Seeking help for learning system for absolute beginners

Hello to all the gurus here !

I am in the process of setting up computers for a group of children,
in the age between 7 to 12, who have never operate a PC before, with
the intention to install educational / entertaining freewares for
them.

The computers will be Windows 98SE based, with Pentium III or better
CPU, 256MB of RAM each. Graphic is VGA, mostly S3-powered graphic
cards.

I am thinking of installing Logo for them, but before I do that, I do
need to ask the Gurus here for help.

Before I continue, some background. I'm from Malaysia, a third world
country, and the children that our computers are for are from poverty
stricken families. The computers will be placed in a "after school
hang out place" operated by a Catholic Charity organization. The
children can understand the Chinese language but not very familiar
with the English language.

Okay, now .. which flavor of Logo do you think best suit the children,
as well as the computers? Or if you know of any offering from Lisp and/
or Dylan that suit this task, kindly please share.

The computers are all donated stuffs, so they are not really fast, nor
powerful. With 256MB of RAM each, I doubt they can run any fancy
programs.

Would be very grateful for any help / suggestion / pointer that you
can offer.

Thanks again !

In article
<e67cd980-fdd3-4565-9777-6add70a0b7e0@s8g2000prg.googlegroups.com>,
pg <penang@catholic.org> wrote:

> Hello to all the gurus here !
>
> I am in the process of setting up computers for a group of children,
> in the age between 7 to 12, who have never operate a PC before, with
> the intention to install educational / entertaining freewares for
> them.
>
> The computers will be Windows 98SE based, with Pentium III or better
> CPU, 256MB of RAM each. Graphic is VGA, mostly S3-powered graphic
> cards.
>
> I am thinking of installing Logo for them, but before I do that, I do
> need to ask the Gurus here for help.
>
> Before I continue, some background. I'm from Malaysia, a third world
> country, and the children that our computers are for are from poverty
> stricken families. The computers will be placed in a "after school
> hang out place" operated by a Catholic Charity organization. The
> children can understand the Chinese language but not very familiar
> with the English language.
>
> Okay, now .. which flavor of Logo do you think best suit the children,
> as well as the computers? Or if you know of any offering from Lisp and/
> or Dylan that suit this task, kindly please share.
>
> The computers are all donated stuffs, so they are not really fast, nor
> powerful. With 256MB of RAM each, I doubt they can run any fancy
> programs.
>
> Would be very grateful for any help / suggestion / pointer that you
> can offer.
>
> Thanks again !

You might also want to ask comp.lang.scheme . There are
useful Scheme systems (like DrScheme) for education that will run on
smaller computers quite well.

Den Sun, 27 Jan 2008 04:42:40 -0800 skrev pg:

> The computers will be Windows 98SE based

Please don't. It's the worst possible OS to install for such a scenario.
It'll be unmaintainable for you, and (what's even worse) will teach the
kids that computers are inherently unreliable and not to be trusted. If
it has to be windows, try to get win2k licenses, it'll run on 256MB just
fine. If you don't have to stick to windows, try a linux (unfortunately
my personal favourite desktop, GNOME, won't quite run satisfactorily, but
XFce will, I have used it on a 48MB machine, and it's still easy to use
set up); for instance Ubuntu is a very easy to install distribution and
has plenty of flavours, including Xubuntu for which XFce is the primary
desktop.

I wonder if OLPC's Sugar is currently portable to anything besides XOs,
it's designed exactly for the type of usage you have, so it'd be a
perfect fit.

As for programming environment, I can't really help with Logos, I have no
idea about them. I don't think there's any pre-packaged CL distro that
you could just give to kids for them to play with, especially the
graphical part is lacking. As Rainer suggests, there are several schemes
that concentrate on rich feedback, http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/ is one
of the new things it seems. A Smalltalk would also do, they're all big on
the "play with things on the screen" side.

