[squeakland] World menu

[mokurai at earthtreasury.org]

On Sat, September 8, 2012 12:32 pm, K. K. Subramaniam wrote:
> 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.

I see that there are additional tiles in the gold box on each script
window toolbar, and in menus accessible by clicking on arithmetic and
other math functions within scripts.

>> 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.

We need to provide for schoolchildren who have no access to human guides.
In fact, we need to provide for children who have no access to schools.
OLPC is conducting an experiment with XOs in villages without schools,
without even a single literate adult. The children are learning a lot of
computer skills, and are learning the alphabet. The next step should be
Same-Language-Subtitling (as in India) with text-to-speech in local
languages.

> Later, kids can ease into Smalltalk code right within Etoys
> (like Bert does in his projects in the Showcase ;-)).

Yes, I see that one can call up the Squeak development tools using
keyboard shortcuts, and that one can get the text of any tile-based Etoys
script.

> HTH .. Subbu

-- 
Edward Mokurai
(默雷/निशब्दगर्ज/نشبدگرج)
Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks