#MimataNightSchool #三股よる学校
#GCompris

The 自由ソフト Freedom Software timeslot is back to Wednesday night. You can see the poetry people talking on a sofa in the background to the left, on the right is the local guitar teacher. The poetry people tend to come every week. The guitar teacher has his own school, I think, and the last Wednesday of every month is the only evening he has free. I tend to refer to him as one of the Gypsy Kings: should probably remember the name of another classic Spanish guitarist, who were they in the movie with Sean Penn??

This time a 5yo girl took a break from her dodge ball adventure to work the mouse with GCompris. I was off talking and came back to see that she had already found the color-making game on her own. She had done it before a few weeks ago, I think. Her mother seemed impressed at how familiar Libre Office's Writer seemed for writing reports like she does at work with proprietary software. Tux Type's lesson 7 or so seemed interesting too. A slightly older boy came in after dodge-ball to join the girl doing TuxType's comet zap. I think I had the Animals selected.. We were supposed to be cleaning up and leaving at the time so I didn't have time to get picture. One of the organizers got some sell phone photos of us all on her phone so maybe those photos are spreading the word somehow. Eventually I'll have to get organized about explaining what it all is, but words from mouths you trust and direct experience and talks about what the needs are might be enough...

#よる学校 #FreeNightSchool #MimataNightSchool #三股よる画工 #自由ソフト #自由ソフト体験 #GCompris

A Modest Utopia --- Paul Goodman: It's just smiling faces in places with good air and water...
The fundamental civic unit is the neighbor --- Jelani Cobb

It's been hot and tiring weather lately, but it's probably good to acclimate yourself by binking through the humidity and get things done: sort of pep yourself up for the painful months ahead. Maron seems to like riding in the bike basket and she gets a lot of suprised smiles when the notice her. She's a hit at the Free NIght School too. She did well Wed. night when I had the Freedom Software Time slot so I took her Friday night for the big Dodge Ball Event. Going there makes me think of Paul Goodman's essay "A Modest Utopia" then today an IG video streamed by and I saw Jelani Cobb comparing ICE raids to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. When goons started taking their neighbors away slavery became more than an abstract abolitionist cause to a lot of people. One of Cobb's comments on some sort of TV show with a white guy with big glasses, reminded me of I.A. Richards in _Philosophy of Rhetoric_ quoting Aristotle: The fundamental unit of thought is the sentence. You get to thinking how you can build something up from fundamentals, be graded, direct and coherent but start with the right unit, like the sentence or the neighbor and make sure each step up has a wide solid base on the steps that make the next step possible. I might fight with neighbors, but I won't let anyone take them away..

I'll take photos of Maron next time. But she's usually surrounded by kids and it's too involved to try and get the understanding and consent I feel is needed when taking photos with people in them. It feels ok if the photos are so distant and blurry that individual faces probably can't be made out. I need a picture of Maron in the bike basket too. She looks cool in there. I'll bike her over to the PlayPark event this afternoon...
#FreeNightSchool #MImataNIghtSchool #YoruGakkou #yorugakkou #よる学校 #三股夜学校 #TheNeighbor #Neighbors

I offer this Freedom Software experience once a week, usually on Wednesdays. It's a bit quieter with fewer people on Wednesdays compared to Fridays. I guess more kids and guardians and everyone else too feels more leeway on Fridays, huh? On Wednesdays the inside space is shared with a poetry group of two which is occasionally joined by one or two others, usually me for a few minutes, sporadically: it's great for learning and chatting. There's a dance section but they only seem to come together and focus before a festival or some other event where they will perform. But this space (a safe space for everyone 居場所) and time isn't really intended for a school classroom sort of approach, I don't think. It's just a place and time where people can get together and having a couple of themes and time slots decided ahead of time makes it easier to come together? The town's Social Welfare office 社協 is one of the main backers or organizers (I'm still don't know much about how it's organized) so certain people are in charge and try to make sure people sign in and put their names by the time-slot they took part in...

You can see hot it would be hard to teach the use of Freedom Software, or programming racket in a serious way here. On the other side of the table with the old PC running GNU/LInux Debian are four people having a great time around the ping pong table. One guy was really good and athletic and helping the three elementary school girls keep the ball going back and forth: not very concerned if the ball hit the table, the floor, or the ceiling just as long as they got the ball to each other past the net somehow. Outside are dozens of kids and other playing dodgeball or on the trampoline (2 at a time!!).. or just running around as some moms(and other guardians) watch and official facilitators also watch participate. But it's freedom exposure..
#YoruGakkou #夜学校 #自由ソフト #FreeSoftwareEducation #TuxType #TuxPaint #LibreOfficeWriter
#MimataNightSchool #三股夜学校 #FreeNightSchool

