All, Yesterday I attended the opening ceremony of Ambedkar Community Computer Center. The center is a volunteer effort from AID and Sthree Jagruthi Samithi providing free computer training to any young child in the area. There are many reasons why this event is path breaking, but their efforts in using GNU and Linux to teach the youth just goes to show that Free Software has now reached a maturity and ease of use that everyone claimed was a barrier to entry. A few years ago, everyone said Free Software was only a niche and could not cater to the general public.
Well, what our friends have shown is this is quite not the case anymore. Children as young as 7 years work with computers and Free Software and understand how. I saw with some amazement that a young child of 10 (sorry don't have his name) start his computer and give a demonstration of his work without a single hitch. It was quite humbling to learn the difference in hardware and software as body and soul which he described with the help of a stand-in volunteer. There was a time when the screen paused for a second, and this kid did not blink; using the function key to reload the screen! For that this whole community needs to be congratulated. I guess any other child his age would have run to his tutor for support. Although there were many heroes for the day from among the AID volunteers and Sthree Jagruthi Samithi, this young man was the hero of the day.
And the beauty of the approach in this center is that children are being taught to dig down and learn computing from the basics and by experimentation. By adopting Free Software, this center is teaching some higher goals of freedom and community participation (in learning and teaching) that Stallman would be proud of. They are being taught that software is not necessarily a black box that only a few can master or that the restrictions places on by big capital to prevent unrestricted access to computers and computing devices are not the only way forward. One day in the near future, these children will go into their own and profess the freedoms to build and use software as they choose and not as others have chosen for them. That indeed would be a solemn and worthy goal to pursue. I'd urge everyone in this list to take a trip to this center and give a little encouragement to these young people. Then come back and share your stories with everyone.
There was singing and dancing with smiles all around. See the pictureshttp://picasaweb.google.com/kumar.harish.singhand video http://www.youtube.com/v/Q3eVm10rf_c to decide for yourself.
Cheers, Harish Singh
great job --- really good one ---- smiles all around -
Congrats and thanks for the people who put their valuable time and effort in bringing smiles on many faces ........
I remember Mr Senthil was discussing in St Josephs college during Free software awareness camp about not only making people or society aware of free software but how also free softwares can get the jobs for them........
for which few things like training on those kind of softwares where tomorrow they can mke life / carreer for which trainings have to be provided so on and so forth.
This is one biggest challege for the whole free software community which i think every one who are part of free software have to address in future and be prepared to answer or help
creating awareness is one thing and also if people have to stay in the community means some how a time or situation comes where normally people would think how is it useful for them, that is the time where they really decide which one to use ----- anyways today the scenario has changed we have alternative sfotwares for almost every proprietary software .....
There is a need for trainers ------------- let us make some basic tutorials however possible ( may be screencasts would be better) so that there will not be a need for the trainer to be physically present.
Since every one are having shortage of time and in future we need more and more people who can spare their time na which we cant gurantee -- so if we have some screencasts then carrying forward the movement or sharing knowledge would be much easier ........
Can we make some basic tutorials or use the existing ones (download ) and make a collection of CD's like basic introductary course about computers , for DTP -- may be on GIMP, Inkscape ,Scribus as many free software support UNICODE we can even make few DTP operators aware of this -
CAN/SHOULD WE HAVE A SESSION FOR THE DTP OPERATORS ALSO IN BANGALORE in coming days? ---
should we do a collection of tutorials?????
can we conduct a session like above ?????
What way we can take forward this -- can this be done ---- could you all spend some valuable time on this
On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 6:49 PM, Harish Singh < kumar.harish.singh@googlemail.com> wrote:
All, Yesterday I attended the opening ceremony of Ambedkar Community Computer Center. The center is a volunteer effort from AID and Sthree Jagruthi Samithi providing free computer training to any young child in the area. There are many reasons why this event is path breaking, but their efforts in using GNU and Linux to teach the youth just goes to show that Free Software has now reached a maturity and ease of use that everyone claimed was a barrier to entry. A few years ago, everyone said Free Software was only a niche and could not cater to the general public.
