A little while back I wrote about Scratch ( Blog Entry here ) which is a fantastic visual programming environment designed for young people.

Since that post I have worked with my children and created a few more games, which you can find at http://scratch.mit.edu/users/lancew

You will notice that I have created a bunch of spelling games. These were built with and for my son, who although being one bright little guy has not been hitting 100% his spelling tests at school. He loves computer games, so I have been creating games for/with him using the words he is given to learn from School.

The result? He has got every word correct since we started creating games!


To me, this is perfect example of how finding the right way to teach the student is essential. My boy loves games, he knows we are being sneaky and making his spelling the game. He does not mind, he knows he has to learn them, so he does not mind, because the way we are doing it suits him. As a sports coach, this make sense to me, sometimes that is what you need to do, find a way to help someone do something they are finding difficult/dull.

The other positive is that my kids are being exposed to programming at a early age. They are becoming literate about software. They are gaining an understanding of what happens to create the Wii games they love and also the cartoons they love.
They are also picking up programming fundamental concepts. Scratch is teaching them about loops, conditionals, objects, etc.

I am a fan, a big fan of Scratch. And I'd like to help promote it's use with other kids/parents/teachers. Luckily, just such an opportunity is coming up... SCRATCH DAY!

Scratch Day is May 16th 2009, and I hope to organise an event here in the UK, I'd love to have some help, so if yu are interested, drop me an email!

*Cross posted on Silicon Souls*

Last week, those of you on Twitter may have noticed that many peoples avatars turned Black. Some thought it an error, a fault perhaps. But in fact this was a protest by a wide variety of people against an amendment to a Copyright law in my Native New Zealand.

So why what was the protest all about and why would some of the high profile twitter users like Stephen Fry be protesting in this manner against an amendment to a law in a small country on the far side of the planet?

The reason is this... Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act assumes Guilt Upon Accusation. In other words, if you are accused of a copyright infringement, then ISPs will be forced by law to cut you off.

So if the RIAA accuse you (note this is an accusation, not a trial that finds you guilty), New Zealanders will be punished by the ISPs. Not by the judiciary, after a trial, by a private business after a mere accusation.

There are some great media out there explaining why this is bad. They all basically boil down to the fact that if you commit any other crime, even much more heinous crimes like murder, rape or genocide even, you will get a fair trial and be punished AFTER being found guilty. If Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act goes through, then this changes and you will be able to be punished for a crime without a trial, without evidence, without a defence, nothing!

This is a fundamental change to the way justice operates in most western countries, including New Zealand. The whole “Innocent until proven guilty” goes out the window and Kiwi's are then guilty until proven innocent! And not for terrorism, murder, rape or other serious crimes, for allegedly breaking a copyright law. For downloading some tunes of the web. Maybe even for watching a movie or TV off YouTube, thetas a breach of copyright too. Heck, quoting text in your blog could be classified as a breach by some people and once an allegation is made section 92 will demand that you are cut off! Not trial, not lawyers, just cut off!

The concern I think non-New Zealanders have is that this sets a precedence for the rest of the world. Just as the DMCA has been copied all over the world (how that for irony?). The UK, USA and the rest of the world will find it easier to pass similarly draconian, human rights busting laws if they can quote nice little New Zealand as an example of this law “working”.

With all this in mind, an online protest was organised via http://creativefreedom.org.nz/blackout.html and mainly Twitter. the #blackout hashtag was number one on twitter trends for days. Meaning it was the number one topic of discussion on Twitter. Some of the big names got onboard, most notably Stephen Fry the amazing British comedian, actor and technology junky!

People replaced their avatars on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere with black GIFs. I did and many many many other people did. The point being that if this law gets through, then anyone could have an internet blackout, they could be cut off from the internet without any judicial process.

Some will argue that “hey, it's just internet access; it's not like it's important”. But that just is not right in this day and age. When the internet goes down in my house and in any office I have worked in, it's the end of the world. I work from a home office, if I got cut off my income would be affected. I am not the only one, and lets not forget that people break copyright in offices everyday.

What happens if this law is passed and copies of it spring up in your country? Imagine the havoc it could cause. You work from home, your son downloads a CD from the internet (worth lets say $20). The RIAA spot this and cut off your access to the internet, now you can't work. Of course you didn't commit a crime, but you are punished without trial.

If there was a trial with evidence prior to a punishment then the facts could be shown and your livelihood would not be affected by an allegation!

What is interesting here also is that copyright is different from country to country, who's copyright law is being broken? The one in your country or the one in another country? So if the RIAA contact a NZ based ISP, will they cut the user off? Or only if a New Zealand rights holder complains?

