squeakland November 2003

squeakland@lists.squeakfoundation.org

18 participants
15 discussions

Squeak For a First Grader?
by Dave Lowry 09 Dec '03

09 Dec '03

I'd like to introduce Squeak to my six-year-old. She reads very well and enjoys mathematics games. We tried the "drive the car" activity, but the allure of controlling the car wasn't there; it was just as much fun to just use the paint tool. Could anyone suggest another activity we might try? Is six too young to Squeak? Thanks. -Dave

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Squeak For a First Grader?
by Dave Lowry 09 Dec '03

09 Dec '03

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[Squeakland] Crazy idea inspired by Leapster Multimedia Learning System
by Dave Bauer 08 Dec '03

08 Dec '03

I recently saw the Leapster handheld product from LeapFrog. I found out it runs Macromedia Flash. I had a brainstorm. What would be ideal is a similar device running Squeak. Kids could plan games on it, and if they wanted learn how the games worked and write their own. It might not be realistic but it is a fun dream. -- Dave Bauer dave(a)thedesignexperience.org http://www.thedesignexperience.org

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Promoting Squeak in NYC
by Charles A. Monteiro 29 Nov '03

29 Nov '03

Hi Squeakers, First of all pardon me if this is a second posting. Please see below: NYC Smalltalk will host a viewing of the "Squeakers DVD" which will be followed by a discussion of Squeak in an educational context and what needs to be done to expand its use in the NYC schools. I mention "expand" because there are already a couple pilots that I know of. Details: Date: Dec 3rd, 2003 Location: Suite LLC offices Address: 440 9th Avenue, 8th Floor Time: 6:30pm to 7:00pm -- Open house 7:00to 8:30 pm -- "Squeakers" the documentary. Directions: Take E or C train to 34th (Penn Station) walk to corner of 34th and 8th. Walk up one block to 9th. RSVP is requested. Please send mail to: charles@o... with subject line of: NYC Smalltalk Dec 3rd, 2003 Our meetings are opened to the general public. Invite a friend ! To join our mailing list simply send mail to: nycsmalltalk-subscribe(a)yahoogroups.com Joining our list will give members access to all of the presentations and articles maintained on our site. Any questions send mail to: charles@o... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ------ I will announce this later on comp.lang.smalltalk, our Yahoo groups list and on the SqueakLand mailing list. Hope to see all you there, Charles --- End forwarded message ---

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[Squeakland] E3 To Host "The Education Arcade" in L.A. - a three-day conference focusing on games in education
by Darius Clarke 25 Nov '03

25 Nov '03

This was recently in the news: _____________ E3 To Host "The Education Arcade" Representatives from MIT Comparative Media Studies and the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) today announced the launch of a three-day conference focusing on games in education, as part of The Education Arcade initiative. The new conference will offer discussion of key issues and emerging trends in the development, use, and marketing potential of games in education. The event will be held May 9th to 11th at the 2004 E3 in Los Angeles, prior to the opening of the Expo show floor, and will be open to the public. Further details can be found at the following website: http://www.educationarcade.org ___ (I realize "games" has a bad connotation in the education community. Perhaps these researchers mean "2D & 3D simulations & modeling that are both fun and constructivist".) Anyone thinking they might go? __________ Also here's an interesting article about savants in Wired: "Autistic savants are born with miswired neurons -- and extraordinary gifts. Now researchers are using breakthrough science to expand our understanding of the brain. By Wired magazine's Steve Silberman." http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.12/genius.html This suggests to me that Squeak might help the autistic - being that it can easily link music, sound, and math together. Also seems to suggest that linear or tabular GUI would be better than a Morphic one for them. ___________ Also: Cover article in Technology & Learning Magazine: - Top 10 Innovative Projects - "We profile 10 projects that combine collaboration, critical thinking, global implications, in-depth investigations, and a very high student motivation factor." http://www.techlearning.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=16000694 ___ This article might suggest to us ways Squeak can be use for in-class projects. Cheers, Darius

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Looking for Squeaker Sites
by Miguel At Squeakland 22 Nov '03

22 Nov '03

Greetings, The crew here at Squeakland.org is looking for Squeak related sites to add to our ever expanding Links page. Do you have a site with great Squeak stuff on it? Do you know of a site with Squeak projects, tips and information? Send the URL to miguel(a)squeakland.org and we will see about adding it to our links page. Thanks in advance for your help! All the best, Miguel Perez "Squeak - The tool for inventing the future!" http://www.squeakland.org

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[ANN] New updates and installers
by Michael Rueger 20 Nov '03

