Hi all,
Markus Gaelli wrote:
Hi Stef,
The squeakland website and image (both the image and the image) currently does not fit for tool building smalltalk learners. This is correct. Likewise the geeky and technical image of squeak-dev does not fit for education of object oriented programmers nubs.
Your tutorial in squeak 3.8 image helps here. Why should this not be part of the squeakland-image? Why shouldn't we have a button in the squeakland image which beams the newbie over the fence into a good smalltalk teaching environment?
I even didn't know the squeak-dev image, but this last question seems a good one. Most of the time Squeak has been oriented toward childs, and I mean, really young childs, so what about "a system for children of all ages"?. I'm trying to use Squeak with a pretty eclectic groups of students in university (the only thing they share is that all them are pregrade students) and I come to squeak after having previous experience with Scheme and Python (that were previous sucessfull experience with students with a more common background and interest in "Computer Science", which I prefer to call "Informatics"[1]). It was a pretty good thing to choose Squeak this time, I'm proud of that choice and I will stick to it in the future. This construction was not an easy one and is still being made. We need more content that can be used for the students profile I talked before, here in LatinAmerica, and we're trying to produce a selection of lectures and in the end some kind of original material.
[1] http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/informatics.shtml
Now we can even make a little exploration of E-toys, but my feeling is that the time is comming when we need to start learnings and asking questions about Smalltalk.
What I like about the french list, is that this distinction is not so serious.
I'd like to have one english speaking list about the use of Squeak for and in education, and this would include both etoys and smalltalk. And I suggested to use squeakland for this, as there are already lots of good souls there, who do focus on education. Actually I think that open minded future software engineers can learn a lot from the etoys paradigm.
I'm agree with this also. I think that both themes are not disjoint and is a bridge for making "a system for children of all ages". Sorry if this mail is taking too long, but I will try to talk more about bridges and my previous experience teaching "Introduction to Informatics" (anyway I read all of you a lot, so its time for revenge :-P )
In that course we try to make a first exploration of informatics from the point of view of a "first in width" instead of the classical one (at least here), the "first in depth" (you know, the one where the students firs encounter with informatics is procedural structured programming, in C/C++, then Object Oriented Programming, In Java/.Net, then Data Base, etc... and in the end of their career studies they come with some kind of revelation and they join the pieces and say "Ohhh this is informatics"). In our first in width approach we try to know something about story, social context, subfields in a panoramic way and the course then goes to programming (because they need to being motivated and prepared about the "now in depth" approach of the following courses). In my previous semesters I tried to follow the path proposed by the people of Teach Scheme Project, about:
1) Keep away from Machine Details (C/C++ is not enougth far from a beginer point of view in my student and teacher experience) and
2) Focus on correctness instead of eficiency (focus on program desing).
and they key was the K.I.S.S. principle (Keep It Simple Sintactically). Was really nice to see all the class having their first program working and understood. And the teach scheme project has a emphasis on learned oriented programming environments, so was nice to see programming seeing as a "liberal art" instead of something teached for programers by programers (in the same way that mathematics is not only for mathematicians). To make a long story short, then I probed python because it maintain the same K.I.S.S. principle and will be more like the program languages they will find or have found in the rest of ther studies. That was nice if all the people were students of informatics but...
This semester I have and eclectic group (the course was made an open one), people from biology, informatics, engeenering, nutrition, some of them are just starting their studies, some of them were finishing them... and scheme and python were not the solution for that group. The programming environment was "deprived"... was something like a "wordpad with sintactical hightlighting"... their motivations where different, so I need to appeal to a shared cultural background this time, and computers where nice multimedia, connected, feature rich machine for them. In that context Squek/Smalltalk was the answer. It provides a bridge from computers in the world to computers in the classroom, and different people were more motivated.
Now we need to start to make bridges from computers in the classrom to programming as a part of a scientific discipline and even part of life, and young children materials are not filling the gap for my students. We need to make a bridge between our classroom and your community... that's the reason why I'm here and I hope you help me.
I also made the experience that people learn Smalltalk much faster, when they have been introduced to EToys first.
Thanks for the advice. I will try to follow it, this week.
Finally I have the feeling that the lack of technical questions/ discussions about Smalltalk on squeakland hindered the development of EToys.
I feel that few bridges between communities are making education a mission impossible... but I have made a log mail already...
Cheers,
Offray