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eToys article on Linux.com
by Milan Zimmermann 26 Mar '08

26 Mar '08

Linux.com published Joe Barr's great introductory article about eToys. While the article concentrates on OLPC, it also provides instructions how to download and install eToys for users who do not own OLPC. The second part is devoted to a detail description of how to create a new project and where to get help (Suggests Squeak Beginners list, I would say squeakland(a)squeakland.org, or etoys(a)laptop.org may be a good Cc option). Article is at http://www.linux.com/articles/130014?

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Summary e-mail distribution
by Michael Haupt 25 Mar '08

25 Mar '08

Dear News team, in the light of the recent razzmatazz on the Seaside list, I would like to propose that we restrict the default distribution of Weekly Squeak Summary e-mails to the announcements, squeak-dev and beginners lists. We could think about something like target-specific Summaries, e.g., a collection of all Seaside-related news items posted to the Seaside list, VM-related news to vm-dev, and so forth. I would think of this as a service from the News team to the various (sub-)communities, but I am unsure whether this would be regarded as unsolicited albeit on-topic noise. Best, Michael

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Squeak News team Report - Feb 2008
by Ron Teitelbaum 02 Mar '08

02 Mar '08

Hello Everybody, This is your monthly News report for Feb 2008. A cold snap has locked the east coast. There has been lots of snow and ice, but things are starting to thaw. I saw some of my bees flying just the other day so spring is on the way. And now the news: We had 13,004 hits for the leap month of February. The one missing day from (29 instead of 30) is not enough to account for the drop in numbers. It must be the lack of good pictures from Craig. We are down 2000 hits from last month and 25,000 from the month of PARC pictures. Our top articles were The Golight: Tool Support for Test-Drive <http://weeklysqueak.wordpress.com/2008/02/07/the-golight-tool-support-for-t est-driven-development/> 3,398 hits Qwaq releases Hydra multi-core Squeak VM <http://weeklysqueak.wordpress.com/2008/02/21/qwaq-releases-hydra-multi-core -squeak-vm/> 2,329 hits Hashing in Smalltalk <http://weeklysqueak.wordpress.com/2008/02/25/hashing-in-smalltalk/> 769 hits IANAL - But they are! SFLC Guide to FOSS <http://weeklysqueak.wordpress.com/2008/02/15/ianal-but-they-are-sflc-guide- to-foss-legal-issues/> 580 hits We had 9 articles in February, which is not bad. I would like to thank Klaus Witzel for helping to find good stories to post. That has been very helpful to get our numbers up. Like Klaus if you have suggestions for things you would like to see posted, please feel free to drop the News Team a line. On the Political front, the Squeak Election Team Headed by Göran Krampe has done a wonderful job getting the Squeak Foundation Board 2008 Election organized and encouraging participation from both the candidates and the community. The News team looks forward to posting an article about the results. Please don't forget to vote! Voting helps to show your support for the Squeak Foundation and all the hard work that the Board does for the community. You can find out more about the election at: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6025 Happy Squeaking, I'm Ron Teitelbaum your Squeak News Team Leader. Have a good day!

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There's no Room 101 Newspeak on The Weekly Squeak?
by Klaus D. Witzel 27 Feb '08

27 Feb '08

Hi Ron & all, did you know - http://gbracha.blogspot.com/ where Gilad Bracha blogs about Smalltalk and the rest of the (language) world, also about developing Newspeak with Squeak. His recent Cutting out Static is great, as are the other parts of his blog :) Cheers Klaus

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FW: News Team Report Jan 2008
by Ron Teitelbaum 03 Feb '08

03 Feb '08

Ooops forgot to send this to the news list. Sorry, Ron -----Original Message----- From: squeak-dev-bounces(a)lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org] On Behalf Of Ron Teitelbaum Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2008 10:50 PM To: 'The general-purpose Squeak developers list' Subject: News Team Report Jan 2008 Hello all and welcome to Leap Month, This is your News Team report for January 2008 We had 15,645 hits in Jan. This is half what we had last month but we didn't have any really cool pictures from Craig to post http://news.squeak.org/2007/12/29/old-smalltalk-pics-from-parc . What's funny is that those pictures are linked from a lot of places and this month we still had 1545 hits. We had 10 articles posted in January. If you would like to volunteer and help write articles for the Weekly Squeak please let me know. We could use your help!! Thanks, Ron Teitelbaum Squeak News Team Leader

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Popularity on the rise: Coding (and Consulting) Kid-Style With Scratch
by Klaus D. Witzel 07 Jan '08