Well, what our friends have shown is this is quite not the case anymore. Children as young as 7 years work with computers and Free Software and understand how. I saw with some amazement that a young child of 10 (sorry don't have his name) start his computer and give a demonstration of his work without a single hitch. It was quite humbling to learn the difference in hardware and software as body and soul which he described with the help of a stand-in volunteer. There was a time when the screen paused for a second, and this kid did not blink; using the function key to reload the screen! For that this whole community needs to be congratulated. I guess any other child his age would have run to his tutor for support. Although there were many heroes for the day from among the AID volunteers and Sthree Jagruthi Samithi, this young man was the hero of the day.
And the beauty of the approach in this center is that children are being taught to dig down and learn computing from the basics and by experimentation. By adopting Free Software, this center is teaching some higher goals of freedom and community participation (in learning and teaching) that Stallman would be proud of. They are being taught that software is not necessarily a black box that only a few can master or that the restrictions places on by big capital to prevent unrestricted access to computers and computing devices are not the only way forward. One day in the near future, these children will go into their own and profess the freedoms to build and use software as they choose and not as others have chosen for them. That indeed would be a solemn and worthy goal to pursue. I'd urge everyone in this list to take a trip to this center and give a little encouragement to these young people. Then come back and share your stories with everyone.
There was singing and dancing with smiles all around. See the pictureshttp://picasaweb.google.com/kumar.harish.singhand video http://www.youtube.com/v/Q3eVm10rf_c to decide for yourself.
Cheers, Harish Singh _______________________________________________ FSUG-Bangalore mailing list FSUG-Bangalore@mm.gnu.org.in http://mm.gnu.org.in/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fsug-bangalore
All, Yes. That and also that we make Logo http://el.media.mit.edu/Logo-foundation/logo/turtle.html available to these kids for starters. We can then gradually move them to imperative languages. From there the whole world is their hands.
regards, Harish Singh
On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 11:31 PM, renuka prasad renukaprasadb@gmail.com wrote:
great job --- really good one ---- smiles all around -
Congrats and thanks for the people who put their valuable time and effort in bringing smiles on many faces ........
I remember Mr Senthil was discussing in St Josephs college during Free software awareness camp about not only making people or society aware of free software but how also free softwares can get the jobs for them........
for which few things like training on those kind of softwares where tomorrow they can mke life / carreer for which trainings have to be provided so on and so forth.
This is one biggest challege for the whole free software community which i think every one who are part of free software have to address in future and be prepared to answer or help
creating awareness is one thing and also if people have to stay in the community means some how a time or situation comes where normally people would think how is it useful for them, that is the time where they really decide which one to use ----- anyways today the scenario has changed we have alternative sfotwares for almost every proprietary software .....
There is a need for trainers ------------- let us make some basic tutorials however possible ( may be screencasts would be better) so that there will not be a need for the trainer to be physically present.
Since every one are having shortage of time and in future we need more and more people who can spare their time na which we cant gurantee -- so if we have some screencasts then carrying forward the movement or sharing knowledge would be much easier ........
Can we make some basic tutorials or use the existing ones (download ) and make a collection of CD's like basic introductary course about computers , for DTP -- may be on GIMP, Inkscape ,Scribus as many free software support UNICODE we can even make few DTP operators aware of this -
CAN/SHOULD WE HAVE A SESSION FOR THE DTP OPERATORS ALSO IN BANGALORE in coming days? ---
should we do a collection of tutorials?????
can we conduct a session like above ?????
What way we can take forward this -- can this be done ---- could you all spend some valuable time on this
On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 6:49 PM, Harish Singh kumar.harish.singh@googlemail.com wrote:
All, Yesterday I attended the opening ceremony of Ambedkar Community Computer Center. The center is a volunteer effort from AID and Sthree Jagruthi Samithi providing free computer training to any young child in the area. There are many reasons why this event is path breaking, but their efforts in using GNU and Linux to teach the youth just goes to show that Free Software has now reached a maturity and ease of use that everyone claimed was a barrier to entry. A few years ago, everyone said Free Software was only a niche and could not cater to the general public.
Well, what our friends have shown is this is quite not the case anymore. Children as young as 7 years work with computers and Free Software and understand how. I saw with some amazement that a young child of 10 (sorry don't have his name) start his computer and give a demonstration of his work without a single hitch. It was quite humbling to learn the difference in hardware and software as body and soul which he described with the help of a stand-in volunteer. There was a time when the screen paused for a second, and this kid did not blink; using the function key to reload the screen! For that this whole community needs to be congratulated. I guess any other child his age would have run to his tutor for support. Although there were many heroes for the day from among the AID volunteers and Sthree Jagruthi Samithi, this young man was the hero of the day.
And the beauty of the approach in this center is that children are being taught to dig down and learn computing from the basics and by experimentation. By adopting Free Software, this center is teaching some higher goals of freedom and community participation (in learning and teaching) that Stallman would be proud of. They are being taught that software is not necessarily a black box that only a few can master or that the restrictions places on by big capital to prevent unrestricted access to computers and computing devices are not the only way forward. One day in the near future, these children will go into their own and profess the freedoms to build and use software as they choose and not as others have chosen for them. That indeed would be a solemn and worthy goal to pursue. I'd urge everyone in this list to take a trip to this center and give a little encouragement to these young people. Then come back and share your stories with everyone.
There was singing and dancing with smiles all around. See the pictures and video to decide for yourself.
Cheers,
Harish Singh _______________________________________________ FSUG-Bangalore mailing list FSUG-Bangalore@mm.gnu.org.in http://mm.gnu.org.in/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fsug-bangalore
Hi Harisingh,
THanx for the report on "opening ceremony of Ambedkar Community Computer Center". I couldnot attend the programme due to my busy schedule.
regards Jaykumar
On 7/7/08, Harish Singh kumar.harish.singh@googlemail.com wrote:
All, Yesterday I attended the opening ceremony of Ambedkar Community Computer Center. The center is a volunteer effort from AID and Sthree Jagruthi Samithi providing free computer training to any young child in the area. There are many reasons why this event is path breaking, but their efforts in using GNU and Linux to teach the youth just goes to show that Free Software has now reached a maturity and ease of use that everyone claimed was a barrier to entry. A few years ago, everyone said Free Software was only a niche and could not cater to the general public.
Well, what our friends have shown is this is quite not the case anymore. Children as young as 7 years work with computers and Free Software and understand how. I saw with some amazement that a young child of 10 (sorry don't have his name) start his computer and give a demonstration of his work without a single hitch. It was quite humbling to learn the difference in hardware and software as body and soul which he described with the help of a stand-in volunteer. There was a time when the screen paused for a second, and this kid did not blink; using the function key to reload the screen! For that this whole community needs to be congratulated. I guess any other child his age would have run to his tutor for support. Although there were many heroes for the day from among the AID volunteers and Sthree Jagruthi Samithi, this young man was the hero of the day.
And the beauty of the approach in this center is that children are being taught to dig down and learn computing from the basics and by experimentation. By adopting Free Software, this center is teaching some higher goals of freedom and community participation (in learning and teaching) that Stallman would be proud of. They are being taught that software is not necessarily a black box that only a few can master or that the restrictions places on by big capital to prevent unrestricted access to computers and computing devices are not the only way forward. One day in the near future, these children will go into their own and profess the freedoms to build and use software as they choose and not as others have chosen for them. That indeed would be a solemn and worthy goal to pursue. I'd urge everyone in this list to take a trip to this center and give a little encouragement to these young people. Then come back and share your stories with everyone.
There was singing and dancing with smiles all around. See the pictureshttp://picasaweb.google.com/kumar.harish.singhand video http://www.youtube.com/v/Q3eVm10rf_c to decide for yourself.
Cheers, Harish Singh _______________________________________________ FSUG-Bangalore mailing list FSUG-Bangalore@mm.gnu.org.in http://mm.gnu.org.in/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fsug-bangalore
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Harish Singh -
jaykumar hs -
renuka prasad