Squeak for 3-year-olds

G.J.Tielemans at dinkel.utwente.nl G.J.Tielemans at dinkel.utwente.nl
Thu May 3 11:41:00 UTC 2001


I love Squeakland:
- It sits convenient in my webbrowser and only if I grow in my wishes I have
to download the stand-alone-Squeaks that ask more study but offer also more
power.
- especially the tutorials with the workspace area and the scrolling
tutorial together in one window steal my heart. (Dan and Scott, you could
look at these pages for an inspiring format for your own tutorials?) 

(By the way, a question button, combined with a most-often-asked-FAQ-box
would make these pages complete for exercising visitors.)

Small remarks: 
- Near the end of the race-car tutorial i miss at least one picture in the
part about colorUnder. 

- If I end a visit to an example on the "Early Play and Exploration" page,
pressing the back button of my browser (Windows98 IE 5.50.4522.1800)  sends
me back to the page Squeak in Schools: I would prefer to be moved to the
early play & exploration page. (The same for creating animations: - I use
the back-button instead of using the previous project in the World Menu -
depends of the target group you are aiming at..)

- I did allow you (?) to install the new plugin update on May 3 when I was
asked for it, but now the circus project does not load correct anymore, like
it did last thursday. (Carny show is still not found, so it opens a new
window...)
- I have a screen with 1024x768, but that is not big enough for the Creating
animation page. (I do not see a scroll bar to overcome this
show-the-bottom-of-the-page-problem. Looking more secure, I see that more
pages suffer this problem.)
- a related problem is that the introduction text Etoys and SimStories is
covered by the graphics part? I cannot see the end-of-the-rows, so reading
is now quit an adventure game.

-(Text with underline in the same storie does not function as hyperlinks, is
that correct?)

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At 7:38 PM +0200 5/1/01, Cees de Groot wrote:
>Sidetracking a bit on the topic of Squeak in education: my kids don't
>happen to read English. Has anyone looked into i18n for Etoys?

remark 1: You should differentiate between the English control commands of
Squeaks and the long English explaining text-tutorilas.
The first discussion about the commands we had already with Logo in 1984.
Some people were saying that children difficulty to learn it because it was
in English. Others were saying that not the English words but grasping the
concepts behind the words was the difficulty. You could always make an end
on these discussions by reminding them that in the sixties(?) there was that
Walt Disney movie Mary Poppins with this magic spell
SUPERCALLIFRAGILOUSCUMEXPIALIDOCIOUS, no problem for any child in these
days. (I think I write it wrong now..)

remark 2: Is it an idea to translate the tutorials with volunteers in other
languages and put it back in stores on the website of Squeakland? (building
some fancy buttons where you can choose your preferred langauge must be
challenging for real Squeakers..)  

remark 3: You could also overcome the reading of English and other
limitations of these not so flexible computers (Alan is warning for this
again and again..) by giving them a human helper... Yes YOU!!!
In music education they offer in our music-school parents the opportunity to
take the first music lessons together with their own child. 
(Helps them to understand how difficult it is to start playing a
music-instrument and doing all these boring exercises while you see yourself
already on the stage: Some grown-up men still have these dreams, we call it
air-guitar-syndrome.) 

Could be an idea to start play along tutorials on the website: the race-car
tutorial is a good candidate for that. (Solves also part of the problem of
offering a tutorial with enough room to make mistakes and still having the
opportunity to bring them back on trail. 
We only should learn not to help them then to much... )





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