Hi Kim,
My name is Miriam Bogler and I am a new user of Squeak. I have been using it for about a year now. I am a database developer and a former computer teacher for grades 1 -12, teaching a wide variety of softwares - with a focus on Logo programming (MicroWorlds). At present I have founded a non-profit organization that intends to open an after-school club which will be dedicated to introduce technologies that encourage children to create their own products. It will be similar to the first MIT after-school club. At present, my organization is functioning in the San Fernando Valley (Northridge) and helps local public and private schools establish techology programs that include: robotics-using Lego Mindstorms, game design-using Squeak, and Macromedia's Director.
I discovered Squeak about a year ago, and proceeded to read "Powerful Ideas in the Classroom," which helped me discover new things daily. About six months ago, I started teaching a Squeak class for fifth graders at Napa Street Elementary School - a Title One public school in Northridge. These children have been previously exposed to Lego Mindstorms, so they were not entirely new to programming. The learning curve was much higher than in Mindstorms and therefore I had to be very creative in attracting their attention to the task. I decided to introduce small manageable tasks and urged students that understood and seemed comfortable with the ideas to assist the other students. I am a strong believer that teaching to others assists one in learning the information and concepts themselves, because one must truly be proficient in order to relay information to someone else. My idea seemed to work better than I imagined. Students, equipped with a new sense of responsibility, were eager to teach their peers the skills that they mastered so well. Suddenly, everyone wanted to become a teacher and teach something the rest did not get. A new atmosphere emerged in the classroom, in which students started appreciating Squeak and understanding its potential. Their new- found confidence manifested itself in personalizing the project that was initially intended to teach them the skills. Finally, they became so engaged that they asked to come to class on a day that school was not in session. For me, this was a sign of bigger things to come.
My main frustration with Squeak was the fact that I did not have a systematic, detailed help source. In my attempt to master the skills, I went through many sources of help such as: the tutorial on the web, the Powerful Ideas book, different projects on the internet. One that I particularily enjoyed was the project created by Dr. Alan Kay, which was a reply for Tamika. However, even that project seemed to have missing scripts and syntax that changed since it was created. As I created more projects, I figured out new things all the time. It was very time-consuming, however . I wish we had more sample projects such as the Tamika, which would serve as a sample for users to expand on. There may be resources out there that I am not currently aware of, but there were many details I was unable to figure out due to a lack of known resources. I am aware that there are plenty of resources for SamllTalk. I am referring to E-Toys because I teach small children.
As a former teacher of Logo using MicroWorlds, I must say that I am amazed with the possibilities in Squeak (or E-Toys). However, in order to have the children benefit from this powerful program, they probably need access to a help menu that would provide a small animation of what can be done with a Squeak component that they are retrieving. Learners in general, and children in particular, learn best by example. A good example is worth a thousand words.
Miriam E. Bogler President Apollo's Vision Computer Clubs, Inc. 22560-3 Jeffrey Mark Ct. Chatsworth, CA 91311 Tel: (818) 576-1428 Fax: (818) 773-8970 E-mail: mebogler@apollosvision.org Web: www.apollosvision.org
-----Original Message----- From: squeakland-bounces@squeakland.org [mailto:squeakland-bounces@squeakland.org] On Behalf Of squeakland-request@squeakland.org Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2004 12:00 PM To: squeakland@squeakland.org Subject: Squeakland Digest, Vol 14, Issue 10
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Today's Topics:
1. Happy Summer - Please send us your feedack! (Kim Rose)
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Message: 1 Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 11:27:48 -0700 From: Kim Rose kim.rose@squeakland.org Subject: [Squeakland] Happy Summer - Please send us your feedack! To: "squeakland.org mailing list" squeakland@squeakland.org Message-ID: <a0602040cbcff6cfc6946@[192.168.0.52]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"
Dear Squeaklanders,
Happy Summer! For those of you affiiliated with schools or universities I imagine your summer has just begun. I hope you all had a wonderful academic year.
Before you go off on well-deserved holidays, or get "out of school mode", we at Viewpoints Research ask a favor: If you've been using Squeak/Etoys this year with your children (at home, school, after school clubhouses, etc., etc.) we'd love to receive your feedback! Please send us (and the whole list if you'd like) your thoughts, remarks, suggestions, frustrations, etc. It will be very helpful to us in many ways.
Also, if you and/or your students have created projects you would be willing to share, if you could put those on a personal homepage or school website we could point/link from the Squeakland.org site it would be fantastic. We're hoping to build more links to help others see the kinds of Etoy projects created using Squeak.
We're working on an improved version of Squeak this summer which we'll make available in August -- in time for your testing/playing before the start of the next academic year. Stay tuned for more news on that front.
In the meantime, we'd love your feedback on the experiences you had this school year and we wish you all a marvelous summer!
We look forward to seeing some of you at SqueakFest in Chicago. If you haven't yet, and still want to come, there's a few days left to "register". (See Squeakland.org and "Squeak News" for details.)
best regards, Kim
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