Dear Harish,
Your contest sounds quite interesting -- thanks for sharing with the Squeakland community.
There are a few programs I can tell you about. You should know these used Squeak "Etoys" and not the more Smalltalk-like environment of "Squeak" -- so these children did their "programming" creating scripts and using the tiles found in the Etoy system. If you choose to use Etoys as part of your contest, we highly advise you to use the most recent version that can be downloaded from the Squeakland website now. This version is also compatible with the version children are using on the XO from olpc.
1) Hewlett Packard Japan started a program a few years ago called "HP Super Science Kids" -- this was a country-wide program in Japan that engaged children to participate by creating science-based Etoys and submit them for judging by a "distinguished panel". Winners shared their entries via public venues. Here is the official site of the Program -- but I am sorry it is in Japanese -- hopefully you can find someone to read/translate. http://www.supersciencekids.com/
2) The organization "Waveplace" recently conducted a contest too, focussing on storytelling, but several of the stories contain well- created scripts that could lead children to create more powerful simulations for science. Here is that website: http://www.waveplace.com/news/awards/
I hope others from the community will comment if they have had contests or experiences in this area as well. We would be most interested in seeing the projects created by your participants if/when they create them, so please do share with us! We'd also love a short article about your experience(s) for our email-newsletter.
Good luck with your program(s) -- regards, Kim Rose
--- Viewpoints Research is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to improving "powerful ideas education" for the world's children and advancing the state of systems research and personal computing. Please visit us online at www.vpri.org
On Nov 23, 2008, at 3:27 PM, Harish Pillay 9v1hp wrote:
Dear List -
Hi. I would like to reach out to all on this list to see how best I can run a programming contest for children 12 years and below.
I am on the organizing committee of a programming contest called code::XtremeApps. It comprises two categories - a Junior Category for those 12 and below, and an open category for everyone on the net.
We are going to run the 3rd iteration of the contest next year (you can see the 2008 details at http://www.itsc.org.sg/codeXtremeApps2008.html) .
For the 2009 run, I am planning on using Squeak for the junior cat - the 2008 contest used Alice. The contest is to be held in the June period (which is in the middle of school year here in Singapore).
I would appreciate pointers and suggestions on using squeak for programming contest and perhaps even lessons learned.
Thanks.
Harish Pillay h.pillay@ieee.org gpg id: 746809E3 fingerprint: F7F5 5CCD 25B9 FC25 303E 3DA2 0F80 27DB 7468 09E3
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