Cheers,
Maciej

On Jan 27, 6:54 am, Maciej Katafiasz <mathr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Den Sun, 27 Jan 2008 04:42:40 -0800 skrev pg:
> 
>
> Please don't. It's the worst possible OS to install for such a scenario.
> It'll be unmaintainable for you, and (what's even worse) will teach the
> kids that computers are inherently unreliable and not to be trusted. If
> it has to be windows, try to get win2k licenses, it'll run on 256MB just
> fine. If you don't have to stick to windows, try a linux (unfortunately
> my personal favourite desktop, GNOME, won't quite run satisfactorily, but
> XFce will, I have used it on a 48MB machine, and it's still easy to use
> set up); for instance Ubuntu is a very easy to install distribution and
> has plenty of flavours, including Xubuntu for which XFce is the primary
> desktop.


Thanks for replying.

There are several problems that we are facing here:

A) Everything we have are donated stuffs. All the computers are
donated, actually, they are computers that people throw away. We got
them for free, fix them up as well as we could, and we can only find
256MB of RAM for each of them.

B) Due to the limited RAM, we can't run any other OS than Win98SE or
WinME. Plus, we do not want to infringe on any copyright issue. We got
a pile of old Win98SE genuine MS CDs, so we kinda like like have no
other choice but to use Win98SE.

C) This entire operation runs on a very very tight budget. These are
the children that people don't care about. They all come from poverty
stricken families, and they are at the edge of becoming street kids.
What we do there is to keep them in school, provide them with some
incentives to keep learning, keep exploring, etc.

D) We do not have any license to run Win2000 or WinXP, and we do not
have the money to buy them either. On the Linux side, so far I am
still trying to learn Linux, I can set up a system, just a base
system. Installing packages, on the other hand, is still too much for
me.

E) As I mention earlier, these are the kids people don't care about,
therefore, our operation is facing the same fate - people just do not
care about us, period. No funding, no help, no nada. We all do it out
of our own time, our own pocket, our own everything. In other words,
we have absolutely NO leeway to get fancy stuffs. That is why I'm
looking for freeware, abandonedware, and/or open-sourced softwares to
get the whole thing going.

Yes, it's like a chop-chop thing, nothing fancy. But we are doing it.
That is why I need the help from all the Gurus here. Please share with
us any of your suggestion, opinion, point, tip, etc. I thank you for
it.

> I wonder if OLPC's Sugar is currently portable to anything besides XOs,
> it's designed exactly for the type of usage you have, so it'd be a
> perfect fit.

See, even OLPC is a luxury for us. Do you know what USD100 can buy
here? Remember that this is a third world country, and our conversion
rate is 3.3 to 1. USD100 is 330 of our local currency here, and this
can buy A LOT OF STUFFS !

In fact, if I purchase 2 OLPC for USD100 each, the USD200 can get me a
NEW PC with Intel Duo-Core CPU, and 1GB of DDR2 RAM and a 120GB SATA
hard disk. Of course, it doesn't have any software, nor any OS.

And in our situation, all our PC are FREE - yeah, NO CHARGE. Yes, they
are OLD PCs, Pentium III, ranges from 500MHz to 900MHz. But they do
run, and that's the important thing here.

> As for programming environment, I can't really help with Logos, I have no
> idea about them. I don't think there's any pre-packaged CL distro that
> you could just give to kids for them to play with, especially the
> graphical part is lacking. As Rainer suggests, there are several schemes
> that concentrate on rich feedback,http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/is one
> of the new things it seems. A Smalltalk would also do, they're all big on
> the "play with things on the screen" side.

> Cheers,
> Maciej

I'll check with the Scheme people, thank you very much for sharing the
info (and thanks to Rainer as well!). My initial pick was Logo because
it was made with the original intention of giving kids a start in
programming, at least, conceptually. Perhaps you're right, there are
other things out there, like Scheme. But I'll check with them.

Thanks again for everything.

Hope that other Gurus here, if you have anything to share, please do
so.

Den Sun, 27 Jan 2008 07:13:21 -0800 skrev pg:

> There are several problems that we are facing here:
>
> A) Everything we have are donated stuffs. All the computers are donated,
> actually, they are computers that people throw away. We got them for
> free, fix them up as well as we could, and we can only find 256MB of RAM
> for each of them.

This is not a problem for win2k, I'd run win2k on a 256MB machine for
several years and it worked perfectly. Lack of licenses is a bigger
problem.

