Teaching Young Children About Software Freedom
338 | Sat 03 Aug 3 p.m.–3:45 p.m.
Presented by
-
Aaron Wolf
https://wolftune.com/
Aaron is a community music teacher, co-founder of Snowdrift.coop (a long-struggling and principled platform working to solve economic coordination dilemmas around FLO public goods), and an activist and volunteer in many other areas. Originally from Ann Arbor, MI; he lives now in Oregon City with his wife, dog, and two kids.
-
Rowan is an advocate for software-freedom (along with several other topics) and author of Cowmath (https://codeberg.org/RDW/cowmath). As of summer 2024, he has presented at two software conferences on the topic of software-freedom-for-kids. He attends the bilingual Spanish-English program at Candy Lane elementary school in Oregon City.
Aaron Wolf
https://wolftune.com/
Abstract
Kids today grow up in a world dominated by computers. And yet the only education they normally get, if any, focuses on basic computer use or on programming. Where topics of power and ethics do come up, they focus on issues like privilege, bigotry, and social-media. How can young people learn about the inherent issues with software freedom at the foundations of the tech that surrounds them?
Thinking about this dilemma, I first asked others for their ideas. Mostly, the responses mentioned pseudo-educational games or other fun-computer-things for kids that are FLO. Few were great, and none taught free/libre/open concepts as an emphasis itself.
Instead of games and spectacles, I decided to set up a computer for my then-6-year-old focusing on a basic terminal. We started by playing with silly commands like espeak TTS saying funny things or gibberish. Over time, it evolved into his own first program: Cowmath — a Bash script in which cowsay and espeak in combination quiz the user on random math questions.
All along, I emphasized how our experiences fit into larger context. We use FLO software to do this, and when we share our code for others to use, study, and adapt, we become part of continuing that process. We talked about licensing and community and other topics. And we now hope to get others to join us in expanding the FLO-first educational curriculum we have started (in-progress at codeberg.org/FLO-Conscience/FLO-kids ).
We presented the first time remotely for LibrePlanet in March 2023. Then, we presented in-person at SeaGL in November 2023. Rowan loved meeting others who actually understand and care about software-freedom, and he's eager to get other kids his age also understand and share his concerns and interests here. In this presentation we will share our story, recent updates, and our ideas about how more parents and teachers can bring these ideas to more kids.
Kids today grow up in a world dominated by computers. And yet the only education they normally get, if any, focuses on basic computer use or on programming. Where topics of power and ethics do come up, they focus on issues like privilege, bigotry, and social-media. How can young people learn about the inherent issues with software freedom at the foundations of the tech that surrounds them? Thinking about this dilemma, I first asked others for their ideas. Mostly, the responses mentioned pseudo-educational games or other fun-computer-things for kids that are FLO. Few were great, and none taught free/libre/open concepts as an emphasis itself. Instead of games and spectacles, I decided to set up a computer for my then-6-year-old focusing on a basic terminal. We started by playing with silly commands like espeak TTS saying funny things or gibberish. Over time, it evolved into his own first program: Cowmath — a Bash script in which cowsay and espeak in combination quiz the user on random math questions. All along, I emphasized how our experiences fit into larger context. We use FLO software to do this, and when we share our code for others to use, study, and adapt, we become part of continuing that process. We talked about licensing and community and other topics. And we now hope to get others to join us in expanding the FLO-first educational curriculum we have started (in-progress at codeberg.org/FLO-Conscience/FLO-kids ). We presented the first time remotely for LibrePlanet in March 2023. Then, we presented in-person at SeaGL in November 2023. Rowan loved meeting others who actually understand and care about software-freedom, and he's eager to get other kids his age also understand and share his concerns and interests here. In this presentation we will share our story, recent updates, and our ideas about how more parents and teachers can bring these ideas to more kids.