Another Wednesday night Free Software time slot! This 7(?) year old girl has been intent on learning chess moves with G-compris durig her last 3 or 4 visits. She comes every other week with he Mom who is the Hip Hop Dance instructor. I was distracted while signing with the two nice Deaf woman and the Mom had to request the PC setup for her daughter. The GNU/Linux Debian Gnome setup that boots to G-Compris was all set up, I just had to get a guy to move to another table so the girl could sit down and focus on chess. She was quick.. I've been going through the HipHop stretching warm up routine with the Mom but got called over to the PC. The girl somehow ended up with 8 applications opened over 5 workspaces. When a new blank workspace opened up the logo key was either forgotten or wasn't helpful enough. I had to close Inkscape and Gimp so she could focus on Fellswoop, "Five in a row"?, and Nibbles. Nibbles with the arrow controls is hard on this laptops keyboard. Maybe it's hard in general of little young people? But the girl is intent. Maybe she'll take it on as a challenge over the next month or so... Maybe I should ask around for an old game controller or find some way to make it more intuitive for a 7yo?

#FreeSoftware #GCompris #FellSwoop #NibblesGame #FellSwoopGame #FreeNightSchool #YoruGakkou #MimataFreeNightSchool #よる学校 #三股よる学校

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

This was my last Friday night, for a while, at the Free NIght school for my Freedom Software timeslot. I had forgotten I was supposed to be off this night but it was good that I went anyway: it was fun! And I got to see how an older participant (not a pre-school or early elementary school child!) tries this GNU/Linxu Debian Gnome system. I started him out by pushing the Logo (?Super?) key and pointing to the Libre-Office software as the equivalent of well-know proprietary applications. He opened up Writer.. Since I use SKK which is very different of other Japanese IME (Input Methods) so it was good to notice I should rush to change it to Mozc when offering a taste of the Freedom Software experience. This computer's Tux-Type comes with a font that is confusing. The "j" looks like an "i" and "g" looked like a "q". I only figure it out by remembering the lesson was for the keys in the row that only has "j" and "q"... Tux-paint seems to be a hit for all ages. If I remember to pull this laptop out to see if I can do anything about Tux-Type's font I should upload the image "LOVE" somewhere...
This time slot is just to show people what they can do after the bring in a computers so I can put the same operating system and application on their hard drive. I can't set aside the time and patience, or take the risk, of setting up a dual-boot machine with a proprietary system so my conditions are some old computer that can lose all it's data. They either backed up the data or don't care. I think it's easiest for us all to ease into this without any shocks misunderstandings if we start out thinking the PCs will be toys, educational toys, serious games and get started that way. None of us yet seems to have the time to dedicate to replacing work, local business documents and such, with Freedom Software: this would be nice eventually though...
#YoruGakkou #夜学校 #自由ソフト #FreeSoftwareEducation #TuxType #TuxPaint #LibreOfficeWriter

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

The weather is getting nicer and my Free Night School timeslot is moved from Wednesdays to Fridays for April and May. An 8 or so year old girl got into Gcompris running through Debian/Gnome on an ancient MacBook. She kept finding interesting activities in GCompris, I had never seen half the things she and was relieved she figured them by herself. I just tried t take photos of each activity using both a digital camera and a FoolPhone. I posted a bunch of photos to instagram with the AtYorugakkou mentions. That was good because a local dentist asked about setting up old computers for kids in his waiting room. So now there's an old Win7 machine set up in the dentist's waiting room and four of his staff members are acquainted with it. A lot of people seem to have old machines lying around that could become useful for somebody.. I might end up with a couple more laptops, maybe I should start visiting the nearest little clinics and hospitals and see if they'd like to Free Software machines in their waiting rooms. And make sure people can get in touch if they have old PCS they want freed up for their kids' learning...

#yorugakkou #GCompris #三股夜学校 #FreeSoftware #FreedomSoftware

Cold winter weather has everyone inside most of the time during the Free Wednesday Night School in Mimata. The dance club and kids that are normally on the trampoline are inside reading, playing othello or pingpong or learning guitar now. Some of the smaller dance club girls explored G-Compris. Maybe the visitors from Kyoto got some of my rushed Free Software explanation amidst the joyful cacophony.
#NightSchool #MimataNightSchool #YoruGakkou #MimataYoruGakkou #よる学校
https://www.instagram.com/yorugakkou

Another Free Software Wednesday at the Local Night School. Today a lot of people worked with GCompris and TuxTyping.. At first a young woman college student started exploring GCompris and the some elementary school girls got her to to let them use it. They seemed to like doing the pair games against each other. It was the first time I ever had two mouses (mice?) connected (usb) at the same time. Two sisters 3- and 8- years old got really excited with the card-guessing game. The college young woman was a decent typist, worked through Lesson 32 with Tux Typing and did some higher level games of Comet Zap and Fish Feeding with Trees and Plants... I showed the emacs Psychotherapist and Tetris too. Got giggles. Towards the end I showed Inkscape, since it was easier for me than Gimp to start learning.. One of the staff must go to the same college as the young woman because after a very quick, very simple demonstration of DrRacket and slideshow `(slide (t "Welcom to Racket!! Slideshow!!")) (slide (circle 500))` they were thrilled and wanted me to teach programming instead of the difficult teacher they have now. That was a first! Maybe they'll find some old PCs and bring them so I can set them up with Debian machines with all the goodies, emacs, Inkscape, Racket, Gimp, GCompris, TuxPaint.... #FreeSoftwared #YoruGakkou #MimataYoruGakkou #よる学校 #三股よる学校 #自由ソフト #GCompris #TuxTyping