> B) Due to the limited RAM, we can't run any other OS than Win98SE or
> WinME. Plus, we do not want to infringe on any copyright issue. We got a
> pile of old Win98SE genuine MS CDs, so we kinda like like have no other
> choice but to use Win98SE.

Or you can use on of the free ones, which is even better from several
standpoints (like me generally believing in the whole "free as in speech"
thing). You can get Ubuntu install CDs shipped to you for free, and if
you mention how you want to use them, it's not entirely unlikely that
you'll get extra help.

> C) This entire operation runs on a very very tight budget. These are the
> children that people don't care about. They all come from poverty
> stricken families, and they are at the edge of becoming street kids.
> What we do there is to keep them in school, provide them with some
> incentives to keep learning, keep exploring, etc.

This is why any of Win9x (Me included) is the worst possible choice. It
will provide them with frustration, not incentive.

> D) We do not have any license to run Win2000 or WinXP, and we do not
> have the money to buy them either. On the Linux side, so far I am still
> trying to learn Linux, I can set up a system, just a base system.
> Installing packages, on the other hand, is still too much for me.

Again, I heartily recommend Ubuntu. It's close to being as easy to
install as it gets. Administration is fairly easy as well.
 
>
> See, even OLPC is a luxury for us. Do you know what USD100 can buy here?
> Remember that this is a third world country, and our conversion rate is
> 3.3 to 1. USD100 is 330 of our local currency here, and this can buy A
> LOT OF STUFFS !

Sugar is the custom-made software that makes up the user environment that
runs on OLPC. I wasn't referring to the hardware here. As it was designed
to be run by kids who have never before seen a computer, on machines with
hardly any computing power, it'd fit your needs perfectly, provided you
can run it on stock PCs. Which I don't know if you can.

Cheers,
Maciej

Den Sun, 27 Jan 2008 15:33:53 +0000 skrev Maciej Katafiasz:

> Sugar is the custom-made software that makes up the user environment
> that runs on OLPC. I wasn't referring to the hardware here. As it was
> designed to be run by kids who have never before seen a computer, on
> machines with hardly any computing power, it'd fit your needs perfectly,
> provided you can run it on stock PCs. Which I don't know if you can.

I asked around on #sugar, and it seems you can in fact install Sugar on
any Linux, with precompiled packages available for Ubuntu:

[url]http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar_on_Ubuntu_Linux#Option_3_-_Deb_Packages_for_Gutsy[
/url]

While it's not entirely streamlined, the whole process should be
relatively painless, and I'm sure you will be able to get help on the
relevant IRC channels (#sugar and #olpc on FreeNode) if you run into
problems.

Cheers,
Maciej

You have my utmost sympathies. I grew up with similar situation.

Many people here (of comp.lang.lisp) are fat, tech ging assholes
here, they wouldn't have the faintist idea of what pain is. They are
the type that tells you to eat meet when you say you don't have rice.
And the technical recommendations from most of them are worthless,
trust me on this. (in particular i refer to the recommendations made
by Maciej Katafiasz. They usually have political agendas.)

As to what language, i'd recommend to keep thinking Logo. It is a lang
designed for this purpose, with a lot existing literature. Dont bother
at all with Scheme. It is completely useless and good for nothing for
the your kids.

If you don't know already, there's Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)

which should provide you many resources. There are many free
implementations, as well as many now freely downloadable books that
was published in the 1980s and 1990s.

Am not sure how familiar you are with computer languages. A useful
alternative, is Visual Basic. Personally i don't know Visual Basic,
but it is a easy language, and one of the top 5 deployed language
today and actually valuable as a skill. I think there are variant
versions out there that are free.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic
(also check Real Basic)

Am not exactly sure for this kinda situation you would need to teach
them computer programing in the first place. Isn't using a computer,
such as browsing the web, the text editing with Notepad, and the
bundled basic paint program sufficient?

For programing, how about teaching them basic HTML? That would be
useful. PHP is also a good candidate, as it is also one of the most
easy to learn, as well one of the top 5 deployed language, highly
demanded skill in the market.

