[Squeakland] Squeak in Japan

[Kim Rose]

-- 
Dear friends and colleagues,

Greetings from me, at 2:00 AM PST, having just returned yesterday 
from a 10 day trip to Japan.  Alan, Yoshiki, Roxanne Maloney and I 
just completed a very successful 10 day trip to Tokyo and Kyoto.  I 
believe most of you know that last year, the Kyoto city schools 
started a three year pilot to use Squeak in several schools.  They 
are starting with 2 elementary schools, 2 middle schools and 2 high 
schools. Currently, the strongest participants are one elementary 
school and one high school.

We met Thoru Yamamoto, the author/illustrator of "Play with Squeak"
(see this page and scroll 
http://www.squeakland.org/sqmedia/books/squeakerbooks.html)  I've 
attached a picture of him here.   His book has already sold over 
6,000 copies in Japan!  We are planning on translating his book into 
English.  We also have made arrangements for "Powerful ideas in the 
Classroom" to be translated into Japanese so that it may be used as 
part of the schools program there.

We visited Horikawa High School where students presented their 
curriculum (in a Squeak-based presentation) and a few Etoys they had 
created.  I've attached 2 more pictures showing student sharing here.

The Etoy in the picture was created by a young lady to help people 
learn about how Japanese live and their culture.  Her butterfly is 
animated and controlled with a joystick. As the butterfly is flown 
around the house, messages are revealed to describe parts of the 
room, such as the "tokonoma" or niche that holds the scroll and the 
ikebana -- the flower arrangement.  Visually, it is one of the most 
beautiful etoys I've seen.

We'll return to Japan at the end of January for curriculum 
development meetings and a more technical conference called "C5" -- a 
Conference on Creating, Connecting and Collaborating through 
Computing with not only contributors from Japan, but other parts of 
Asia.  We hope to have some of our Asian colleagues come to the next 
U.S. SqueakFest in 2004.

We'll put more text and picutres on the Squeakland site soon.  In the 
meantime,  I hope everyone is well and enjoying the fall.  Please let 
us know what you are up to and share your or your students' projects!
cheers,
Kim
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