On Friday 07 Sep 2012 9:47:23 PM mokurai@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