Simply Seeking Syllabus for 5th-8th Grade Squeaking

[John.Maloney at disney.com]

Mark,

Scott Wallace and I recently taught 3 classes of 33 kids at a local elemantary
school's "Discovery Day". The first two classes were fifth graders, the last
class was sixth graders. We worked throught the "Drive-a-car" example.
Our experiences strongly supports John Steinmetz's observations of the
Open School classes. In particular:

Re:
>One way of teaching that has worked well: at the beginning of a session do
>a short demonstration for all the kids, showing them the activity before
>you turn them loose to do it. That way if there are any unfamiliar skills
>or concepts needed for success, you can introduce them while giving
>everybody a feel for the activity.

We actually taught one of the first two classes with an up-front demonstration
and one without it. Even though the up-front demo takes an extra five minutes
(out of 40 minutes), the class with the demo got further. We decided to
teach the final group with the demo and that class also got further. One
practical thing about an up-front lecture/demo: that's the only time you really
have the full attention of everyone in the class. After they start their projects,
some of them will always be distracted when you ask for their attention.
In fact, we asked them to not even start up Squeak until we'd finished the
initial demo and introduction, and that was a good idea.


Re:
>Iit's good to have plenty of help available for the kids--especially at the
>beginning. So that means you should have a small group or some assistants.
>Any computer activity involves confusions and missteps, and Squeak is a
>research system so there are even more possible confusions and blind alleys.

Scott and I were only two "teachers" for 33 kids who had never seen Squeak.
I thought it would be a chaos. Actually, it worked better than I expected, in
part because we only had 18 computers, so kids worked in pairs. That
meant you could help two kids at once, and often one of the two would
understand your suggestions quickly. In contrast, we recently taught 14
kids who had never seen Squeak at Disney's "Bring your child to work day"
and we had about seven teachers. In that situation progress was very fast,
because kids who were stuck got immediate attention. However, I don't
believe that many teachers is necessary. I thank that if Scott and I had just
one more assistant, it would have been optimal: one teacher for every six pairs.
(Actually, one might say it is the computer/teacher ratio that matters! You
want that ratio to be under six for maximum progress.)

Your original posting said there were six PC's in the lab. I think that's
about the max for a single teacher, but there should be no problem
with pairing up two kids per computer. If you do this, I'd limit it
to 10 kids on 5 computers, at least for your first time. That would
also leave one machine available as your "demo" machine. You also
said it would be open to kids from 5th-8th grade. We had
that same span for the "Bring your child to work day". In that case,
the eighth grader was noticably faster and more self-sufficient than
the youngest kid. If that happens in your class, you could recruit the
fastest kids as teachers.

Good luck!

	-- John