheWong's  children were able to do with 1:1 laptop ownership.

Yes, we hope to do another event for August 12, 2018!



To reach out to new children and even smaller children we piloted leaving a few XOs to a kindergarten to the delight of the 4-6 years old children. They were using it almost immediately and was very proficient a month later with no support. Work is in progress  that we will get each children their own laptop by the end of 2018. Hence this pre-school will become a 1:1 kindergarten and will serve both very young CheWong children and Malay village children.


In another front some good progress is coming out from a small pilot of XO4 with another local volunteer who is based in Sarawak. As an academic and computer scientist he is engaging development of local support resources. I was sent this link on their development and even had a video of their pilot test session.

So the progress from 2017 into 2018 has been good. It will be 5 years since Basecamp2013@Malacca was organised. We were lucky to attract participants from all over the world. Will there be a Basecamp 2018? I have sketched of what could be possible dates in August for synergy in Hong Kong or/and Malaysia. It has been a tiring 5 years but rewarding when you see children and kids getting the opportunities. For basecamp2018, this is a vapour idea more than a month away. If it happens it happens! 


 Will love to hear from any of you as comments or by e-mail (tkkang@nurturingasia.com)

This one is more prosaic…but we want to share it anyway because it’s just so great in its own way…J

First a bit of background:

In 2009. Axim started its Axim GirlsSenior High School with 23 students, after years of work and the support of Chief Awulae, Member of Parliament Catherine Afeku, Founding Headmistress Mrs. Bonku, businessman and Western Heritage Home Chairman James Kainyiah, and so many other local leaders. As Chief Awulae said so many times:



By September of 2016, the Axim Girls Senior High School had 88 new first-year students. Each student paid hefty fees for tuition, books, lab fees, supplies, and room and board….beyond most families economically…especially for daughters.

Then…WHAT A CHANGE! The newly-elected Ghanaian government implemented the long-held national dream/promise to focus on education—for sons AND daughters. It started funding “free” academic senior high school for newly incoming freshman---even including room and board if needed.

The “free” SHS has now extended to all three years. So, when Maryanne Ward visited the school in May 2018, there were just over 350 students in the entire school. More than 500 are expected in September 2018! We are hoping/praying that Ghana can somehow keep this all going…not easy.

When Maryanne asked what she needed, Madame smiled. 

Well, all that was a bit beyond our bank account, but we did settle on Mrs. Appiah’s TOP PRIORITY…a...PHOTOCOPIER/PRINTING MACHINE. 

How does this thing work, anyway?? Wow! 21st Century Technology Coming to good old Axim!! Principal Theodora Appiah and Her New Machine! Thanks you all! And, well, if you know someone who can help her with all the other stuff, you know who to contact! Ghana Together website: http://ghanatogether.org email: info@ghanatogether.org

THE GREEDY FROG.

Written by Subeta

There were those days when frogs were the most beautiful reptiles on earth. There voices were so sweet and they had also smooth shiny skin and strong graceful legs. These made other animals liked them. They also liked singing to other animals.

 

There lived one frog called Lende. Lende had such a nice voice that all animals gathered at her hut, after every morning’s work for songs and stories.

 

However, in those days good things never missed there bed side. Lende was very greedy for food, This made her hate other animals. She had a fellow greedy friend called Kaza.

Kaza could not leave Lende ́s home without eating. She always made long  unending stories in order to wait for food.

    One day Kaza decided to pay her long time friend Lende a visit to hear her beautiful stories and songs. She was also hungry as she had not eaten for the past three days. She had timed her arrival at lunch time when she was very sure that Lende has prepared food. She drew closer to her friends house. The sweet smell of boiling pumpkins filled her stomach.

    I will use all tricks to get that greedy friend of mine to give me food. Kaza said to herself and knocked at the Lende’s door before it could be opened. She peeped through the hole in the wall and saw her friend hiding food. No sooner had she began, than he said! Oh! my friend, the God of the earth and sky has just saved me!

   

What happened to you my friend? Lende asked in disbelief. I almost got a snake bite! A snake, as long as from this place where I am seated to that hot pot under your bed, just crossed my way as I made the last stride away from it. Kaza replied, pointing at the food Lende had hidden.