From April till June I do my Freedom Software (or GDM English) time slot on Fridays not Wednesdays. The Wed. Nursing School class conflicts so I see what Night School is like on other nights . One year I did Mondays, or Tuesdays for a time. People make and share meals in the little wood building by the BioTope. They feed all comers! Free! That can be very stimulating, to stimulating to eat with so many people to talk with and with the kids running around, some outside getting wet in the BioTope while catching little freshwater shrimp(?) who knows what else. After the meal people (mostly kids) split off to go to a study room, or play dodgeball or soccer in a lighted and roofed area. So that's Monday, and Tuesday.
But Fridays can seem the most festive. When the weather is nice and lots of kids come out to enjoy dodgeball, soccer, trampoline, board games...One of the nice Moms does the board games events. Until seeing the stuff she brings (and the university board game club) I didn't know there were such a variety of board games. It's hard for me to sit down for a board game, I'm either moving around, or talking, or reading or something. Board Games fall into a gap for me, I need to be doing something much more active, or much less: just not set up for the particular mix needed for board games. It's probably the same with knitting, crotchet, hemp knot jewelry: the sorts of things I'm tempted by but can never sit down and do: like playing and instrument to I guess. Maybe one day I'll be able to do those in-between things, those things that don't have you moving around outside with the ax or the animals, walking in the woods, or being still sitting at a keyboard, or lying on your back with a book.
The games are interesting and look fun, but with little time I am with people it feels like I need to fit in a lot of conversation, free ranging conversation with the freedom to jump off into something else.
#MimataNightSchool #YoruGakkou #夜学校 #三股夜学校 #FreeNightSchool

GCompris is a hit with the kids and their Moms. One little girl asks for "OiGaki" drawing(TuxPaint) but mostly the kids keep finding things to do among the GCompris Activities. This time the 7(?) year old's Mom got involved with exploring chess moves. These two knew me from some sort of Xmas Santa event in December. After doing some board games (and maybe the trampoline and other things) they got started with the Freedom Software PCs late (after 7:30 during the 6]30 to 8:00 time slot) but it was great for me to see that the color matching game is more subtle or involved now. I guess it's a newer version of GCompris compared to the one I have on the ancient MacBook. I'm glad this newer PC fell into my hands, the screen is bigger and it doesn't make me nervous by getting really hot likes some of the older machines. I got an older Sony Vaio that gets hot and seems like part of the screen is melted or something. But I take it as a backup in case more than 2 or 3 people want the Freedom Software experience at the same time. I'll have to make sure I have still more backup PCs in the car just in case. One other Mom has been talking about bringin an old PC in for months. Some old guys are having PC troubles too, andi just free a 32bit Fujitsu machine for my 82yo wood stove buddy. It seems like he AND his peers have a bunch of older machines laying around. the old Fujitsu is slow (with Gnome, maybe I should have went with XFCE or LXDE but I know how to adjust everything with GNOME) but the screen and the rest is immaculate, very nice: it could be a good machine for learning to touchtype with tuxtype or for grandkids to playaround with GCompris, TuxPaint, fraqtive....Maybe learn English with Emacs Psychotherapists and by comparing the tutorials in different languages. DrRacket is on there too, along with Abiword and gnumeric, light-weight office-type applications in case the heavy-weight LibreOffice is too much for slow machines...
#GCompris #MimataNightSchool

Wednesday's Free Night School was another slow day. It got a little cold again. Slow nights are good for quiet chats about upcoming events, ASL for We Are the World, this weekend anti-nuke concert and march... One 9yo girl wanted play with the Freedom PCs. She must have done it before months ago as she knew she prefered TuxPaint over GCompris. She figured out how to get a new cavans and make it all sparkly. It's not too cold for half the kids to be out half the time doing soccer, trampoline, dodge ball..
#よる学校 #三股よる学校 #MimataNightSchool #FreeNightSchool

It's good to set up at least one Freedom-working PC at the night school. It's always worthwhile to go and see who shows up, talk with people.. There are times when it seems like the bother of starting the PCs could be skipped. This time a 9?yo girl found 3 G-Compris activities while I talked with a young guy from the Social Welfare office. When she was done with the PCs I sat at the poetry table we caught up on Luddites, Byron, Bender and Gebru.
#よる学校 #三股よる学校 #MimataNightSchool #FreeNightSchool

昨日のよう学校は今まで一番人が少なかった。 やっぱり冷い冬の夜、 家から出て行くのが辛いかも。 だけど、 充実していた。 中学校の先生たちと新聞記者さんとGDM^1とフリーソフト^2の話をした。先生たちに GCompris, TuxPaint, TuxTyping、Emacs Psychotherapist(「ネットバカ」のイライザ?で有名なAI?)体験を。 そしてRacket Slideshow^3とdocsで基礎プログラミングの習い方、教え方を一緒に考えて行こう雰囲気になった。 今、持って行くパソコンがぼろすぎる。 今度もっと性能のいい奴でRacketを使った頭体操します!!
^1 https://www.gdm-japan.net/introduction/about-gdm/
^2 https://www.gnu.org/education/edu-why.ja.html
^3 https://docs.racket-lang.org/quick/index.html
#三股よる学校 #MimataNightSchool