A Term With Plan Ceibal

On Tuesday, I visited an escuela especial--a school for kids with disabilities--with several other ceibalJAM! volunteers to test out a new program. The XOs have a game called Memorize, which volunteers have converted into an accessible version. Instead of using the keys and touch pad, the student can navigate the game by pushing a lever to the side with his head. We also tested a PC game called Plaphoons that uses the same technique. The tester was a 9-year-old boy named Nelson, who Roxana told us is very smart and likes computers, but he can't use regular computer games on his own because he is mostly paralyzed. Using the lever, he played both games successfully and seemed to be having a great time. Here's the video we made about it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZctBPnzC4U
At the end, Roxana is telling Nelson that volunteers are working on more games he can play this way, and asking what he thinks--that's what elicits the big smile.

Saturday was ceibalJAM7! (The exclamation mark is part of the name). So far I've been to miniJAMs, which meet for a few hours to work on one development project. A full ceibalJAM, however, takes most of a day and breaks into groups to work on a variety of projects. There were five projects at this one:
-Pippy, a game that teaches the basics of programming in Python.
-Creating more examples and class plans for Scratch, which also teaches programming.
-Making programs accessible for kids with disabilities
-Conozco, originally a quiz game about Uruguay's geography that is now being extended to other topics.
-Exploring possibilities for new games using a tool called pygame
Despite the fact that all of the buses and most of the taxis were on strike, there was a good-sized crowd with a wide range of programming backgrounds. Here's a photo of the Scratch group working on the laptops. Video to come.