Is it alive?

Christopher Sawtell csawtell
Fri Apr 18 14:54:26 PDT 2003


On Thu, 26 Sep 2002 23:01, Kidd, Gary wrote:
> I work for the US Dept of Defense Domestic Schools, based in Peachtree
> City, Ga.  The list led me to squeakland, and I am fascinated by what I
> have seen and been able to play with on the website.  How can I find out
> more about how we may be able to infuse squeak into our schools?

imho, getting squeak out there needs a few things:

1) A live CD which somebody can just pop into a CD drive on a PC and boot to 
get Squeak working. It does not matter what the underlying o/s is. A possible 
example method is at:- http://www.knoppix.org/ which provides a Live Linux 
CD. It would not be too difficult to replace the unneeded window manager and 
applications with a Squeak system.

2) Books which are understandable by children of all ages, yet don't talk down 
to them.

3) a Joystick interface. Controlling the e-toy objects is really quite hard if 
you only have a mouse as the interface.

4) Removal of the red cautionary-tale text screen which greets you on starting    
up a 3.2 image. If you tell them it's difficult right at the start, the 
masses will take off like scaled cats, never to be seen again. Actually 
Smalltalk is difficult only if your mind has been horribly corrupted by many 
years of traditional computer programming.

Given time, I could probably:-

Make 1.

Provide input to 2. I'm not sufficiently au fait with the Squeak Smalltalk 
language yet to originate this, but have had a fair amount of contact with 
children, and could, with the help of various children we know, be an 
effective editor.

3 is totally beyond my knowledge.

 
> Thanks
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alan Kay [mailto:Alan.Kay at squeakland.org]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2002 6:48 PM
> To: squeakland at squeakland.org
> Subject: Re: Is it alive?
>
> Yes. Kim, Roxanne Maloney and I are in Japan where the city of Kyoto
> is planning on putting versions of the "etoy curriculum" in 6 schools
> in the Spring (2 each of elementary, middle and high school).
>
> Cheers,
>
> Alan
>
> ------
>
> At 2:49 PM -0700 9/25/02, Lawson English wrote:
> >Haven't gotten a new message from this list in over 3 weeks. Is anyone
> >there?

-- 
Sincerely etc.,
Christopher Sawtell



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