20 Nov '03

Dear Squeaklanders, a few minutes ago I released a few more updates and installers for Mac OS X on squeakland. The updates include yet another fix for the publishing problems and an improved way to report errors. The error notifier now has a button "Store Error Report" which generates a files containing information about the problem. Please send these reports to us as they are of great help in tracking down and fixing bugs! You can fetch the updates by pointing your browser to http://www.squeakland.org/project.jsp?/projects/EToy-Template.001.pr We recommend that Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) users download and run the new installers, as they also include a new VM. Cheers Michael

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Thank you to all who have gone before
by RATZEL, MARSHA 17 Nov '03

17 Nov '03

It is with much hesitation that I write this, but also with great excitement. I learned about Squeak this summer and then took the plunge with my students the past few weeks in experimenting with it. We have experienced everything possible....from excitement to frustration. My students have been so enchanted that they have gone home, downloaded it and played with it and come in and chattered away with what they figured out on their own...and then showed all of us what they learned. Does it get any better than that? Don't think so. We've worked to learn how to build scripts, tests, paint, and on and on and on. We've tried almost all of the different green tiles and tried to see what they do....almost like the old math guess and check method. Then we wrote down what they did. Pretty crude but we didn't know how else to attack it and it sort of worked. Then we just jumped in and figured out which ones we could use to do the things we wanted to do to build the animations the kids wanted to create. Barbie cars at the beach, rocket ships, Sonic the hedgehog, skateboarders, and on and on. We had a gallery showing today and they pretty much worked and we called it good. Yet, it is so frustrating at the same time. There isn't enough places to go to learn what to do and how to fix stuff. And we've had tears when we've lost stuff or they've been so frustrated that they just gave up. One of my skateboarder kids just freaked and quit. Hopefully he'll try again but I just didn't know what to do to help him anymore than I did. But I count it all a victory because this Squeak is very cool and engages them like I haven't seen anything else do. I am working so hard at getting one of our math teachers to let me integrate this into one of the modules they have. I'm experimenting at home in my spare time and if I can come up with something, I think she'll be up for it. Because I think the real excitement of this is really out in the math or science classroom instead of just in my animations....although they are great fun. All of you who write on this list do things I don't understand.....that's OK because someday I will. I thank you for having something like this for teachers like me who want to learn and having a place just to listen in on those of you who do get it. And I wanted to share our small victory with you because it is inspired by what you write and I read. So thank you. marsha ratzel

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http://people.squeakfoundation.org/ - an invitation
by Cees de Groot 14 Nov '03

14 Nov '03

Dear Squeakers, Over the last couple of days, I have been busy setting up a new community site for Squeakers. It is based on the Advogato website (http://www.advogato.org/) and uses a web-of-trust metric that helps establishing a safe environment of sorts (probably bad wording, but to explain the full deal is a bit too much in this context - browse around on both sites if you want to learn more). Basically it is a combination of a weblog site (users can keep diaries), Slashdot (people can post articles and others can comment on them), and a social charting system (because it enables you to see relations between people and what they're doing). The site went on-line last Wednesday night, and made a great start - we have over 50 people signed up and the number is steadily increasing. As the Squeak(-dev) and Squeakland communities often have little contact because of the differences in goals (Smalltalk hacking vs. education, if you'll allow me to put it like that), I thought it would be a good idea if people from the Squeakland community would join the site and start telling what they're up to. In my opinion, this could really help in creating more community sense between both groups. If you're interested, go to http://people.squeakfoundation.org/ and sniff around - and don't hesitate to ask me if you have any questions. Regards, Cees de Groot

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Installation Problem
by Carole Parker 12 Nov '03

12 Nov '03

I have an Apple G5 running 10.2.7. I also tend to default to Safari for web browsing. I successfully downloaded the appropriate Squeak package at squeak.org. It unpacked successfully, and everything is in one directory. When I tried to open Squeak on my machine, I got a black line expanding rectangle that does nothing. It looks like it is trying to start something but nothing obvious happens. * I checked the troubleshooting page on squeak.org, and it does not appear to be anything on that page. All the files seemed to unpack correctly. * I have tried double clicking on the Squeak image. * I have tried dragging and dropping onto Squeak, and that did not work, either. * I have verified that all the files are there and in one directory. * I have verified the plugins to the best of my ability. So, the question is, *why* can't I open Squeak? The squeak.org package said that it was Carbonized - which is to say that it should work in 10.X. Until later-- Carole Parker Senior Technical Writer

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squeakland November 2003