    “You must be lucky,” replied disappointed Lende. In a flash Kaza got up from his seat and quickly walked to the pot of pumpkins as he demonstrated how long the snake was.

    Oh! my friend, this pot is so hot , what is it that you are cooking under the bed? “, Kaza asked.

Lende was so disappointed and embarrassed that she brought out the food and they all ate together . Kaza ate as fast as she could and even faster than her friend. After the food was all finished she stood up pretending to be going for a short call.

 

Once outside she hurriedly left for home. The following day, another friend also decided to march in without knocking the door. Lende had prepared porridge and potatoes for lunch. My friend saw that porridge seems sweet.  The visitor said, “it is so sweet that we don’t even need sugar to make it sweeter”, she added.

    Lende tried hiding the porridge but she slid and burned her soft and smooth skin. The visitor was so hungry that she had never allowed the porridge to go like that. She bent over Lende and with her long and rough tongue, cleared all the porridge on her friends skin each time removing with it the skin and part of Lende’s flesh.

    Mr. Hare was another problem to Lende because he could smell food from far and walk into his house talking about it.

    “Ooh! what a delicious meal for you have cooked” said the hare. I will come with my children to help you eat the food. Lende got fed up with her friends and decided to swallow hot stone to spoil the sweet voice brought so many visitors. As the stone rolled down her throat it burned her that she could not bear with the pain any more. She jumped near by pool of water to drink some water to cool her pain that had gotten worse by now. However, she tried getting out of water the pain got worse that even breathing was a problem. She therefore, decided to stay permanently in water to keep cooling her throat and so to avoid many visitors. That is why up to now frogs have very rough voice, skin and also stays in water.

   

    LESSON learned from the story:

Greedy does not pay but instead can give a permanent body harm.

The story helps as to mentor ourselves and fit in the current society of 21st century.

 

WARNING

We should not be selfish instead be kind to others.

 

written by Subeda wanjala from Bukokholo RC Primary school grade 8, 2018   

• BUTONGE PRIMARY SCHOOL – SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE CASE STUDY TEAM – BUNGOMA
• BUNGOMA SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE PRESENTATION ON 12^TH JUNE, 2018
• INTERNATIONAL DISTANCE LEARNING

THERE WERE THREE PRESENTORS: A). HELLEN N. WATITI GRADE 8 BUTONGE PRIMARY SCHOOL – BUNGOMA- KENYA

Hi everyone, my name is Hellen Watiti a grade eight student of Butonge primary school Bungoma Kenya.Welcome participants. OUR SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE GOAL

Our main goal of practicing sustainable agriculture is to meet society’s food and textile needs in the present without compromising the ability of future generation starting from our current generation to meet our own needs.

Being practitioners of sustainable agriculture, we seek to integrate three main objectives in our farm work as follows;

A). A healthy environment

B). Economic profitability and

C). Social economic equity

Therefore, I call upon all countries under OPEN especially schools to be involved in the food system – growers, food processors, distributors, retailers, consumers and waste managers to play a role in ensuring a sustainable agricultural system.

As students of Butonge primary school Bungoma Kenya, our major practice in sustainable agriculture will be to promote soil health, minimize water use and lower pollution levels on our farms.

Thank you,

Hellen.

B) METRINE WEKESA GRADE EIGHT BUTONGE PRIMARY SCHOOL- BUNGOMA KENYA

My name is Metrine Wekesa grade eight of Butonge primary school Bungoma Kenya and am to present over our preparation. Preparation that we are trying to put in place,

Through the school management board, we have been given part of our school land that we will use to practice sustainable agriculture demo plots. In that part of land we are going to divide it into four small plots measuring 6m by 6m or 18ft by 18ft.

We intend to start with two crops i.e beans and sweet potatoes early August this year 2018

Between now to August we are looking forward to do soil sampling to know our school’s soil PH before we prepare for planting.

Thank you,  Metrine.

C).EMMANUEL WAFULA GRADE EIGHT BUTONGE PRIMARY SCHOOL- BUNGOMA KENYA:  PREPARATION PROCESS

My name is Emmanuel Wafula of Butonge primary school – Bungoma Kenya

After knowing the soil PH, as a school team, we will to collect organic manure (compost manure).

