[Squeakland] Who is this list mainly intended for?

[Tim Andrews]

This list is intended for educators and students so you are in the right
place.  The squeak community does include many home schoolers as well.  As
far as your son's desire to learn C++, this is to be expected.  It is
unfortunate but the overwhelming culture around him (if he's over 10) will
see C++ - or really Java these days - as the cool thing.  I have had
experience as a language designer and I have a deep interest in education,
so I can state with some experience that C++ is not a particularly great
place to go.  As a parent I can also tell you that you will have to work
indirectly to get your child interested in alternatives.

One strategy I use with the kids I work with is to find something they are
really interested in doing (say creating and editing movies and sound and
pictures), then expose them to many environments such as flash, java,
Dreamweaver, Adobe Photoshop, Vegas Video, etc.  (most of these offer free
trial downloads for 30 days so you don't have to invest a lot of money to
gain some experience).  It's easier for kids (or anyone) to begin to
understand the differences between languages and construction/editing
environments when they have the broader perspective gained from using a few
different tools.  It's also much easier for them to gain appreciation for
the deeper principles that will enable them to make judgments when they are
embedded in a real practice doing something they are truly interested in.  I
find most kids go down programming ratholes because they are programming for
its own sake rather than to achieve some form of expression (as Lewis
Carroll said - "if you don't know where you're going, any road will do").
It's really not about OOP - that's not really the point.  OOP is just a
particular set of ideas about programming, but it's the means not the end,
and the best way to understand the means is working hard towards an end.

So find something he's really interested in and then get some help from this
list or elsewhere to see how squeak can be used to achieve that end.  Your
best bet is if he comes to the conclusion himself that squeak is much better
than the alternative (which is usually though not always the case).

Tim Andrews


-----Original Message-----
From: squeakland-bounces at squeakland.org
[mailto:squeakland-bounces at squeakland.org] On Behalf Of Shelagh Manton
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2004 12:00 AM
To: Squeakland
Subject: [Squeakland] Who is this list mainly intended for?

Hello,
I just joined this list today and have been briefly scanning old maessages 
(or aleast those from last month). Is this list for children using squeak, 
or for those who hope to help those learning squeak?

I am a home educating parent who stumbled across the concept of small talk 
in a throw out book from our local library. I was interested enough to 
search for it on google and came up with squeak eventually. My edest son 
has aspirations to learning C++. And I thought smalltalk sounded like a 
good place to get your head around the concept of Oops. We used to use 
MSWLogo, but while I liked it a lot, my son disdained it as being too 
uncool or maybe just not commercially relevant.

Hear form you soon, Shelagh

-- 

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