[IAEP] Filesystems for kids

[mokurai at earthtreasury.org]

On Sun, May 22, 2011 3:29 am, Carlos Nazareno wrote:
>> Preschoolers, I said. Where would you have preliterate preschoolers
>> start?
>
> Sorry, didn't catch that part :) Preschoolers are a bit more difficult
> to teach with this manner :)
>
> Well, here's one way to work with it...
>
> Before the "mac/windows" GUI paradigm came along, all of us were
> working with the command line (and still are).
>
> Here's the interesting thing: command lines share a very high
> similarity with text adventures like the games made by infocom (Zork,
> etc), so this might be one effective way to get kids to start thinking
> of the filesystems:

Preliterate children, Carlos. No command line, no text adventures. Start
over.

> Describe directories as virtual rooms where kids can navigate around,
> and files as the contents of the "rooms". Kids have a natural tendency
> to explore, and this might be a more natural way to describe the
> filesystem.
>
> You can then describe the filesystem heirarchy as a house or building
> with different floors and entrances/exits to different rooms.
>
> When the filesystem is mapped to a GUI like Gnome/KDE/Mac/Windows, you
> can then show them how to navigate around the "rooms" (directories)
> and look at the objects inside the rooms.

> If you can get kids to visualize this in their minds, it could be a
> good way to get it to stick (it's how I learned).

At what age?

> When you get to first to third graders, it becomes a little simpler.
> Another (horror?) story (sorry about the one with 6 year old
> streetkids playing violent video games), my neighbor's kid and her
> friends are on facebook (mostly playing facebook games) and they're
> thereabouts in that third-grader age demographic.
>
> If these kids can navigate websites, then they can navigate filesystems.

This turns out not to be the case. Before we had the hyperlinked Web, we
had hierarchical Gopher servers. It turned out that nobody had a general
method for navigating to a desired resource other than knowing the full
path in advance. Yes, you could navigate from topic to sub-topic, but
where do you put items that fall under several topics? This is still the
problem with the Unix filesystem.

/bin
/sbin
~/bin (if the user chooses)
/usr/bin
/usr/sbin
/usr/lib
/usr/share/lib
/var/lib
/usr/local/bin
/usr/local/sbin

>> What is the reinforcement for third-graders to learn a file system when
>> XOs provide the Journal?
>
> Well, the journal's not a very good place to learn filesystems.

Yes, I didn't say it was. It is a replacement for the filesystem in the UI
to make things easier for children. I asked you about motivation and
reinforcement. Why would they _want_ to learn the filesystem?

>  The dual boot to Gnome is though.
>
>> Who in
>> the preschool to third grade age group wants to know badly enough, and
>> why?
>
> Preschool would be a bit difficult, but age 7+ will do. When they
> start creating files, they can be taught how to make folders so that
> they can organize their files. The journal can get pretty messy when
> you reach logs in the hundreds.

Yes, they can be taught some of the filesystem. That is not my question.
Who in that age group _wants_ to learn it? Who would find it compelling?

>> A single folder is simple. The entire Windows or Linux file system is
>> insanely complex. For one thing, essential system files have different
>> names and locations in every version of Windows, and in many Linux
>> distros, and sometimes in successive versions of the same distro.
>>
>> Here is a simple exercise for you. You are to imagine that you are
>> helping
>> an amazing third-grader understand how the filesystem relates to Sugar
>> activity development, packaging, QA, and deployment, since it is all so
>> simple to you.
>
> Well, this is a different story altogether. Tinkering with the
> "engine" under the hood + Sugar dev is a little bit scarier and might
> be beyond the average third-grader. :)

I didn't ask them to do this exercise. I asked you, so that you can prove
to me how simple the filesystem is. According to Synaptic, Ubuntu Sugar
package files are installed in

/usr/bin
/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/sugar
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/sugar
/usr/share/doc/
/usr/share/locale
/usr/share/pyshared
/usr/share/pyshared-data
/usr/share/pyshared/sugar
/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/engines
/usr/share/icons/sugar
/usr/share/themes
/usr/share/sugar/activities
/usr/share/applications/
/usr/share/menu
/usr/share/dbus-1
/usr/share/sugar-presence-service
/etc/xdg/xdg-usr
/usr/share/apport/general-hooks
/usr/share/gconf

Sugar then puts other files in

~/.sugar
/var/log

and elsewhere.

In particular, Journal entries are in

~/.sugar/default/datastore

> For simple stuff like creating notes with a text editors

No text editors for pre-schoolers.

> & making
> drawings with image-editing apps, they should be good with that.

I have heard that two-year-olds take to Record like ducks to water.

> (teach them directories to make their workspace tidy from all the
> icons/files)

Most of the older adults whom I have taught computing never got that idea.
They leave everything on the desktop, or they put things away as you
recommend and forget where, so they can never find them again.

Basically, you are asking the entire population to think like programmers,
and to be motivated like programmers. They aren't.

If you want, you can start over again. Go and talk to a preliterate
preschooler, and show him or her an XO. Let the child explore freely, but
answer questions. What does your research subject ask? (Take notes, or
record the session.) Does the filesystem ever come up?

Second session. Demonstrate the file system to a preschooler, using only
built-in XO software. Ask them to find something. What is the frustration
level, on both sides?

OK, I cheated on that last one. Now you are allowed to install Fedora
packages. Do

yum install mc

to get the Midnight Commander. Use it to demonstrate the filesystem. Did
that work better? Oh, wait, your preschool subject can't read filenames,
commands, permissions, and all that. How much can your subject grasp?

That is why we use the Journal and graphics for preschoolers. They can
find their last Turtle Blocks or Record session by looking at the picture.
If they use my experimental block set in TB, with icons instead of names,
they may be able to program without knowing how to read.

Again, where would you have them start?
> --
> carlos nazareno
> http://twitter.com/object404
> http://www.object404.com
> --
> core team member
> phlashers: philippine flash actionscripters
> http://www.phlashers.com
> --
> poverty is violence
>


-- 
Edward Mokurai
(默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر
ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks