Tag: LiveCD

Categories
Mombasa

Floppy Disk Updated (for the last time?)

A few days ago I updated FUZOMA on this site to version 1.6, which makes it the seventh release!  This will likely be the last version, since there’s not much time left before I leave here.

For the uninitiated, this is a project where I squeeze as many awesome educational games and programs into a single floppy boot disk as I can, to make the old computers at my school useful.  It can run off a floppy, a CD, a USB stick, or can be installed in Windows, Mac, or Linux computers.

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This is a version that I spent a lot of time on, and received an unprecedented amount of help with.  The kids have been using version 1.6 (or some beta form of it) for months, but it’s finally reached the point where it’s good enough to share with the general public.

One of the biggest highlights of this version has been the further help of Loren Blaney, a programmer whose previous jobs include writing software for the Viking Mars Lander!  His career hit a new all-time high, of course, when he started helping me with my floppy disk.  Loren modified a few of his own old games just for my students, and for this version of FUZOMA he also wrote a few new ones from scratch.  His XPL0 programming language also exposes curious kids to Computer Science from a young age.

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In the course of looking for better educational games for my kids, I also stumbled onto a few non-free programs, but I wanted to use them anyway.  As always, people have been quite willing to grant permission to use them.  Marcia Burrows (author of Math Mileage) and Richard from Flat Rock Software, publisher of Pixel Puzzler, were prompt and accommodating.  (Pixel Puzzler, by the way, was co-created by John Romero, who co-created some other games you might have heard of—Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake!

Tony McSherry from Microcraft also granted me permission to use an old program of his, WordWorm, but unfortunately the game (from 1983) was just a little too old to work properly on my school’s computers.  I also got some help from Paul Toth in customizing his Commodore 64 emulator, but like WordWorm, it just didn’t work out.

A big “thank you” to everyone who contributed in some way!  Here’ one of my students signing “Thank you.” in KSL:

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Of course, working on FUZOMA is a mostly thankless, lonely time in which I stay up until 4AM trying to squeeze additional kilobytes out of a floppy disk that’s basically already full.  I thought I’d go ahead and pat myself on the back a bit, so here’s a short list of cool things in this version of FUZOMA:

  • A Commodore 64 emulator!  (I played C64 games when I was a kid, so it all comes full circle to see students of my own playing Commodore games that are still fun and educational for them, even to this day.
  • A more thorough Journal feature, taking inspiration from the One Laptop Per Child.  It’s a CSV-formated log that makes it easy for me to use Excel to look at what the kids are actually doing on the computer.
  • Running FUZOMA from the C drive of a Windows 95 machine now works much better.  This is handy for me, since I need to do this to get really big log files from the Journal.
  • Y2K compatible!  Seriously.

Here’ the FUZOMA page with more info, if you aren’t inclined to click the link at the top of the site.

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Categories
Mombasa

One Old Computer Per Child

Today I visited the Mombasa public library.  After leaving my backpack at the bag check outside, the privilege of entering the building cost me twenty shillings.  After I walked around and admired the small but dense collection of books with torn, yellow spines, I witnessed a bit of an oddity: a commotion in the back of the building grabbed my attention, and I saw a man walking in my direction, holding a book straight up in the air with one hand.  This man had a printed sign taped to his chest and back that read, “I AM A THIEF.  I TRIED TO STEAL A BOOK FROM THE LIBRARY.”  Behind this man was a a somber looking security guard, who slowly paraded him around the building, past me, and then out the door.  What happened outside I have no idea.

The scarcity of learning materials here is striking, as is the seriousness with which the sanctity of those materials is taken.  Today’s experience put into perspective my own school’s policy: the library is not for children.  Books only leave the library in the hands of teachers.

And that’s just the books policy: it’s no wonder the computers are so dusty!  If a book can’t be trusted to a child, how can a computer?  When the culture and the resources dictate this kind of policy, does an organization like OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) make any sense?

The adults don’t trust the children with books, let alone their own laptops.  In a country where a computer in the home is usually just a pipe dream, a shiny new laptop for every child runs the risk of being downright offensive to the adults, who likely would hear nothing of talk about manufacturing cost effectiveness and subsidies.

I have been reflecting on this a lot recently for two reasons:

  1. I am still trying to identify how best to utilize the old computers in the school library (in fact I’ve been downloading educational software nonstop for three days and counting).
  2. The OLPC project was in the news recently due to its downsize and forking of hardware and software divisions.

The reason that the second point struck me was this: the OLPC staff thought about more than just how to build a cheap computer.  Read their Learning Vision and you’ll understand.  They clearly spent a lot of time on the software side of things, thinking about what would benefit a child most… not just “which programs/games can I put on here?” but also how to organize it all.  They call it Sugar, which is what actually just branched off to its own company.  The (hopefully) good news is that I shouldn’t need this special laptop to benefit from this: I can download a LiveCD of the whole thing, meaning I can boot my computer right off the CD without changing anything on my hard drive.

Why take this approach?  Why not just install a bunch of free stuff onto Windows, which is already installed?  Well, two reasons:

  • By keeping the computer itself intrinsically linked to the software ON the computer, it encourages adults to fear the children’s use of the computer.  “They might change something and break it!” is a sentiment not limited to Kenya.  Making the software into a fairly disposable, easily replaceable commodity, the adults only need to make sure that the children don’t PHYSICALLY break the computer.  A server computer is not the correct solution in this environment, I think, because the IT infrastructure is simply not in place in the schools.
  • Despite what I just said, I’m moving down the “stay-in-whatever-version-of-Windows-is-on-the-machine” road in parallel, in an attempt to possibly bundle a software package for other schools, but I’ll tell you, it’s a mess.  When I find a program for Windows, I need to see if it works specifically with Windows 95.  What about Windows 95 pre-OSR2, which is not a free upgrade?  Will I need to install DirectX?  Java?  Flash?  Which versions?  What about the Y2K patch (no joke)?  If this sounds technical and obnoxious, it is, and I’m having a difficult time imagining anyone else being able to reproduce my “old Windows machine” success unless they are coming from an IT background.  A LiveCD, on the other hand, or a bootable USB stick, leaves little to worry about.  Does the computer have a CD-ROM?  No, then take it to the shop and get one, it’s cheap.  Then use CD that costs 5 cents.  Certainly cheaper than buying a newer Windows license.  This makes for an inexpensive and simple distribution of learning tools that makes the OLPC Deployment Guide look like a Dickens novel by comparison.

The OLPC / Sugar Labs group is not alone in distributing an educational LiveCD, although they have probably taken the concept father than anyone else.  Other LiveCDs include the old GComprix, superseded (I think, documentation is poor) now by FreeDuc.  A decent article on the topic with more examples is here.  I get the impression that I’ve barely scratched the surface, and I’m trying to download as many as I can before I jump to any conclusions, but I already anticipate one problem:

The computers at my school, and probably many others, are SLOW, and I don’t think that these LiveCDs always take that into account.

I think there would be a tremendous value in maintaining an up-to-date CD/USB school-ready Linux LiveCD available for schools in developing nations.  I’ve already downloaded the Damn Small Linux LiveCD to see if it would make a good starting point.

Well, I still have a lot to learn, and since I’m still paying by the megabyte, my wallet is starting to shrink thanks to these LiveCDs (700MB each)!  I’m talking with Zuku to get WiMax at my house, because I may be in range and it would probably be better than any of the mobile phone networks.  Oh, how I yearn to multitask on a one gigabit connection again:

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Having multiple computers here would be nice, too.  Oh, and if you couldn’t tell by the fact that I clearly have so much free time, the strike is not over.  Tomorrow I expect some fellow volunteer teachers to visit, so I’ll be going now to clean up the area around my computer.  The Dr. Pepper cans area already starting to stack up!  Makes it feel like home.