Out of 100 students who will participate in our sustainable agriculture demo plots, especially bean plot, we have resolved each student to come along with two kgs of compost manure and prepare it for planting beans on the plot that we will be doing conservation farming and on a control plot we will use inorganic fertilizer as we continue to study our soil fertility improvement in next planting season.

Not only shall we be monitoring soil fertility improvement, but also see crop production performance.

In our preparation we are seeking technical advice from agricultural experts especially agronomist and agricultural extension offices to inform us more about spacing, pest and disease control among other farming basic technical requirements.

Thank you,

Emmanuel.

QUESTIONS

• Is it proper to eat sweet potatoes with their skin (without peeling)?
• How can we control potato weevils?
• Why sometimes bean leaves change color to yellow prematurely?

 

There is an old legend of a man from Jerusalem who lived on the route that Jesus took on the way to Golgotha. This man, named Ahaseurus, had seen many criminals pass by on their way to crucifiction, so he took no notice of Jesus as he fell for a third time on his doorstep. He nudged the prostrate Jesus who said, “ Because you have not allowed me to rest, so too you will never rest.” At that moment Ahaseurus became immortal. Jesus appeared to him in a dream and told him that he would wander the world as a witness to the miraculous events of those times. To those faithful people who recognized him, he could give an account of that first Good Friday and reassure them that miracles do happen for those who have eyes to see. Throughout the Middle Ages Christians sought for this man in the faces of strangers, travelers and pilgrims.

I mention this story because we met this man at a kindergarten we visited in the foothills outside of Siguatepeque. I can’t describe the impact that a room full of beaming, beautiful and expectant faces can have on a heart that is open and willing to receive. All that was good, true and loving in us was called to the surface. There was simply no room for mean-spiritedness, selfishness or self-absorption.

Carried away by these emotions, I moved to the back of the classroom and was approached by an older Honduran man who was not introduced to us earlier. He proceeded to tell that he had heard of us and the story of Owen’s death and our response to it. He conveyed that he sometimes prayed for Owen’s soul and that he wanted to meet Sally and I. I can’t tell you how humbled I was by this simple and profound expression of compassion. Just as mysteriously, this man left without ceremony, but I hope to remember him for the rest of my life.

His appearance proved to be prophetic because he prepared us for an afternoon visit to the special needs school in Siguatepeque. Most of these students are deaf and unable to speak. They use facial expressions, body language and gestures to convey what their words cannot. Mostly they convey joy and happiness. Did I mention that they are the world’s best huggers? Such trust and openness! Presley, Hannah, Brian, Thong, Brooke and Kaelin found it hard to tear themselves away.

I’ll end here with some pictures which will mock my attempts to convey in words what can only be experienced directly.

Saint John of the Cross was a Spanish mystic who chronicled what he called the “ dark night of the soul.” I have known these nights, but I wonder if there are other stages of a soul’s journey that correspond to more pleasant times of day. When we arrived in San Pedro Sula safely and without lost bags or any delays, I felt a rush of gratitude and happiness that matched the vibrant green of the countryside. The experience reminded me of Saturday mornings when I was a child. The air itself tasted sweet and the sunlight was golden and magical. Borrowing from Saint John, can there be a bright morning of the soul? If so, then I have known these as well. I wonder too if I am effected by the childlike excitement of our latest and largest contingent of students. I trust that they are posting plenty of pictures. However evocative those images, there is some element of direct experience that cannot be captured by pictures or words. You have to see their faces and feel the force of their emotions.

We piled into a Forestry Service van and soon left the sweltering lowlands, climbing into the fantastically-forested mountains. The temperature fell, dark clouds gathered and the sky opened up. The rain was so fierce that we feared flooded roadways. After weeks of baking heat in Texas, we enjoyed the chill in the air and arrived safely.

Monday morning after breakfast at Dona Mercedes’, we left for our first school. Some of us rode in the back of a pickup, while others stayed safely in a van. I am going to try to add some pictures here. Sally has reminded me that no one wants to read my purple prose.

 

I’m going to sign off now so that I can post this.

With care,

Mark

Willkommen zur deutschen Version von WordPress. Dies ist der erste Beitrag. Du kannst ihn bearbeiten oder löschen. Und dann starte mit dem Schreiben!

