Introducing children and/or school to Squeak

[Mark A. Schwenk]

B.J.,

I'd also like to hear more details of your lessons, as well as any 
Squeak-centric preparatory work.

I talked with the Youth Services Director at our local library this evening 
about teaching a free course at the library. We are now planning to offer a 
Squeaking With Your Computer workshop consisting of two two-hour sessions. 
The sessions would be spread across two consecutive Saturdays in July and 
would be offered to six student-parent pairs. The students would be fourth 
and fifth graders. Although initially we considered twelve students, the 
Director thought that many parents would be interested and would like to 
participate. What do others think? Perhaps later we could hold separate 
workshops for parents and teachers in addition to the young student classes.

As we gain more experience with this, I think Squeaking classes could 
become a regular offering at our library. The library staff members I have 
spoken with feel quite comfortable with the notion that Squeak could be an 
essential part of the new literacy, and thus part of their mission.

Then we can expand into the local schools...

I had previously worked with one local high-school senior who served an 
internship at WellThot to create a Squeak test suite (which inspired some 
of Richard Harmon's work on Smalltalk test suites that grew into the Camp 
Smalltalk ANSI test suites, now included with the Squeak World Tour image).

Before long we may grow a local community of Squeakers!

-Mark Schwenk
  WellThot Inc.

At 5/9/2001 10:17 AM, James Howe wrote:
>At 10:27 PM 5/8/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>>Hi:
>>
>>     I am a teacher at a charter school and have been using Squeak in my
>>classroom for 2 years.  I have tied my lessons into the standards and would
>>be happy to share what I have done with my students.
>>
>>B.J.Conn
>>Open Charter School
>
>
>I would be interested in anything you have to share about what you did 
>with your students.  I'm particularly interested in how you got your 
>students started using Squeak in the first place.  What sort of basics 
>were needed to be taught before the students could start on projects?  I 
>would also be interested in hearing about some of the projects you had 
>your students work on.  I've seen a couple on Squeakland, but I would be 
>interested in knowing about others.
>
>Thanks.
>
>
>James W. Howe                   mailto:jwh at allencreek.com
>Allen Creek Software, Inc.              pgpkey: http://ic.net/~jwh/pgpkey.html
>Ann Arbor, MI 48103