[Squeakland] musings

Mark Kesling mkesling1 at comcast.net
Thu Sep 1 08:55:53 PDT 2005


I just finished my first week with our entire first grade (60  
children) and have the following reflections to offer:

1. Alan and the team, Squeak works intuitively (not news to you) and  
I heard lots of "awesome" "cool" "bad".
2. A one-button mouse is by far easier with this age group. 10 out of  
the 12 macs have the normal one-button mac mouse and the others a  
three button one and they click accidentally and activate the halos  
which are confusing. This issue may only be of concern for really  
newbees because I am guessing they may want the functionality later  
as both their intellectual and fine motor skills develop.
3. Have you considered adapting to an easier icon-based navigation  
system for younger students?
4. The halo icons are too small for this group to hit easily.
5. I started by just letting them explore the drawing tools and they  
discovered really cool things to do with them. They got excited many  
times by doing something that some teachers might say was wrong from  
a following the rules perspective. These getting lost experiences  
always turned into exploration experiences and increased learning. As  
programmers you might think how this can be planned for and used to  
tall our advantage.
6. I will now move on to teaching them to move an object and to have  
more than one object on the screen.
7. Have you considered that Squeak helps with basic reading and  
language acquisition literacy with young children?

Enough for now. I'll post again after next week's adventures.

Mark


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