Dear Friends,

Through the generosity of our donors, this young woman is being trained in nutrition.  She has gained notably superior marks in her work.  She will come back to the Bungoma community and share her knowledge and services.  This strengthens the impact of our programs, and builds goodwill and trust in the community.  Everyone benefits.

Receive many greetings from this end of the great rift valley of our beloved country Kenya. I hope and trust that you’re doing well in the United States of America. I’m also doing well here in my training school as I say once again that, thank you so much for your immeasurable support that enabled to be where I ‘am.

I’m learning new things about nutrition of which historically, people of my community are not upholding them. For instance, I have to help my community on the side of maintaining good health. For example, one should choose a diet moderate in sugar and salt. This is because, too much consumption of sugar leads to hypertension, diabetes and too much consumption of salt leads to goiter. They should choose a diet of whole grains, vegetables especially; they are given too much food to children, weaning starts too early or late without following health procedures and they are often sick.

Solutions on how to curb the above problems,

I will encourage mothers to breastfeed their babies for at least 6 months before complimenting them.

I have to teach mothers to complement their babies at 6 months so that they can get enough food and breast milk

Mothers should vaccine their children in order to protect their immunity.

As a dietitian, I will use the following dietary assessment to assess the diet of people in the community.

For example;

Food Frequency Questionnaire:

This is whereby a person is given a list of around 100 food items to indicate his or her intake per day, week, and month.

24 hour dietary recall;

Trainer interviewer asks the subject to recall all food and drinks taken in the previous 24 hours.

Dietary history:

Its aim is to discover the usual food intake pattern of an individual over a relatively long period of time.

Food dietary:

Food intake should be recorded by the subject at a time of consumption

Observed food consumption:

The unused in clinical method practice but is recommended for research.

I will go ahead to advice people of my community to plant plenty of guava trees and teach them about the importance of eating a balanced diet e.g fats, minerals, vitamins, proteins and carbohydrates.

According to analysis of diet survey data, the measure of nutrient provided by the diet is calculated by basing on calories supplied by the food such as that food rich in nutrients relative to the energy content are termed a food with high nutrient density. E.g !kg carbohydrate(CHO)- 4 Kilo calories (kca)

1kg proteins – 4 kilo calories (kca)

1g fats – 9 kilo calories (kca)

1g alcohol – 7 kilo calories (kca)

In our community, there are children, who are malnourished due to,

Not getting enough breast milk

Given too little food and

Overfeeding among other diet requirements

Here is my performance report:

Remember those Western Heritage Home Scholars(?)…the ones we’ve written so much about over the years? Well, as of about a week ago, SIX of them have graduated!

And we are pleased to give each of the four senior high graduates the “Leif Pederson Graduation Award” in the amount of $300 US --- about 3-4 months income for basic work in Axim, Ghana.

We lost Leif, one of Ghana Together’s founding members, in 2010, but the children remember “Uncle Leif”, and his computers and just his fun ways with them, and we know he would be so very proud of them.

We got to know all six because they spent their early years living in the Western Heritage Children’s Home. Western Heritage Home, our associate NGO in Ghana, and we have supported these young men and women in one way or another since 2007, so yes, we are proud of them!

Western Heritage Home Children in 2007. Our newest graduates are somewhere in this pic!

Dorothy has graduated with an Nursing Associate degree from the Asante Nursing School. She will be placed by the Ghanaian Government in a locale needing medical staff in the near future. Meanwhile, she is supporting herself by working with the cleaning staff at the Lou Moon Resort not far from Axim.

Peter graduated from Nsein Senior High School. He took all the "extra" classes in science and math, and dreams of becoming a computer engineer. His WASSCE test scores (like our SAT) will be available in September. Meanwhile, he is considering offers for two teacher positions (math and science skills are scarce and so even at this stage he can help younger students) and/or a position in a bank until his future educational plans materialize.

Ernestina (left) and Gifty have graduated from Axim Girls Senior High School. Both have already had some experience in market selling, and plan to use their Graduation Awards to start their own businesses

Kingsley has graduated from the Axim Community Development Vocational and Technical Institute. He has specialized in Welding and Fabrication. He has done some apprentice work, and his training at CDVTI included business and computer skills, English, and entrepreneurship as well as training in his technical specialty. He is looking for a job!

