[squeak-dev] GSOC 2009 not accepted

Rita Freudenberg rita at isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de
Fri Mar 20 10:56:56 UTC 2009


Hi Donna,

its great to hear what you are doing! From your mail I assume you are 
using Squeak with BotsInc and the Smalltalk delvelopment environment? 
Are you doing that with 8-year-old kids? Are you using Etoys, the 
tile-scripting environment as well? I would like to know whats on your 
wish-list!
We founded Squeakland Foundation this year to (among other things) 
promote Squeak-Etoys, create educational material, and build an online 
community of Etoys users world wide. With that, we are looking in many 
directions, for instance, the use of Etoys in the classroom, wherefore 
we create material for teachers aligned with the curriculum, or the use 
by the kids themselves at home, so I think that Etoys would be a very 
useful tool for homeschooled kids. What do you think?

Greetings,
Rita

donna at hawcenter.org wrote:
> Hi Aik-Siong,
>
> I am the founder of the Hawthorne Center for Innovation in the 
> Southern California area. I also applied for GSoC 2009. The Center has 
> a whole "wish-list" of Squeak-based projects we would have liked to 
> have gotten funded. I would be interested in connecting up for next 
> year's program.
>
> I found Squeak on the web in the fall of 2005 while searching through 
> wiki frameworks for the 20 years of history I had harvested and wanted 
> to get onto the web. While surfing I ran into Swiki and from there I 
> soon ran into the then newly-published book by Stephane Ducasse, 
> Squeak: Learn Programming with Robots. I was so excited! - I had 
> started the Center to work with homeschooled kids in my area and had 
> wanted to develop a robotics program that didn't involve the expense 
> of buying Mindstorms or Logo.
>
> When I got the book, being a non-geek, I could barely understand what 
> was being discussed, but there were pictures and I could at least 
> figure out that I was finally in the right ballpark! I handed the book 
> over to my Principal Research Scientist-in-Residence, Ben Cooper, who 
> also got excited; we got hold of every piece of literature on 
> Smalltalk that we could. After 6 months of intensive study, Ben 
> started to head a weekly workshop here at the Center for kids on Squeak.
>
> Now, 3 + years later, the Center has morphed into a small research 
> institute helping to support the work of a group of 
> internationally-placed Squeakers and Ben has started a collaborative 
> arrangement with a student form the University of Missouri-Rolla to 
> create lessons for introducing Squeak to kids form 8 to 80 which will 
> provide the experience of "painlessly" learning of the principles of 
> computer science while having fun with graphics.
>
> At present, I don't have much on my website; in a couple of days, I 
> will have the alpha version of the first lesson up at 
> www.hawcenter.org. I will also put up the "wish list " that I would 
> have posted for GSoC 2009. I will include more about on-going 
> Squeak-projects being worked on through the Center including the data 
> structure Ben is writing for my history wiki (as yet unnamed).
>
> Looking forward to any relationship,
>
> Donna Schrokosch
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "askoh" <askoh at askoh.com>
> To: <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
> Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2009 7:14 AM
> Subject: Re: [squeak-dev] GSOC 2009 not accepted
>
>
>>
>> Thanks Bert. Great idea.
>>
>> As Bert suggested, nothing prevents us from joining other groups that do
>> work that interests us. It might even be good to expose others to Squeak
>> when we join them.
>>
>> Any one knows of other groups that can use Squeak mentors and students?
>>
>> All the best,
>> Aik-Siong Koh
>> -- 
>> View this message in context: 
>> http://www.nabble.com/GSOC-2009-not-accepted-tp22589998p22600985.html
>> Sent from the Squeak - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>


-- 
Rita Freudenberg
FIN-ISG
Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg
http://isgwww.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/isg/rita.html




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