[Squeakland] Lack of documentation frustrating

[Brad Fuller]

Guyren Howe wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am volunteering at a local school, and will be doing squeakland  
> once a week with some fifth graders.
>
> Squeakland (etoys?) seems ideal for these kids, except that I'm  
> frustrated by the lack of documentation.
>
> I've spent ages looking through the website and searching online, and  
> I can't really find the kinds of things I'm looking for. I went  
> through some of the tutorials myself, and those will be great to get  
> started, but I would like to give the kids fairly free reign, and be  
> able to answer most of their questions. I tried to do some little  
> projects myself, but I kept coming up with seemingly simple things I  
> wanted to do, and not finding any obvious way to do them (or,  as I  
> say, any documentation suitable for answering the questions).
>
> For example: I wanted to make an etoy follow the mouse pointer  
> around. I can't see any way of even obtaining a reference to a mouse  
> object.
>
> I would also like to do loops and suchlike. Not obvious how to do that.
>
> I can see that if I can dive down into the smalltalk level, I could  
> do it, but this seems like the kind of thing that's probably at the  
> squeakland (etoy? What do I call the kids' environment?) level.
>
> But as I say, what I'm really looking for is not this particular  
> fish, but how to fish for myself.
>
> I would buy a book, but the one pointed at from the website appears  
> to just be a set of projects, rather than the kind of documentation  
> I'm looking for. Squeak: Learn Programming by Controlling Robots  
> looks like it might be sort of what I'm looking for, although I'm  
> interested in a broader range of Squeakland projects than just the  
> turtle graphics mentioned in the summary of the book.
>
> So: where is the documentation it seems ought to be there
try the book Powerful Ideas in the Classroom

http://www.amazon.com/Powerful-Ideas-Classroom-B-J-Allen/dp/0974313106/sr=8-1/qid=1162350766/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-7335726-6184028?ie=UTF8&s=books