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Oscar,
My experience is not teaching Etoys speficically, in fact, our classes about Etoys is almost just one week of 16 (not all dedicated to just the programming part of "Introduction to Informatics"). We mix that with Scratch also (2 weeks) because is both are nice introductions to programming for people who come from different backgrounds and have different expertise (or none) with programming. Even the people who has programmed before find both things nice, but our primary mediation for "Smalltalk to teenagers" is Bots Inc., which is mainly focused on fundamental algorithmic concepts, but is also a nice introduction to Smalltalk. May be is not the same with students who come from a programming Olympiads because they have good algorithmic concepts, but anyway the idea of giving a intense workshop experience with aesthetic value and having them working on a project which can survive the day and half are the main concerns of my previous post, even if this seems like some kind of "Zen metaphorical advice" with not specific detail (well the details I gave are attached to a different context, so they're not applicable in your context).
So, to design the workshop I would wonder to myself:
* Which are the values I want to emphasize in the new aesthetic experience? (which are the differences I want my students to confront from the way of programming that they had previously?)
* How can I provide a project/problem to be solved/created that crystallize that values?
Hope this helps, in some way.
Cheers,
Offray
Oscar Nierstrasz wrote:
Hi again,
Is anyone on this list teaching Squeak *Smalltalk* to high school kids?
Sorry for not being more specific in my previous posting -- I did not realize that for many people, Squeak = eToys.
I realize the advantages of starting with eToys, but I will be dealing with a group of kids who have already seen some other programming languages. I was wondering if anyone has experience with getting kids quickly started with some simple but interesting Smalltalk stuff.
Thanks in advance, Oscar Nierstrasz
Prof. Dr. O. Nierstrasz -- Oscar.Nierstrasz@iam.unibe.ch Software Composition Group -- http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~scg University of Berne -- Tel/Fax +41 31 631.4618/3355 vcard: http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~oscar/oscarNierstrasz.vcf
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