Godwin has graduated from Manye Junior High School. He will next attend Kikkam Technical Institute, which offers a wide range of vocational/technical classes for further training.

-James Kainyiah, Founder/Chair of Western Heritage Home, and Evans Arloo, WHH Operations Manager who managed the relationships with the schools, teachers and keep the program going, no matter what!

-Mindy and family who supported Ernestina all through senior high

-Bonnie who supported Dorothy through nurses training

-Madame Felicia Attah, teacher and now Headmistress of Manye Academy who took a special interest in these children, and also Madame Safiatu Seidu, Director of the Community Development Vocational/Technical Institute, and Madame Theodora Appiah, Principal of Axim Girls Senior High School, and the teachers and staff of each of the schools

We give these new graduates our congratulations, and our confidence in them, and our best wishes as they launch their adult lives!

There is a beautiful short story by Jean Giono called, ” The Man Who Planted Trees.” In it a peasant living in Provence early in the 20th century loses an only child and is emptied out by grief. He becomes a shepherd and moves to a part of Southern France that has been deforested and desolate since Roman times. He takes on the mission of replanting trees in this high desert- one acorn at a time, one day at a time, one year at a time. After decades of patient labor and magnificent generosity, he revives the ancient forest and water returns to the streams and springs, and animals return to the trees. With Christ-like devotion this simple man changes the world.

For obvious reasons this story resonates with Sally and I. We recognize what it feels like to be emptied by grief, and also how broken hearts are fertile ground for quiet service. In Siguatepeque our principal partner Oscar Ochoa Mendoza is a forester, a man who plants trees. For the past 8 years we have also joined him and many others in planting computers in schools in the mountains around Siguatepeque. We hope that these digital seeds have spread some measure of excitement, joy and curiosity to these children- one life at a time, one class at a time, one village at a time.

Mark

It is the time of the year to start dreaming of summer vacation, and for me this means a trip to Honduras. Six of my students, all graduating seniors, will be with us this trip. I’m including their photos above. I was particularly moved by these young people because they came to me to ask if they could join our mission before I had mentioned anything  about going to Honduras. With continuing wonder, Sally and I have become observers of a project that seems to draw loving people into its orbit.   I’ve asked them to view some of our old posts to get a sense of what it might be like in a mountain school surrounded by smiling children. Reviewing these posts myself, I felt like Marcel Proust, overcome by recollections of the past, overcome by a beguiling nostalgia, an enchantment.

It was not the taste of a petite madeleine dipped in tea that I sought in the memories evoked by those posts; it was that quiet joy, that moral clarity, that sense of ethical purpose. I remember a film entitled ” The Hurt Locker” which involved the adventures of a munitions expert in Baghdad who defuses bombs for the military. After his tour ends in Iraq, he returns home to his wife and child. He goes shopping for breakfast cereal and is overwhelmed by the bright lights. the muzak playing and the sheer number of choices offered in the cereal aisle. In the next frame he is back in Iraq risking his life. I think I understand him. In Baghdad his life is simple and full of life and death importance. Most days I feel like I’m in the cereal aisle of moral choices, confused and ill at ease. It seems quaint  and naive to try to love your neighbor as yourself here in Texas. This is never the case in Honduras . Some day I’ll bring some of that confidence back home.

A final note: I’ll identify those handsome folks who are about to find out  what I was struggling to convey earlier. In the order of their photos: Tong Vu, who will be attending Blinn College; Brian Cash, also attending Blinn College; Kaelin Casey, who will attend Concordia College ; Brooke Mueller, who will attend Texas A&M; Hannah Patek, is bound for Texas Tech University; and Presley Carter, will be at the University of Texas in Austin. I feel a father’s pride in all of them.

More later,

Mark

This May, Ghana Together’s Maryanne Ward visited Axim. For two days, she joined Regional Library Director Mercy Ackah and Western Heritage Home Operations Manager Evans Arloo as they reviewed the mobile library service with Headmistresses/Masters and Library Teachers at 17 schools.

"Madame Mercy", as she is known, trying out the tricycle mobile library. No she doesn't drive it herself---she has Gaddiel Eyison, her library lead staff, to do that!!

