Hello! I was wondering if anyone here would be so kind as to help a helpless
beginner (or a group of helpless beginners). :-(

I'm currently in Senior Project at my university and me and my group mates
came up with an idea to make a children's interactive learning software
package. Nothing fancy, just something good enough to literally and
figuratively make the grade. Anyway, we picked a project (well...our
professor sort of did) and the language (well...our professor sort of picked
that as well). The language is Squeak. Our professor feels that Squeak is
the way to go. We'll have capability for .midi files and other things we
would like to do.

We decided to create a geography learning activity package which will have
the following (adding bells and whistles if time permits after the initial
program is executable):

 A main screen allowing the user (children ages 8-12) to go straight
to the tutorial or take the quiz (which will be tri-leveled: beginner,
intermediate, advance)
 The first screen on the tutorial will be a flat map of the world.
The user can select a continent. From there, the user will be able to view
information about that continent and can select a country. Then, specific
details about that country is displayed such as an image of the country's
flag, the population, the capital and other specifics
 The user in the beginning of the program will be prompted to input
user's name and will be referred to as such throughout
 There will be an animated character (very simple character) in
order to stimulate the user and to guide them and possible give helpful
hints
 Images depicting the country such as wildlife and vegetation as
well as sound effects will also be on the detail screens

We have the data, we have the sources, and we have our screens all mapped
out...flowchart and all. We will initially cover the first 50-100 highest
populated countries and will add more data if time permits. This sounds all
find and dandy for a group of seniors to tackle, right? 

Problem is, none of us know Squeak and we never programmed in Smalltalk. All
of our members except myself (still waiting on Amazon to ship it) have
purchased the Squeak book by Mark Guzdial. Those who have bought the book
are having a difficult time grasping the concept. All of us mainly have
knowledge in procedural languages such as Pascal and C. Not really strong
OOP experience. Though I have scratched the surface almost five years ago
with objects and inheritance in a C++ course.

Can someone give us some helpful hints as to what we can do to accomplish
our goals? My thing is I need some sample Squeak code...any code just to
test run and get used to the new platform. I have read an excellent online
tutorial about Smalltalk and with guidance from my aids, I think I can begin
some simple code.

Also, how should I arrange our data? Flat text files? If so, how does Squeak
read outside data? I know that if you're using records in Pascal, you have
to declare the amount of space for each record. From all of the Squeak
information I printed out, I saw nothing that could aid us in this endeavor.
I have no idea where to start as far as arranging my data on disc to be used
by the program later. I at least want to have that part of the program under
our belt.

It would absolutely be appreciated if someone can help us out. Someone
recommended that I subscribe to the list and that people here are extremely
helpful. Our project is due in December. We may not get much accomplished,
but I would like to be able to say that we put forth an effort to learn
Squeak.

Thank for reading and any and all suggestions will be GREATLY appreciated!