Teaching Young Children About Software Freedom
Most tech-for-kids stuff emphasizes basic computer use and learning programming. Instruction rarely brings up ethical and social issues with technology. In considering how to best introduce computers to my young son, I developed a plan to help him experience software freedom in practice.
We started with command-line and then moved into bash scripting. My aspiration is see kids sharing scripts with each other and modifying one anothers’ programs. That helps them understand free/libre/open collaboration and then be able to start dabbling with the source code of more advanced programs.
Along the way, we have been reviewing which free software games and programs are most accessible. Now, we have a guide that we invite others to check out and help develop: https://codeberg.org/FLO-Conscience/FLO-kids
In this talk, we’ll share the stories of what we’ve learned and discuss the importance of framing kids’ computing with understanding of the political and social issues in technology.
Note that the first iteration of this talk was given at LibrePlanet 2023: https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/kids-need-to-experience-software-freedom-not-just-the-idea-of-it/
Presenters
Aaron Wolf, Snowdrift.coop
Aaron teaches private music lessons (in Oregon City and Portland prior to covid, now online via Jitsi Meet) and is otherwise an activist and advocate for Free Culture and Free Software.
He is co-founder of the in-progress fundraising platform Snowdrift.coop, which aims to support widespread community patronage of freely-licensed creative works.