The mobile library program is geared to “bring the library to the children” rather than expecting the children to consistently visit the library. It visits each school once/per week, depending some on whether the District Assembly has helped fund the fuel.
Since schools don’t have libraries or in many cases textbooks, this is a vital service to encourage literacy, especially for primary school students.

At the end of the Jan-early April term, 779 Axim-area students are registered library card holders, and the children had checked out a total of 8,622 books.

Meeting with Headmaster and Library Teacher

Ghana Together

808 Addison Place

Mount Vernon, WA 98273

Website: http://ghanatogether.org

Email: info@ghanatogether.org

CORRUPTION IN KENYA
Corrruption is where a person becomes greed of money and needs to be bribed in order to do something.Corruption in Kenya has been widely spread in all parts including in schools,offices,companies,churches and hospitals.

Kenya has been noted by many countries in all parts of the wold to be among the most corrupt countries. Behold the fact that Kenya is one of the third world countries in the world where citizens depend on education for survival, throug corruption Kenya is killing her own inovative and prosporous son.

A good example is a person who works as the company manager,he claims that he want kitu kidogo (something small) in order to employ ssomebody. This leads to lose of jobs to the poor who are educated, they lose chances because they have nothing to offer.

Principals in schools are bribed by parents who had their children perfoming poorly for them to get a chance inthe school while the poor children who perfomed better loses the chance.

Traffic police officers need to be bribed by drivers.The drivers who have wrecked dud vehicles which may lead to accidents on *roads are allowed to pass on roads.

Effects of corruption
1. Corruption has led in killing of prosperous and inovative minds which can change kenya by vission 2030.
Managers can only employ the rich who are able to offer something smallto them .
Through this we discover that Africa is killing her own son
2.Accidents are rapidly becoming high because traffic police officers are allowing wrecked,old and poorly managed trucks passing on roads.
3.Companies are collapsing because the managers employ unskilled people who are rich leavingout the skilled people who are poor.
4.Extreme poverty.

What kenya shall do to overcome corruption.
1.Citizens should practice equality to all because we were made by the same God and our blood is made of the same colour.
2.Citizens should not be greed of money.
3.Citizens should conduct public rallies so as to fight corruption by conducting public awarenesses.

US BEING YOUTHS,LETS DISCUSS CORRUPTION SO THAT IT CANT HAPPEN AGAIN IN OUR GENERATION.

LETS UNITE AND FIGHT CORRUPTION

LETS SAVE THE LIVES OF THE POOR AND OPHARNS

KENYA-CORRUPTION=PEACE+LOVE+UNITY+PROSPERIT

BY  BRIGHTON

Brighton is one of our Scholarship students. He is attending St. Luke’s High School for Boys.  It is a very good prestigious local school.  He wants to be an engineer.  He is one of our ‘building youth leadership’ students.  He contributes to the learning and activities at the Hands of Charity/SSBI Technology Education center.

Seymour Papert is credited as saying that tools to support learning should have “high ceilings” and “low floors.” The phrase is meant to suggest that tools should allow learners to do complex and intellectually sophisticated things but should also be easy to begin using quickly. Mitchel Resnick extended the metaphor to argue that learning toolkits should also have “wide walls” in that they should appeal to diverse groups of learners and allow for a broad variety of creative outcomes. In a new paper, Benjamin Mako Hill and I attempted to provide the first empirical test of Resnick’s wide walls theory. Using a natural experiment in the Scratch online community, we found causal evidence that “widening walls” can, as Resnick suggested, increase both engagement and learning.

Over the last ten years, the “wide walls” design principle has been widely cited in the design of new systems. For example, Resnick and his collaborators relied heavily on the principle in the design of the Scratch programming language. Scratch allows young learners to produce not only games, but also interactive art, music videos, greetings card, stories, and much more. As part of that team, I was guided by “wide walls” principle when I designed and implemented the Scratch cloud variables system in 2011-2012.

While designing the system, I hoped to “widen walls” by supporting a broader range of ways to use variables and data structures in Scratch. Scratch cloud variables extend the affordances of the normal Scratch variable by adding persistence and shared-ness. A simple example of something possible with cloud variables, but not without them, is a global high-score leaderboard in a game (example code is below). After the system was launched, I saw many young Scratch users using the system to engage with data structures in new and incredibly creative ways.

