[Squeakland] looking for some advice on teaching *Smalltalk* toadvanced high school kids

[Offray Vladimir Luna Cardenas]

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Oscar,

My experience is not teaching Etoys speficically, in fact, our classes
about Etoys is almost just one week of 16 (not all dedicated to just the
programming part of "Introduction to Informatics"). We mix that with
Scratch also (2 weeks) because is both are nice introductions to
programming for people who come from different backgrounds and have
different expertise (or none) with programming. Even the people who has
programmed before find both things nice, but our primary mediation for
"Smalltalk to teenagers" is Bots Inc., which is mainly focused on
fundamental algorithmic concepts, but is also a nice introduction to
Smalltalk. May be is not the same with students who come from a
programming Olympiads because they have good algorithmic concepts, but
anyway the idea of giving a intense workshop experience with aesthetic
value and having them working on a project which can survive the day and
half are the main concerns of my previous post, even if this seems like
some kind of "Zen metaphorical advice" with not specific detail (well
the details I gave are attached to a different context, so they're not
applicable in your context).

So, to design the workshop I would wonder to myself:

 * Which are the values I want to emphasize in the new aesthetic
experience? (which are the differences I want my students to confront
from the way of programming that they had previously?)

 * How can I provide a project/problem to be solved/created that
crystallize that values?

Hope this helps, in some way.

Cheers,

Offray


Oscar Nierstrasz wrote:
> 
> Hi again,
> 
> Is anyone on this list teaching Squeak *Smalltalk* to high school kids?
> 
> Sorry for not being more specific in my previous posting -- I did not
> realize that for many people, Squeak = eToys.
> 
> I realize the advantages of starting with eToys, but I will be dealing
> with a group of kids who have already seen some other programming
> languages.  I was wondering if anyone has experience with getting kids
> quickly started with some simple but interesting Smalltalk stuff.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Oscar Nierstrasz
> ---
> Prof. Dr. O. Nierstrasz    -- Oscar.Nierstrasz at iam.unibe.ch
> Software Composition Group -- http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~scg
> University of Berne        -- Tel/Fax +41 31 631.4618/3355
> vcard:  http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~oscar/oscarNierstrasz.vcf
> 
> 
> 
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