So far, Logo, Visual Basic, PHP... i think are good candidates, as
they require little hardware resource, easy to learn, and the latter 2
are highly valuable skills...

Just noticed that the ages are 7 to 12... adding the fact they don't
speak English, i'd say just consider Logo and HTML.

(just noticed that you also posted to comp.lang.dylan. Dylan is a very
advanced, industrial, and also dead language. It is not a language for
kids. Even a professional programer would have hard time learning
Dylan.)

Best wishes,

Xah
xah@xahlee.org
=E2=88=91 http://xahlee.org/

=E2=98=84

On Jan 27, 7:13 am, pg <pen...@catholic.org> wrote:
> On Jan 27, 6:54 am, Maciej Katafiasz <mathr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
 
 
t 
>
> Thanks for replying.
>
> There are several problems that we are facing here:
>
> A) Everything we have are donated stuffs. All the computers are
> donated, actually, they are computers that people throw away. We got
> them for free, fix them up as well as we could, and we can only find
> 256MB of RAM for each of them.
>
> B) Due to the limited RAM, we can't run any other OS than Win98SE or
> WinME. Plus, we do not want to infringe on any copyright issue. We got
> a pile of old Win98SE genuine MS CDs, so we kinda like like have no
> other choice but to use Win98SE.
>
> C) This entire operation runs on a very very tight budget. These are
> the children that people don't care about. They all come from poverty
> stricken families, and they are at the edge of becoming street kids.
> What we do there is to keep them in school, provide them with some
> incentives to keep learning, keep exploring, etc.
>
> D) We do not have any license to run Win2000 or WinXP, and we do not
> have the money to buy them either. On the Linux side, so far I am
> still trying to learn Linux, I can set up a system, just a base
> system. Installing packages, on the other hand, is still too much for
> me.
>
> E) As I mention earlier, these are the kids people don't care about,
> therefore, our operation is facing the same fate - people just do not
> care about us, period. No funding, no help, no nada. We all do it out
> of our own time, our own pocket, our own everything. In other words,
> we have absolutely NO leeway to get fancy stuffs. That is why I'm
> looking for freeware, abandonedware, and/or open-sourced softwares to
> get the whole thing going.
>
> Yes, it's like a chop-chop thing, nothing fancy. But we are doing it.
> That is why I need the help from all the Gurus here. Please share with
> us any of your suggestion, opinion, point, tip, etc. I thank you for
> it.
> 
>
> See, even OLPC is a luxury for us. Do you know what USD100 can buy
> here? Remember that this is a third world country, and our conversion
> rate is 3.3 to 1. USD100 is 330 of our local currency here, and this
> can buy A LOT OF STUFFS !
>
> In fact, if I purchase 2 OLPC for USD100 each, the USD200 can get me a
> NEW PC with Intel Duo-Core CPU, and 1GB of DDR2 RAM and a 120GB SATA
> hard disk. Of course, it doesn't have any software, nor any OS.
>
> And in our situation, all our PC are FREE - yeah, NO CHARGE. Yes, they
> are OLD PCs, Pentium III, ranges from 500MHz to 900MHz. But they do
> run, and that's the important thing here.
> 
o 
 
n 
>
> I'll check with the Scheme people, thank you very much for sharing the
> info (and thanks to Rainer as well!). My initial pick was Logo because
> it was made with the original intention of giving kids a start in
> programming, at least, conceptually. Perhaps you're right, there are
> other things out there, like Scheme. But I'll check with them.
>
> Thanks again for everything.
>
> Hope that other Gurus here, if you have anything to share, please do
> so.

In comp.lang.lisp Rainer Joswig <joswig@lisp.de> wrote:
> In article
> <e67cd980-fdd3-4565-9777-6add70a0b7e0@s8g2000prg.googlegroups.com>,
>  pg <penang@catholic.org> wrote:
[...] 
[...]
> You might also want to ask comp.lang.scheme . There are
> useful Scheme systems (like DrScheme) for education that will run on
> smaller computers quite well.