What if I write a spurious (but legitimate looking) letter/email to an ISP saying you breached my copyright of.... say this blog post. The ISP will cut you off, no evidence required, not court case, no nothing. What if I accuse my business competitors? What a great way of getting rid of them. or maybe an ex-girlfriend/boyfriend?

What this comes down to is this, do you want to live in a country/world where you can be punished for a crime without evidence? We do not accept guilt upon accusation anywhere else in the criminal justice system, why on earth would we want to accept it over copyright.

So don't stand for it, visit http://creativefreedom.org.nz/blackout.html and see what you can do. Visit sites like http://www.eff.org/ (USA) and http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ and make sure you stay informed to threats of this sort.

Also you can protest, you can lobby your representatives in government, you can blog, you can write letters, print leaflets, stand and shout on street corners. Me, I am starting with this blog post.

Lance

So, tonight (like many nights) I have been discussing (arguing) about Judo and the way the Judo world operates, etc.

As anyone who follows my www.judocoach.com/blog site or my posting on the BJA and judoinfo.com forums will know, I have strong views on how people in Judo do things.

What I realised tonight is that this is just my set of values manifesting themselves. These are, like me a mix of Judo and tech.

Judo and the tech world share a lot of similar concepts. GNU and Judo are closer cousins than people might think. To my thinking Judo's Seiryoku Zenyo and Jita Kyoei principles are very closely related to the ideas and values behind Open Source.

Jigoro Kano in many ways was an open sourcer, the Linus Torvalds of his time. He took closed martial arts systems and opened them. He took the best of the closed systems and created an open system called Judo that had the best features of the others. Judo is an open art, there are no secret techniques, it is all there and I can easily look at someones code by stepping on the mat with them and seeing if it works or not. I can see the bugs and help correct them.
I can take throws I learn in one club and use it in another, I am free to share that method of throwing with whomever I want, wherever I want. No scary EULAs here thanks!

I think much of the time people don't get that the IT stuff I spout in Judo circles is IMHO Judo stuff. Partly because I am not saying it right, partly because I take much of the geek fundamentals as read. I assume people have the same education as I do, but in Judo circles most know nothing about Stallman, Raymond, Lessig and Torvalds et al.

So after a discussion this evening I promised to send some links to a colleague in the Judo world. I collected some links and then thought I'd post it online too, on this blog so that you my tech savvy readers might add the important links I am missing either becuase I am poorly read, rushed for time or overlooking a classic.

So below is a list of things that I think will help my Judo colleagues understand my value set and how they are closely liked to those of Judo. Please take a look and let me know what I have missed.



http://www.cluetrain.com/
http://craphound.com/content/

and the venerable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathed ... the_Bazaar which is probably the start of it all.

http://www.audible.com/adbl/entry/offer ... DBL_000302
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

GNU Manifesto

Free Culture


I shall update this post with links and additions over the next few days/weeks.

Thanks in advance esteemed reader for your contribution.

Lance

From time to time I look at programming languages and environments for kids. One I found and recently have taken a liking to is Scratch.

Scratch is a project of the brilliantly named 'The Lifelong Kindergarten research group" at MIT. Scratch is a visual programming language aimed at children 8+ years old.

Anyway, last week my daughter was off ill from school, so I decided to to take a look and see how she got on. The short is that it is still a while off before she (or her brother) will be able to use it fully on their own.

However, with me doing the majority of the operating my daughter had a great time doing the design work. Think of it as extreme programming with a five year old. She designed two things, a game for her brother and also a story/animation.

Given the positive response, I tried it with her brother and he loves telling daddy what things to make the games do. They both love the seeing their ideas come to life.

It was fantastic to share some geekery with the kids. Scratch is really powerful and I am seeing opportunities to use it as a coaching tool ( http://www.judocoach.com/blog/index.php ... 214-093252 ).

Anyway... do check out the project. And also please enjoy the animation my daughter made and I have included below:

Learn more about this project

Lastly, watching the kids get so much pleasure from seeing their own names in games is an amazing experience and one to be honest I remember enjoying, but at a much older age!

Yesterday afternoon/night I attended the OpenWeb Southampton event held at the Harbour lights Cinema in Southampton. It was a great event, with over 20 people attending and enjoying the beer provided by the good folks at Campaign Monitor.

There were three talks of about 10 minutes; including mine about NoseRub, which I have now uploaded to SlideShare and is embedded below:



It was nice to spend time with fellow geeks, people who knew what twitter was before Stephen Fry pimped it on the TV. It was kind of weird to find I had been following some of these guys despite never having met them, then meeting them, odd.

So a big thanks to Dan from Slipstream Studio for organising the event! I hope I am following all the attendees on twitter, if not let me know!

Lance.

P.s. Thanks too to Adam for the freebie FoxyCart t-shirts!