Although these examples reflected powerful anecdotal evidence, I was also interested in using quantitative data to reflect the causal effect of the system. Understanding the causal effect of a new design in real world settings is a major challenge. To do so, we took advantage of a “natural experiment” and some clever techniques from econometrics to measure how learners’ behavior changed when they were given access to a wider design space.

Understanding the design of our study requires understanding a little bit about how access to the Scratch cloud variable system is granted. Although the system has been accessible to Scratch users since 2013, new Scratch users do not get access immediately. They are granted access only after a certain amount of time and activity on the website (the specific criteria are not public). Our “experiment” involved a sudden change in policy that altered the criteria for who gets access to the cloud variable feature. Through no act of their own, more than 14,000 users were given access to feature, literally overnight. We looked at these Scratch users immediately before and after the policy change to estimate the effect of access to the broader design space that cloud variables afforded.

We found that use of data-related features was, as predicted, increased by both access to and use of cloud variables. We also found that this increase was not only an effect of projects that use cloud variables themselves. In other words, learners with access to cloud variables—and especially those who had used it—were more likely to use “plain-old” data-structures in their projects as well.

The graph below visualizes the results of one of the statistical models in our paper and suggests that we would expect that 33% of projects by a prototypical “average” Scratch user would use data structures if the user in question had never used used cloud variables but that we would expect that 60% of projects by a similar user would if they had used the system.

It is important to note that the estimated effective above is a “local average effect” among people who used the system because they were granted access by the sudden change in policy (this is a subtle but important point that we explain this in some depth in the paper). Although we urge care and skepticism in interpreting our numbers, we believe our results are encouraging evidence in support of the “wide walls” design principle.

Of course, our work is not without important limitations. Critically, we also found that rate of adoption of cloud variables was very low. Although it is hard to pinpoint the exact reason for this from the data we observed, it has been suggested that widening walls may have a potential negative side-effect of making it harder for learners to imagine what the new creative possibilities might be in the absence of targeted support and scaffolding. Also important to remember is that our study measures “wide walls” in a specific way in a specific context and that it is hard to know how well our findings will generalize to other contexts and communities. We discuss these caveats, as well as our methods, models, and theoretical background in detail in our paper which now available for download as an open-access piece from the ACM digital library.

---

This blog post, and the open access paper that it describes, is a collaborative project with Benjamin Mako Hill. Financial support came from the eScience Institute and the Department of Communication at the University of Washington. Quantitative analyses for this project were completed using the Hyak high performance computing cluster at the University of Washington.

「派遣」と聞くと、一般的に想像するのは、事務職やSEなどのIT企業への派遣、日雇い労働に多い力仕事などでしょうか。 でも最近は、「コンパニオン派遣」というコンパニオン専門の派遣会社もありますね。 コンパニオン派遣に含まれ …

• 

Ed Felton tweeted a few days ago: “Often hear that the reason today’s Internet is not more secure is that the early designers failed to imagine that security could ever matter. That is a myth.”

This is indeed a myth.  Much of the current morass can be laid at the feet of the United States government, due to its export regulations around cryptography.

I will testify against the myth.  Bob Scheifler and I started the X Window System in 1984 at MIT, which is a network transparent window system: that is, applications can reside on computers anywhere in the network and use the X display server. As keyboard events may be transmitted over the network, it was clear to us from the get-go that it was a security issue. It is in use to this day on Linux systems all over the world (remote X11 access is no longer allowed: the ssh protocol is used to tunnel the X protocol securely for remote use). By sometime in 1985 or 1986 we were distributing X under the MIT License, which was developed originally for use of the MIT X Window System distribution (I’d have to go dig into my records to get the exact date).

I shared an office with Steve Miller at MIT Project Athena, who was (the first?) programmer working on Kerberos authentication service, which is used by Microsoft’s Active Directory service. Needless to say, we at MIT were concerned about security from the advent of TCP/IP.

