Open Source Educator (Part Three: OLPC Intern) March 1, 2011

<polyachka> what is Fedora vs Sugar?

<mchua> The Fedora, Sugar, Fedora+Sugar focus is definitely an artifact of myself and Sebastian spending so much time on POSSE, because that’s exactly the intersection of the two communities we work in.

<mchua> Well, Fedora is a Linux distribution. It’s an operating system, and its mission is not education, but instead to rapidly advance Free Software (and content) as much as possible. In part by making it easy for people to run and get their hands on the good stuff – trying to make our packages as up-to-date and close to upstream as possible, that sort of thing. The two projects intersect in Sugar on a Stick, which is a Fedora spin. Which means that it’s a custom Fedora version that’s designed to boot Sugar by default and run Sugar activities.

<polyachka> to me Sugar is for children, is there anything similar to it but for adults, like college students and above? I mean from the user perspective

<mchua> Well, if you’re looking at Sugar as a platform with open and extendable tools that people can use for learning… I would say that really, any open operating system can serve that purpose for older folks.

<mchua> I used Fedora myself in college. And the community is also really supportive of newcomers, encourages people to learn and play and explore.  (this isn’t limited to Fedora – lots of other open source projects have great supportive communities too!)

<polyachka> where did you go to college?

<mchua> In Needham, Massachusetts, which is a suburb of Boston. I attended Olin College (
http://olin.edu
) which was brand-new at the time, I was in their second-ever graduating class.

<polyachka> and what was your major?

<mchua> My major was somewhat arbitrary – I couldn’t decide, so I used a dartboard to decide for me. But the dart landed on “Electrical and Computer Engineering,” so that’s what my degree says.

<polyachka> so how did you get into the project with Elsa?

<mchua> It’s actually where I learned a lot of the ways of thinking that have come in handy for me in open source. I was the first Oliner who got involved in OLPC.

<mchua> Nikki Lee came along shortly afterwards, and she started the club that got Elsa Culler and others involved.

<mchua> Ian Daniher and Sebastian Dziallas did a sort of reverse migration, getting involved in OLPC and Sugar first, and finding out about Olin through that, and now they’re both students there.

<polyachka> when did you get involved?

<mchua> I started becoming an active contributor when I was 20 – my senior year of college, very start of the spring semester… so that would be January, February, 2007.  Just kept on showing up at the office in Cambridge pestering people for things to do.

<mchua> I realized the engineers there were all overworked and couldn’t handle volunteers much, but that there was this army of engineers who wanted to volunteer help, and a bunch of work (Activity creation, for instance) that wasn’t getting done.

<polyachka> and what did you do?

<mchua> So the first big thing I did was to organize the first OLPC Game Jam, which was at Olin the summer I graduated.

<mchua>
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Game_Jam_Boston_June_2007

<mchua> It was a win-win for everyone; the volunteers showed up, the engineers showed up and taught everyone how to make Activities, and by the end of the weekend we had a bunch of volunteers who could make Activities. And they went on to teach others (Wade Brainerd, one of the original volunteers from that Game Jam, went on to be the first leader of the Activity team, and so forth).

<polyachka> that is really cool

<mchua> It’s just about unblocking people who want to do good stuff, that’s all. Easiest job in the world. You’re letting people who want to do work, do work.

<polyachka> I couldn’t agree more!

<mchua> Well, a little after that – I kept showing up at the office in Cambridge, sitting there and working on whatever seemed most useful… at some point, Walter Bender (who was still OLPC’s president at the time) walked up to me and said “here, sign this, we’re going to hire you… and can you go to Taiwan in two weeks?”

<polyachka> sounds great to me! 

<mchua> So that’s how I started my official tenure at OLPC – right after I signed my internship papers I jetted off to represent OLPC at Wikimania in Taipei. They brought me on full-time later as a QA/Support engineer.

Mai Am Ba Chieu February 19, 2011

Exactly one year ago I was in Vietnam. About two weeks ago, I wrote an email to my students at Ba Chieu in Saigon and sent them a card to congratulate them with New Year of Rabbit! I received two emails back from Bi and Hanh. I was glad Hanh wrote in English or translated her letter into English with Google Translate, so I could understand the meaning very well.

