Alright, it's maybe not the worst situation in the world, but we just got back from two weeks in Hawaii on holiday and I experienced a distressing situation on the five hour flight back from the Big Island to San Francisco (where we overnighted): an abusive parent and her child in my row of the plane.

As is common with airlines, we booked months in advance but couldn't get our five seats together, so we had three seats in one row, one seat immediately ahead of it, and one seat two rows ahead of that. Not so good when we're traveling with the kids, needless to say, but since K-'s now two, we have to buy her a seat too.

We decided that we'd arrange it so that Linda and all three kids were squished into the three-seat row (with the baby on her lap to hopefully sleep) and I'd be in the row immediately ahead.

But when we were all trying to settle into our seats, I was joined by a heavyset native Hawaiian woman and her five year old (I'm guessing) daughter. Her daughter promptly stood on the chair to look over and meet our kids and the Mom...

The next day I received an email from Peter Freer, a banker from the UK who decided to raise funds for the Jaden Foundation as part of a jungle adventure challenge that was held in Belize recently . Together with his team 'the Belize Bankers' he came in 3rd place. They apparently had to kayak, run and survive in the jungle with nothing more than the shirts on their backs for several days. Thank you so much Peter for doing this for the Jaden Foundation. I think you're crazy, but there you go. You all seemed to have survived the ordeal.

There was one problem with this whole story, though. The Jaden Foundation is not registered as an official charity. I didn't do this as it would have cost me $8000 to do so. And that money I would rather spend on the Belizean kids (100% of the Jaden Foundation donations go to school fees, books, uniforms, transport and whatever else the kids need).

Peter told me that he could only donate to a registered charity, which is fair enough. So I decided that this was a sign to push through a dream that I have had for years now: to try and get as many local kids as possible accepted into a private school. The Belize Christian Academy is the closest school to us and by far the best school in this part of the country. It is linked to a registered charity in the US, so Peter and his team mates could make the donation directly to the school to pay for school fees.

It is already amazing that all the children in our community go to school these days, but if they could be going to BCA that would make an ever bigger impact on their lives. Many of the kids are currently 'falling through the cracks'. They are being passed along the grades, but should really be kept back as they still struggle so much with the English language. Right now they are crammed into classrooms with over 30 kids and don't get the attention they would need to excel. At the BCA they would be in classes of only half the size and they would not be getting so confused by the mix of Creole and English (which is another problem at the state schools)

Anyway, I am not sure what it would take to get all the children from our community accepted into that school. It may be too expensive. In that case, I will focus on getting the youngest kids in that school and let the older ones continue in the school that they are at now.

It's going to be quite a challenge, as the school fees for the private school are $250 BZ ($125 US) a month per child. I will try to get a special deal or assistance from the school & hopefully that way I will be able to send all.

Anyway, Jay and Jasper have just made a wonderful donation to the Jaden Foundation. They have given us $400 US! John and Rich' parents donate a further 20 Pounds per month & have done so for last year! Thank you, thank you, thank you, you guys. And now it looks like Peter Freer and his team mates have raised roughly $3500 US (to be donated at the end of then month). So we are getting there. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your help. This is all so exciting!

If any of you blog readers out there would like to sponsor one of the kids, please contact me. You could even donate directly to the school, so the donations are tax deductible (rather give it to these kids than the tax man, right?)

Thank you,
Simone

P.S. I'll let you know what happens in the coming weeks....

I'm in the 'alt.chi' session, which is a collection of papers that are very interesting projects but for one reason or another would not compete well against traditional research papers to make it into the conference programs.

First project: incorporating digital technologies into a playground.  Their first prototype was a mat (looks sort of like two sets of train tracks, side by side) that kids could step or run on, and hitting pressure mats would activate motors. In their second iteration, they got the kids involved in making spinners to put on the motors. Then they observed how kids used it and experimented with it, including inventing their own games.  Their big goal: use technologies toaugment playground equipment without compromising the nature of unstructired play?

Second project: Tokyo Youth at Leisure, supporting the design of new meida to support leisure planning and practice. A user study of young adults aged 18-25 (the only age group that actually has free time) to see how they plan and participate in their leisure outings. Relaxation and companionship were the most important leisure qualities; finding new romance was the least. People and TV were the top resources for planning outings, mobile device was very low (though distinguish planning from coordination, where mobile and PC are used extensively).  'downtime' is essential; they often spend it alone, but hyper-connected (via email and mobile phone). For group outings, you choose the set of people you want to be with first, then decide what to do. Planning a meeting place for a specific activity is the process of minimizing the commute and maximizing opportuinities for other serendipitous activities. One interesting take-away: lots of cultural hype of mobile phones' hyperuse as distinctly Japanese, but the PC was used a lot more than was expected; people liked the large screen for viewing information and planning activities.

Third project: RoomBugs. simulating insect infestations in elementary school classrooms.  Kids use computers to run a simulation over several days of insects in the classroom, as a science experiment where they need to quantify can classify the infestation. PC's act as stations around the room and show the virtual equivalent of a 'sand trap' where they see insect tracks as virtual insects walk voer them. Kids were able to correctly count and identify 94% of over 1500 insect tracks that they were exposed to over a 2-week period. Yow!

Fourth project: Orbital Browser. How to connect up components in a ubiquitous computing environment.

Fifth project: Quill: a narrative-based interface for personal document retrieval.