We asked MIT whether we could incorporate Kerberos (and other encryption) into the X Window System. According to the advice at the time (and MIT’s lawyers were expert in export control, and later involved in PGP), if we had even incorporated strong crypto for authentication into our sources, this would have put the distribution under export control, and that that would have defeated X’s easy distribution. The best we could do was to leave enough hooks into the wire protocol that kerberos support could be added as a source level “patch” (even calls to functions to use strong authentication/encryption by providing an external library would have made it covered under export control). Such a patch for X existed, but could never be redistributed: by the time that export controls were relaxed, the patch had become mostly moot, as ssh had become available, which, along with the advent of the World Wide Web, was “good enough”, though far from an ideal solution.

Long before the term Open Source software was invented, open source and free software was essential to the Internet for essential services. The choice for all of us  working on that software was stark: we could either distribute the product of our work, or enter a legal morass, and getting it wrong could end up in court, as Phil Zimmerman did somewhat later with PGP.

Anyone claiming security was a “failure of imagination” does not know the people or the history and should not be taken seriously. Security mattered not just to us, but everyone working on the Internet. There are three software legacies from Project Athena: Kerberos, the X Window System, and instant messaging. We certainly paid much more than lip service to Internet security!

Government export controls crippled Internet security and the design of Internet protocols from the very beginning: we continue to pay the price to this day.  Getting security right is really, really hard, and current efforts towards “back doors”, or other access is misguided. We haven’t even recovered from the previous rounds of government regulations, which has caused excessive complexity in an already difficult problem and many serious security problems. Let us not repeat this mistake…

 

 

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What questions does Marvel Comics “Black Panther” movie pose for us?

1. How do we recover and overcome the sins of our fathers.?
2. Is it possible that the powerful plant or the equally powerful mineral – that changes the world might be invented in some remote African village?
3. How much of war is male egos?  And in this film how do the women suceed in turning their power towards healing rather than conquest?

 

Does it make a difference that people of color have joined the mostly white club of directors and filmmakers. Kudos to Marvel for Black Panther and its director, Ryan Coogler. The performances are remarkable in the quality of the acting, beauty, grace and authenticity of the characters,  The role of women in the drama, and the rescue of their country is worth a discussion. The genre is a Superhero Comic book genre. The main character Ch’alla appeared first in 1966, and overtime has rated at the 52nd most popular Super hero.

 

Black Panther is not only beautifully executed with strong performances especially notable are the performances of the women, Lupita Nygong’o as Nakia, Letita Wright as Suri, and Florence Kasumba as Ayo.  The character portrayed by T’Challa by Chadwick Boseman, is one of the tradition of challenges that prove his earning leadership How can we build a future from poverty.

 

The theme of a kingdom in the hidden forests of Africa what has the key to the future and to a world peace is a timely message.  My experience of African people, especially the women, is a remarkable strength overcoming the obstacles of poverty, failed governments and access to education.  I find them also totally dedicated to building a better future for their country, and ready to take leadership into their own hands.The are strong in technology. It is a great message to youth of color that the smartest person in the story is a woman who has built the technology that fuels their civilization.   And who plays the tradtiona role of ‘evil’ in this movie version that is now playing? Someone very like the sterotype of the aparthied Boers Africaans. Toally reckless in his valuing of himan life. The other evil is a California home grown young man who has been through the US military war in Afghanistan, and become a killer.  He has a disarmingly casual cool demeanor, which some may think makes him not very believable. The face that so many people of color have suffered for so long from the effects of racism and had to wear a cool innocent face to get through life is not far from the truth of the hidden anger that mus be brewing – that we see now in Black Lives Matter.   

This film provides a vision of rising up and conquering from the perspective of those have suffered, and as a good Superhero movie does, holds out for the good guys, the superheroes, to overcome evil and launch a future of peace and reconciliation.  The fact that their skin color is not white, is a powerful message to people of all colors.

 

I’d like to contrast the women in this film with those in  Wonder Woman film. I found the physical and dramatic portrayal of strong women much more convincing in this film..   For the Kenyan actress, Lupita N’gongo she knows the struggle of her Kenyan sisters who had to be strong, to face survival issues such as FGM, early marriage,preferential treatment and  education of the males. Many made bargains with their families and tribes for their freedom and right to an education, others fled to secure their future. Her power, and anger is fueled by an internal knowledge. It looks vastly different from the horse back riding sisters of Wonder Woman.  

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