Hello Marina!
I am happy to receive your mail you, thank you about the pictures, it was very beautiful. How is the knife? How are you? all is not favorable?
You know now there are more changes that, and Thao, Truc, Huong skin no longer with us anymore, and there is a lot of new kids on with us. I hope someday you can come visit us again as the days past are happy with us.
New Year, wishing the men that a lot of fun and always smiled. all good things will come to you most.
miss you very much.
Hanh

I was really concerned about three girls who are no longer in the shelter, and I immediately wrote to Hanh asking where the other girls went, to Andy, who is  a VPV local volunteer organization coordinator, asking him to investigate what happened. I also wrote to Kris, who was a volunteer just like me, who lives in Spokane, WA, and who is going to Vietnam again  this year to teach children English in another shelter. I asked her to bring presents from me (which I mailed to her) to my students at Ba Chieu shelter and to find out about missing girls. She will be flying to Saigon next week on Thursday. I also did some research online to learn more about Mai Am Ba Chieu and that is what I found:

Bà Chiểu Home
Add: 149/1 Nguyen Van Dau, Ward 11, Binh Thanh Dist, HCMC
Tel: (+84). 85.150.556
The Ba Chieu Home for disadvantaged and homeless girls in Ho Chi Minh City was set up in May 1996 with initial funding from the New Zealand Embassy. It is administered by the Women’s Charity Association of Ho Chi Minh City, a voluntary, non-governmental organisation set up in 1989 under licence from the HCMC People’s Committee. After the first two years, the Embassy could no longer fund operating costs, so I have organised fundraising and private donations mainly from New Zealanders and New Zealand businesses with a Vietnamese connection ever since.

Mai Am Ba Chieu (MABC)　 

Mai Am Ba Chieu is an open house for street children and little girls without parents’ care. It was established in 1998 and twenty children, at the age from seven to sixteen are living in it. Before NVC‘s gathering money through PR at TV and constructing the current house, there was just one room. It should be mentioned that WOCA offers land and Ambassador of New Zealand sponsors for Mai Am Ba Chieu. It is a model open house in Ho Chi Minh City and many volunteers from overseas and the members of Embassies visit there. This is one of the successful projects which NVC sponsored as the facility constructions. Twenty girls live in MABC in 2001, seven high school students, five junior high school students and four trainee of national factory.　　They used to be street children, who had lived on collecting garbage, begging and selling them. They have to leave MABC to society at the age of seventeen or eighteen, so they are job-trained in MABC. Some of them will be able to go to college by the scholarship of NVC.

 Please, also see Video 1 and Video 2, and one more Article about a New Zealander Celia Caughey, who helps Ba Chieu Shelter.

3 Ways to Stick to Your Goals January 5, 2011

To help you stick to you New Years Resolutions, here’s an article from Chris and Kara Mohr of
http://mohrresults.com
:

It’s January 5th. Some are still “riding high” on the goals they set for 2011. Sadly, though, some have surely started to slip through fingers like quick sand! Already.

That’s why we’re here with 7 SUPER simple ways to see all your goals through to completion! ZERO Excuses for the best year EVER!

1. Find a Buddy. The magic is the accountability. When you go at it alone, you’ll struggle because it’s easy to give in to your own excuses — “I’m tired” or “I’m too busy” etc. Your friend/spouse/co worker/sibling — you’re all there to support one another.

2. Write Process Goals — AND Endpoint Goals. Daily. What’s a process goal? Process goals are how you’re going to achieve the endpoint. For me at one point my endpoint goal was to finish the Ironman on August 31, 2008. The process goals were the daily “tasks” I needed to do to achieve that.

I had a training partner and coach (fulfilled #1) and I wrote my goals daily.

I finished the race. Felt great. And it was one of the greatest accomplishments of my life. This is certainly not something to overlook. Unless you want to be working on the same things come 2012.

3. Keep Tempting Foods Out of Your House. This is seriously the most simple of them all. Yet the hardest at the same time. Why? Because there are lots of excuses as to why they’re there…for the kids, my husband/wife, company, they’re left over from Christmas…whatever the reason, it’s a bad one.

Your kids don’t need to have ice cream or whatever sweet treat lying around the house, just like you don’t. And if it’s there, it will be eaten. Trust us. Make a list for the grocery store, stick only to the perimeter, and you’ll ultimately achieve your goals.

Here’s to creating the Greatest Year of Your Life!

Part of the gang December 23, 2009

I always thought that gang is a bad group, like those that rule in my neigborhood. .. But Adam proved me wrong: not all gangs are bad… OLPC support gang is a great one and  I became a member of it today. I don’t really know all my responsibilities yet, but it feels good to be part of a community solving problems. I’m sure that is what Bam Bam thinks too, he is a cat I visit while his loving parents are away. He is so happy to see me, and not beacause I refill his food plate when it is empty, but because he feels he is part of a community too when I show up, he is not lonely in his one apartment world. We spent an evening together reading XO and Sugar manuals.