My 12 year old son and e-toys in Squeak

Stephen Davies steve at daviesfam.org
Fri Dec 26 07:25:13 UTC 2003


Hi,

I just wanted to send my compliments to the developers of the
Morphic/e-Toys stuff in Squeak.

I had Squeak open on my iBook the other day and my 12-year old son
came to have a look.  I thought to show him etoys - and a little
scripting.

He already knows and uses Logo to a good level.

He understood what was happening straight away.  I put a copy of
Squeak on the computer that he uses and let him "get on with it".

I asked him to show me his squeak the other day, and:

 - he's decorated his workspace with all sorts of morphs and things
 - he's written a car racing game with:
     detection of going off the track - you get "damage" when you do
     100% damage is game-over
     its got a limited time to drive.  he measures how far you get
       by counting laps and partial laps.
 - he's also been playing with the 3D stuff, and done something that
   randomly animates some giraffes around.

I'm really impressed with how easily he got started and how much he's
done.  Like Logo, Squeak/etoys is just SO much more interesting and
fullfilling than learning "how to write in MS Word", which much school
computer classes seems to have degenerated to.

By contrast, the Squeak environment really does work as an exploratory
environment that kids can get to grips with.

So thanks and compliments,
Steve Davies





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