[squeakland] World menu

[K. K. Subramaniam]

On Friday 07 Sep 2012 9:47:23 PM mokurai at earthtreasury.org wrote:
> Apparently I now know how to apply all that I know of Squeak (not a lot,
> but increasing) within Etoys, by bringing up menus that allow me to bring
> up everything else.
Etoys is a visual scripting layer built on top of Squeak. You enter it by 
pressing the "eye" halo icon. This will bring up a vertical "chest of drawers" 
containing scripting tiles that can be dragged onto the work area to assemble 
a script. The tiles are a veneer over Smalltalk (you can get to the underlying 
text through a menu item from the "gold box" along the top of the script 
window.
 
> Is there a design document for Etoys explaining what its intention is? Am
> I right in thinking that it is meant to provide a greatly restricted
> programming environment on the surface, where only a few Squeak/Smalltalk
> objects and methods are available without going behind the scenes, chosen
> for younger children?
See under Resources in squeakland.org site. Particularly Alan Kay's articles 
and the book "Powerful Ideas in the Classroom". Etoys is also covered heavily 
in "Squeakers DVD" in A/V. It is a summary of the various ideas presented in 
these articles.

Etoys is meant for middle-schoolers to explore [computable] ideas without 
preconceived notions. However, it does have a higher "floor" compared to 
Scratch. Learning is faster if there is someone to guide over the shoulder in 
the beginning. Later, kids can ease into Smalltalk code right within Etoys 
(like Bert does in his projects in the Showcase ;-)).

HTH .. Subbu