I am planning an introductory course in Smalltalk for high school students. This will be starting from scratch; no previous programming experience required. The goal is to be able to create self-made personal software.
To this end I have been working through The Laser Game Tutorial and Squeak by Example. Neither seem right for beginners.
Can anyone recommend any other books or teaching materials? Maybe a successful syllabus?
Gary Dunn escreveu:
I am planning an introductory course in Smalltalk for high school students. This will be starting from scratch; no previous programming experience required. The goal is to be able to create self-made personal software.
To this end I have been working through The Laser Game Tutorial and Squeak by Example. Neither seem right for beginners.
Can anyone recommend any other books or teaching materials? Maybe a successful syllabus?
I know that there are some people from Spain with an extremely rich experience in this topic. People from Conselho de Extremadura and I guess some of them are present at this list.
Casimiro de Almeida Barreto a écrit :
Gary Dunn escreveu:
I am planning an introductory course in Smalltalk for high school students. This will be starting from scratch; no previous programming experience required. The goal is to be able to create self-made personal software.
To this end I have been working through The Laser Game Tutorial and Squeak by Example. Neither seem right for beginners.
Can anyone recommend any other books or teaching materials? Maybe a successful syllabus?
I know that there are some people from Spain with an extremely rich experience in this topic. People from Conselho de Extremadura and I guess some of them are present at this list.
Hello Gary
I think the Spanish friend of Extremadura are focusing on Etoys use.
What about using a dedicated Smalltalk environment to learn Smalltalk programming?
Come to my mind:
- BotsInc and the book Learning programming with robots? http://scg.unibe.ch/wiki/botsinc/
- Related to mathematics teaching in secondary education, DrGeo (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/DrGeo) is a Smalltalk environment for interactive geometry with dedicated programming facilities (scripting and programmed figure) See this example of Smalltalk scripting with DrGeo http://blog.ofset.org/hilaire/index.php?post/script-drgeo (a google translation link is provided at the end of the document)
DrGeo scripting is a very lovely way to introduce problem solving methodologies in a quite comfortable way. Well, I am a math teacher...
For a polished general introduction to DrGeo, read this English document http://blog.ofset.org/public/drgeo/drgeo-EsugAwards2008.pdf
Previous version of DrGeo was written in C++ with an embedded Scheme interpretor for scripting and user programming. Really the DrGeo Smalltalk version is much more user friendly when it comes to user programming, thanks to the Smalltalk IDE tools and image experience.
You are nice to your learner planing to use Smalltalk, a big boost in ease to learn programming.
Unfortunately, I have not yet re-written the companion book for DrGeo programming in Smalltalk. (A previous version in Spanish for the C++ version http://documentation.ofset.org/drgeo/es/drgenius.html)
Any organisation willing to support its rewrite?
Hilaire
On Saturday 30 May 2009 07:15:00 am Gary Dunn wrote:
Can anyone recommend any other books or teaching materials? Maybe a successful syllabus?
http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/5699 (Terse guide to Squeak) SmalltalkIntroduction project in Squeak 3.8.1 image (see example on a postcard page)
You could start with Etoys and introduce Text object for simple expressions. SimpleButtonMorph is handy for experimenting with simple methods (in text mode). As you advance, you can introduce etoyFriendly and simple menus options in preferences to get the full Smalltalk environment.
Subbu
Hi Gary,
We are developing a course in Squeak for absolute beginners / junior high / high school students here at the Hawthorne Center for Innovation in the L.A. Area. We just got the 1st 5 lessons onto a Live CD. Let's connect up.
Donna Schrokosch, Founder, Hawthorne Center for Innovation donna@hawcentwer.org
----- Original Message ----- From: "Gary Dunn" osp@aloha.com To: "Squeak-Dev List" squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Sent: Friday, May 29, 2009 6:45 PM Subject: [squeak-dev] Teaching Recommendations
I am planning an introductory course in Smalltalk for high school students. This will be starting from scratch; no previous programming experience required. The goal is to be able to create self-made personal software.
To this end I have been working through The Laser Game Tutorial and Squeak by Example. Neither seem right for beginners.
Can anyone recommend any other books or teaching materials? Maybe a successful syllabus?
Hello Gary, You may want to complement the usage of learning environments with some material or ideas from the David Taylor's "Object Technology" book (forget about the "Manager's Guide" part of the title, it is a good reading for everyone involved in object technology).
http://www.amazon.com/Object-Technology-Managers-David-Taylor/dp/0201309947/...
There is another useful lecture called "A Smalltalk for Students: A giant step to studentkind"
http://homepages.ecs.vuw.ac.nz/~tk/publications/papers/smalltalk.pdf
And a lot of resources for teaching, in the Pedagogical Patterns Project site here:
http://www.pedagogicalpatterns.org/
Finally, a "Recommendations for teachers" section is a must read, the paper is called "An effective approach to learning Object-Oriented" and it was written by two very experienced teachers in object technology:
http://www.lifia.info.unlp.edu.ar/~casco/papers/ecoop98.html
Cheers,
Hernán
2009/5/29 Gary Dunn osp@aloha.com:
I am planning an introductory course in Smalltalk for high school students. This will be starting from scratch; no previous programming experience required. The goal is to be able to create self-made personal software.
To this end I have been working through The Laser Game Tutorial and Squeak by Example. Neither seem right for beginners.
Can anyone recommend any other books or teaching materials? Maybe a successful syllabus?
Gary Dunn, Honolulu osp@aloha.com http://openslate.net/ http://e9erust.blogspot.com/ Sent from a Newton 2100 via Mail V
On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 9:45 PM, Gary Dunn osp@aloha.com wrote:
I am planning an introductory course in Smalltalk for high school students. This will be starting from scratch; no previous programming experience required. The goal is to be able to create self-made personal software.
To this end I have been working through The Laser Game Tutorial and Squeak by Example. Neither seem right for beginners.
Can anyone recommend any other books or teaching materials? Maybe a successful syllabus?
I also highly recommend "Learning programming with robots" http://scg.unibe.ch/wiki/botsinc/
Bill
squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org
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Bill Six -
Casimiro de Almeida Barreto -
donna＠hawcenter.org -
Gary Dunn -
Hernán Morales Durand -
Hilaire Fernandes -
K. K. Subramaniam