Hello,
I would like to thank the Etoys team that came to Porto Alegre and have joined us at Squeakfest Brasil and World Conference on Computers in Education www.wcee2009.org
From July 23 to 25th we had around 300 people attending Sqeuakfest Brasil at
UFRGS Porto Alegre. The conference was held in an auditorium for 250 people and 3 rooms ( located near the auditorium) each room with 20 laptops each. Hands on workshops on these rooms were always crowded. Colleagues from our local research group, Teachers from Uruguay, Kathleen Harness, Kathleen Smith and Avigail Snir ( from Etoys Illinois) and Randall Caton and children form Luciana de Abreu School, have conducted hands on workshops. One of the rooms had focus for developers ( since most attendees were educators), there Yoshiki, Scott Wallace, Alex Warth, Bert and Rita Freudenberg, plus Gonzalo Sabala ( Argentina) and Jecel ( Brasil) conducted activities for developers or activities related to robotics.
On the main room there was several kinds of presentations, from a PhD Thesis (Edson Lindner) to high school student sharing their experiences.
Local reports like Sdenka Salas Pilco from Peru, and many friends from Uruguay where great! Lea Fagundes pleased us with a great presentation Why powerful ideas? and ended the conference with many plans to disseminate the one to one modality among the more than 20 municipalities attending the conference.
The Squeakfest had a great and friendly atmosphere. This was the first time that I organized a conference like this, I could be nervous, but I had the constant feeling that I was among friends!
I look forward to lead the organization of the second Squeakfest Brasil for July 2010!
From July 27th to 31st I, Tim, Rita, Bert, Scott, Yoshiki, Alex Warth,
Kathleen Harness, Kathleen Smith, Avigail Snir attended WCCE in Bento Gonçalves, a city near Porto Alegre. There, we have interacted with many other researchers and students working in different areas on ICT for Education. We conducted a Workshop and a Panel about Squeak Etoys.
Well, two weeks ago few people in Brasil new about squeak etoys.
Now we end the week with a new mailing list America-latina@squeakland.org with more than 230 participants and many plans for this new local community, for that and for your friendship and support I want to say thank you for all those that came to Proto Alegre, and for those that couldn´t come, you can start planning for 2010 J, cause we are certainly going to gather again!
Kind regards
and a I wish you a great Squeakfest in Los Angeles,
Marta