Melanie did a short update-video shoot with Lynne May on Tuesday night - it was done very late at night, and I love how Lynne May goes from exhausted to animated as she talks about the deployment. (The video becomes most interesting to me about 2 minutes in.) I livetranscribed - full transcript, as best as I can render it, posted below.

Transcript: Lynne May, 1st grade teacher

I'm testing - I'm going through the Sugar Activities to see what would be interesting for the kids.

I'm thinking how to introduce to unit to the children... talking about how communities - the general idea the kids have is that in communities, people get together, they work together, they agree on things, they have peace and love and they show respect.

We're going to focus first on neighborhoods, the communities where they live. They actually have the homework of thinking about what they see in their neighborhood, so they have to figure out where they live, what neighborhoods they belong to, and what is their street where they live. I asked them to do some visualization of their neighborhood and they got to tell about what they saw on their way to school this morning from their house.

What? (Mel, from the side: You were talking at dinner about how they were really excited...) So I saw this neighborhood, and I said that we would study two other neighborhoods, I said our school community, which is the community where you work, so they're ok with that, and then I said the third is an open source community called Sugar Labs. And I wrote "Sugar Labs," and they said "Sugar? Labs?" And I forgot what one kid said, but I said "oh, lab, it's like a laboratory."

And I gave a very generic description of open source community - it's where people who take time from their lives to develop software, applications, for other people to use for free, and then I referenced the DS and the games they have that they have to buy and pay money for. And I said the open source community people believe that there should be some things that should be available to anybody in this world for free. I think it's like "huh?"

And that's when I said "remember when my niece Mel, and..." and then they said "SEBASTIAN!" And then I said "Uh huh." And (as kids:) "Oh! Oh!" And then they got really excited. (As teacher:) "We will not start right away!"

But then they... because I told their parents [about the SoaS pilot] in their [weekly classroom] newsletter and apparently some parents told their kids, so one kid, yesterday, Monday, when we got back from break, said "Are we going to work on the computer?" I said "Yes, aaand..." And then today he said "My mom said we're gonna work on Sugar." And then he said "My dad said we're gonna have Sugar on a Stick." So I said "What does that mean, Sugar on a Stick?" (As kid:) "Sugar on a Stick!" (As teacher, joking:) "You mean to say... something sweet, on a stick?" All he knows is that he's got to be excited about Sugar on a Stick. He was quite excited about it.

But I think they are excited about it. So... So we'll see. They might start saying "Oh, Lynne May, you said we're going to have Sugar on a Stick! Where is it? Where is it?" By... tomorrow, they might say that. I'll ask them to be patient.

(Melanie, behind the camera: So you're actually going to start introducing it next week?) I will see if I can start introducing it on Friday. Or... yeah, maybe on Friday, or if not earlier, Thursday, to begin to. But it will be great to be introduce it when they have the computer, right? And I don't think we are that ready yet to have the computers in the classroom. I mean me and the kids. Because first week back from break, I have to get them back on the routine. After being away for a week. You know, they sort of get excited like it's the first week of school.

Anyway. So some of the things I've been thinking about is a [paper] journal that they would have a... when they will upload blog entries for, when they're thinking about bug reports, that they would write there. (Melanie, from behind the camera: Battery runs out in 1 minute 30 seconds.) That's ok, I won't go on too long. So I'm working on tweaking on what it should look like. I have a prototype, I will see if that works.

That's it for now. I'm pretty sleepy. (Melanie, holding the camera: That's ok, thank you.) Bye.