Make my train move

Those few hours I spent with Nikhil seem to have a much greater significance than I thought of. And I am proud that I did a few things right, the first time around. I did not ask Nikhil to draw something that I wanted him to draw. I asked him what he wanted. He demanded a train. And I re-discovered something that K.T.Margaret had noticed. Kids like to draw and discuss trains. I thought this was a random choice by Nikhil. But it seems it is universal preferred choice by kids.

Remember how Nikhil demanded that the train should start moving and I was left dumbfounded... That is what kids want to do... Create objects and breathe life into them. I had to fool him by dragging the selection and creating the illusion of movement. I felt all the Force within being drained away and my Ego shrinking into a tiny void.

All this years of programming were useless. If I want, I can write a device driver... I can fiddle with XML,YML and what not. I can fiddle around with Natural language parsing if I want to. But I can't breathe life into the creation of this three year old. It was the worst humiliation I ever faced.

Then I encountered Scratch. In a few minutes I was blown away. It was as if I had rubbed a lamp... a genie had appeared and granted my wish. I could help any kid breath life into his own creation. In fact I was so startled that I realized that after all these years of programming, had even killed my ability to dream. I did not even know what to ask for. And here is gift, that cries out to me. Is this not what you would have wished for, if you knew how make a wish?? Hats off to the guys at MITs Life Long Kindergarten Group!!!

The kid is too small now. I am not obsessed with turning him into a prodigy. I have learnt the hard way round, that you have to wait for some anatomical changes to happen in a child's brain before he is ready to grasp certain kinds of things. Just because something is logical to you and a child is able to understand logic. You cannot stuff its brain. I think, it is also unethical to do so.

The moment he is in 5th grade, I will attempt to teach him Scratch. I learnt BASIC in 5th grade. So it should not be hard for him. He seems orders of magnitude smarter than I used to be at that age. When he is in 3rd or 4th Grade, I will try to see if he is interested... I think he may be able to at least concoct dramas,jokes and stories using scratch even if programming takes longer... Any kid would love to create cartoons... that too ones with “behaviour”... but I will not put any pressure... I want him to enjoy every minute.

And now I know what to wish for!!! Let Scratch get ported to the OLPC platform as soon as possible and let millions of those Laptops reach the Kids. Amen.