RES: [Squeakland] Squeakfest 2009

[Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas]

Hi Martha

Marta Voelcker escribió:
>
> Randal, Jecel and all,
>
> June is also possible, but, I was thinking how Smalltalk Conference 
> and how FISL atmosphere relate to the Squeakfest that I had in mind 
> (similar to Chicago 2007)...
>
> I have limited experience, but the way I see things, the currently 
> biggest challenge for E-toys growth is not on its code, is not related 
> to software, but to teachers and schools reps. It is related to 
> communicating /what for,/ and /how to,/ use it inside schools.
>
> In this context, making a metaphor with sports, let's say... with NBA 
> - I see the developers/programmers as the wise and experienced 
> coaches, and I see the teachers as the players. They are those who 
> score, who make it happen inside the classroom - I would like to see 
> them becoming the stars, shining in this context!
>
> The name Squeakfest made history already, and so we plan to keep it, 
> but in fact, the idea is not about squeak-the programming language- 
> the idea is gathering together to share experience and plans about E-toys.
>
> Talking about e-toys I am particularly motivated about 2009 - the 
> landscape had never been so proper to make it growth. Taking growth as 
> explained by
>
> David Cavallo's in his paper - Models of growth — towards fundamental 
> change in learning environments - ... /as the terms replication and 
> scaling are themselves problematic and misleading. /I see 2009 proper 
> for growth because OLPC has already delivered XOs in schools in many 
> countries; technology price had go down also in developing countries… 
> But schools will need initiated teachers, teachers active in e-toys 
> community, to make it happen.
>
[...]
>
> Maybe, relating Squeakfest with a big software conferences might scare 
> teachers…
>
> In the other hand, making Squeakfest close to an IT for Education 
> conference (WCCE) is probably going to increase attendance of teachers 
> and people from education area.
>

Nice to hear about you and your views for the incoming Squeakfest. 
Talking about the Cavallo's article. His group also said that changes in 
macro scale require also (among other things):

* Materials: things that make easy the work with new paradigms (etoys 
and OLPC are two of them) and
* bottom up and emergent process
* Community and communication

So I think that Squeakfest has a lot of opportunity to take advantage of 
this things. I emphasize this three because with a little switch in 
Squeakfest they can help to create a more large scale changes:

* We need a more bottom-up spaces in the event. Of course workshops and 
usual conferences will be there, but I would propose something more 
emergent and bottom up. We have here in Colombia something called 
Educamp[1], the space and the dynamics emphasize the emergent process of 
knowledge building between participants. Other things like the world 
cafe work in the same vein

[1] http://educamp.wetpaint.com/
[2] http://www.theworldcafe.com/

We need also somekind of "Squeak cross-pollination" between Squeak and 
other communities. For me Squeak has somekind of natural way to 
construct a discourse about computers as cognitive artifacts. In some 
way things that you think for long time ago before knowing Squeak about 
what computers should be, are already there, but you find this a a lot 
of other interesting ideas in other communities. Recently I found the 
idea of a self-contained, elucidative system in Tiddlywiki. Would be 
nice to put this ideas and communities to chat and to stretch ties and 
talks between them.

There is any place for papers submisions or ideas about workshops? I 
will really like to present something this year also.

Cheers,

Offray