Pinguin Café @ LinuxTag
A place for the kids
LinuxTag,
Europe's leading exhibition on Linux and Open Source takes place from
May 28 - 31, 2008 at Berlin's Messezentrum unter dem Funkturm. The international
event (conference languages are English and German) attracts about 10,000
visitors ranging from IT managers, developers, system administrators to
users and those interested in new and exciting Open Source solutions.
Supporting
sustainable open source thinking in education
The first Penguin Café will be at LinuxTag 2008, from the 28th to the 31st May, as an area designed for the younger visitors. Coming from an idea to provide a place where children can occupy themselves while the adults attend the more esoteric aspects of the fair, and a platform for the breath of perhaps more unknown, pedagogic and Open Source software developments, including unusual and new hardware available for children and education.
Penguin Café supports learning by doing. From playing with and getting to know what LegoMindstorms and EEEPC's can do, to using a Wii whiteboard and what is TuxPaint and Audacity and why are they fun?
Parents and educators alike are known to express concern regarding children and media. Much of the concern centers around commercial computer games. Penguin Café aims to provide information on the diverse software available for creative use that is free and supported by the open source community. Pointing out that there is more to computer games than just being a consumer. Even while younger children are attracted to, say the easy interface of the graphics program TuxPaint, when it is understood that it is open source and open to addition, this leads to children thinking about ICT and programming in a way that applies to their interests. It's one thing to play a game, another to invent one. One cannot invent a game unless one knows what a game is, and one can't know a good game unless one has experienced bad games. It is the experience that counts and experience is what Pinguin Cafe provides.
The project managers; Louise Brass and Malcolm Dow, have been working with children and media technology for the last 10 years, most recently in East London, South Africa with the BlueCraneMedia youth empowerment project, and have learned that a great deal can be effectively achieved by self led learning and the exchange of knowledge between children. The learning environment has to be fun, and they see Penguin Café with its technological and social aspects as being a 'classroom' of the future.
After LinuxTag Penguin Café will source permanent locations, concentrating on the Neukoelln and Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg areas of Berlin, with a view to benefiting the local learning community with the concept and resource.