Not to critique the DrScheme environment on other grounds, but a few years
ago, on my old Linux laptop, which had only 128MB of memory, the DrScheme
environment was pretty much unusable (swapped like crazy).  The DrScheme
web site (http://www.drscheme.org/) says:

"The latest version of DrScheme is useful with at least 256MB of RAM in
your computer, and installing requires roughly 60MB of disk space."

Who knows, maybe it runs perfectly with just 256MB, but I know that it
certainly didn't run nicely with 128MB.  I would recommend trying it on a
256MB machine having 1-2 memory hog applications like a browser running in
the background (which is what many would probably be doing anyway) before
going with DrScheme.

-Vesa Karvonen

In comp.lang.lisp pg <penang@catholic.org> wrote:
> I am in the process of setting up computers for a group of children,
> in the age between 7 to 12, who have never operate a PC before, with
> the intention to install educational / entertaining freewares for
> them.
>
> The computers will be Windows 98SE based, with Pentium III or better
> CPU, 256MB of RAM each. Graphic is VGA, mostly S3-powered graphic
> cards.
>
> I am thinking of installing Logo for them, but before I do that, I do
> need to ask the Gurus here for help.
>
> Okay, now .. which flavor of Logo do you think best suit the children,
> as well as the computers? Or if you know of any offering from Lisp and/
> or Dylan that suit this task, kindly please share.
>

You may consider Poplog system:

http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/p...oplog.info.html

Poplog gives you four programming languages: Pop11, Common Lisp,
SML, and Prolog.  Poplog need only a few megabytes of memory and
will run pretty fast on 500 MHz processor.  Installation takes
about 70 Mb of disk space.  Pop11 is a language with similar
power to Common Lisp, but is more similar to traditional languages
(it uses Pascal like syntax).  For beginners Pop11 offers words
and list maniputaltions in Logo style, while advanced users can
use much more.

Let me mention some drawbacks.  First, on Windows Poplog is text-only
-- Poplog support graphics only on Linux.  Second, Poplog is not
localised: messages and documantation is in English.  AFAIK the
program can handle any language, but somebody would have to
translate texts...

--
Waldek Hebisch
hebisch@math.uni.wroc.pl

På Sun, 27 Jan 2008 13:42:40 +0100, skrev pg <penang@catholic.org>:

> Hello to all the gurus here !
>
> I am in the process of setting up computers for a group of children,
> in the age between 7 to 12, who have never operate a PC before, with
> the intention to install educational / entertaining freewares for
> them.
>
> The computers will be Windows 98SE based, with Pentium III or better
> CPU, 256MB of RAM each. Graphic is VGA, mostly S3-powered graphic
> cards.
>
> I am thinking of installing Logo for them, but before I do that, I do
> need to ask the Gurus here for help.
>
> Before I continue, some background. I'm from Malaysia, a third world
> country, and the children that our computers are for are from poverty
> stricken families. The computers will be placed in a "after school
> hang out place" operated by a Catholic Charity organization. The
> children can understand the Chinese language but not very familiar
> with the English language.
>
> Okay, now .. which flavor of Logo do you think best suit the children,
> as well as the computers? Or if you know of any offering from Lisp and/
> or Dylan that suit this task, kindly please share.
>
> The computers are all donated stuffs, so they are not really fast, nor
> powerful. With 256MB of RAM each, I doubt they can run any fancy
> programs.
>
> Would be very grateful for any help / suggestion / pointer that you
> can offer.
>
> Thanks again !

Just thought I would warn you that Microsoft no longer supports Windows 98.
This in particular means browsers and the like will be out of date.
Some plugins probably won't install some pages won't display right etc.
Personally I would feel better running a Linux and a new version of
Firefox or Opera.
What you save initially by not learning Linux could quickly be eaten up in
the time spent fixing problems.
Linux's can be gotten for free and Linux comes with a vast number of
languages out of the box.
For teaching programming I might suggest Python which is easy to learn.
There is a also a SmallTalk implementation called Squeak which is child
friendly, free, and not very demanding on resources. Java is the last
thing I would choose at it is almost guarantied to eat up all your
resources. (And it is a fairly difficult language to learn.)

--------------
John Thingstad