07 Jan '08

See below, especially "... elective program classes have used Scratch to deliver consulting and programming services for students at another school." and "They made products that are real pieces of software, adapted to the needs of real clients." :) /Klaus <quoted from ACM's TechNews> "Coding (and Consulting) Kid-Style With Scratch" T.H.E. Journal (12/07); Schaffhauser, Dian MIT Media Lab's Lifelong Kindergarten research group has developed Scratch, a programming language designed to help kids learn mathematical and computational concepts along with the process of design. A paper about Scratch explains that the language can nurture skills in the areas of information and communication, thinking and problem-solving, and interpersonal and self-direction. The Scratch Web site freely offers the program for download, examples, tutorials, and discussion forums, and approximately 45,000 people have registered on the site thus far. Programming via Scratch allows kids to blend together sounds, music, graphics, and photos by dragging and dropping graphical command blocks onto a Scripts work area. The program begins with a "sprite" character that users can manipulate with command blocks, and starting and stopping scripts involves the user clicking a green flag and a red stop sign button, respectively. Students in Expo Elementary School teacher Karen Randall's elective program classes have used Scratch to deliver consulting and programming services for students at another school. Randall says the language helped her team experience the process of design in a deeper and more meaningful way. "They made products that are real pieces of software, adapted to the needs of real clients," she says. http://www.thejournal.com/articles/21743 </quote>

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News Report Dec 2007
by Ron Teitelbaum 03 Jan '08

03 Jan '08

Happy New Year everyone, Here is your news report for Dec 2007 and the year. We had a big hit with Craig's pictures http://news.squeak.org/2007/12/29/old-smalltalk-pics-from-parc-place/. There was an amazing amount of interest: 29,614 hits! Thank you! Craig helped us to beat our record and gave us our best day ever of 17,959 hits on Dec 30 (this was more then all the hits we received last month). This was a very nice way to end the year. Our second place post was http://news.squeak.org/2007/12/05/demand-olpc/ with: 1279 hits. We had only 5 posts for the month. Our search hits continue to be very strong on search keys that include 'OLPC'. For the entire year of 2007 we had 179,745 hits. This was our first full year (total of 16 months). My impressions of the Weekly Squeak are that we are doing quite well. I've noticed that there is a lot of talk about Smalltalk and Squeak and we are receiving a number of links from other communities, blogs and web sites. I'm sure most of the buzz has been generated by OLPC, Croquet and Seaside but I would like to believe that we helped a little to raise the awareness of other developers about the Squeak community and our continued support and progress. We have a terrific community and I'm looking forward to the new year of Squeak and Smalltalk. We are proud to be a part of and support this community. Thank you for supporting and reading the Weekly Squeak! Ron Teitelbaum and The Squeak News Team

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A child's view: even better, there was an animation programme called Etoys
by Klaus D. Witzel 13 Dec '07

13 Dec '07

Dad brought home a XO laptop from Nigeria, now look what happened: - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7140443.stm /Klaus

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Project to Build Virtual Learning Platform Within Popular Online Worlds Wins Financial Support
by Klaus D. Witzel 10 Dec '07

10 Dec '07

<quote> from ACM's news service, Chronicle of Higher Education (12/10/07); Foster, Andrea L. Boston College instructor Aaron E. Walsh is leading a multimillion-dollar project backed by the Federation of American Scientists and the Kauffman Foundation to develop virtual-reality software that can be used for educational purposes. Researchers are working with an international consortium of colleges, research institutes, and companies to develop standards and best practices for the virtual-reality platform. The project, called Immersive Education, will build on Walsh's experience teaching Boston College students online in virtual spaces. Immersive Education includes plans to create mini-games and interactive lessons within virtual spaces, including Second Life, Croquet, and Project Wonderland. At a conference announcing Immersive Education, Walsh demonstrated how virtual worlds can be used to teach students about real-world places, events, and ideas. During the demonstration, the virtual avatar of a student, standing in front of a digital jackal, explained that to the ancient Egyptians the jackal helped transport the dead to the underworld. Three-dimensional models of archaeological sites and tombs in Egypt, developed by the Theban Mapping Project, provided a virtual tour of an otherwise inaccessible site. Meanwhile, Gene Koo, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, described how students at Emerson College and Boston residents are using Second Life to foster civic engagement, and how virtual worlds are being used to design real-world spaces. http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/12/925n.htm (Web Link May Require Paid Subscription) </quote>

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News Team update for Nov 2007
by Ron Teitelbaum 06 Dec '07

06 Dec '07

Hello all, This is the news team update for November 2007. We had 9 articles posted on Weekly Squeak in November. The article was the most hits was: Seaside - One Click Experience! http://news.squeak.org/2007/11/10/seaside-one-click-experience/ With 1,360 hits The Give 1 Get 1 program resulted in a large number of hits from searches on OLPC. There were hits on over 130 different articles with 13,057 hits overall (down from 17.5 K last month). There are also a number of blogs that regularly reference and comment on our articles. If you have ideas for stories please let us know mailto:news@lists.squeakfoundation.org We appreciate all suggestions and comments. I received a number of comments about editorials. Most were very positive and encouraging and were the result of some public discussion about the Weekly Squeak on IRC. If you would like to comment on the content of our articles we are very interested in your opinion. The News Team is a great place to volunteer and contribute to your Squeak Community! Thanks for Reading and Supporting the Weekly Squeak! Ron Teitelbaum Squeak News Team Leader

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