It is with much hesitation that I write this, but also with great excitement. I learned about Squeak this summer and then took the plunge with my students the past few weeks in experimenting with it. We have experienced everything possible....from excitement to frustration. My students have been so enchanted that they have gone home, downloaded it and played with it and come in and chattered away with what they figured out on their own...and then showed all of us what they learned. Does it get any better than that? Don't think so. We've worked to learn how to build scripts, tests, paint, and on and on and on. We've tried almost all of the different green tiles and tried to see what they do....almost like the old math guess and check method. Then we wrote down what they did. Pretty crude but we didn't know how else to attack it and it sort of worked. Then we just jumped in and figured out which ones we could use to do the things we wanted to do to build the animations the kids wanted to create. Barbie cars at the beach, rocket ships, Sonic the hedgehog, skateboarders, and on and on. We had a gallery showing today and they pretty much worked and we called it good.
Yet, it is so frustrating at the same time. There isn't enough places to go to learn what to do and how to fix stuff. And we've had tears when we've lost stuff or they've been so frustrated that they just gave up. One of my skateboarder kids just freaked and quit. Hopefully he'll try again but I just didn't know what to do to help him anymore than I did.
But I count it all a victory because this Squeak is very cool and engages them like I haven't seen anything else do. I am working so hard at getting one of our math teachers to let me integrate this into one of the modules they have. I'm experimenting at home in my spare time and if I can come up with something, I think she'll be up for it. Because I think the real excitement of this is really out in the math or science classroom instead of just in my animations....although they are great fun.
All of you who write on this list do things I don't understand.....that's OK because someday I will. I thank you for having something like this for teachers like me who want to learn and having a place just to listen in on those of you who do get it. And I wanted to share our small victory with you because it is inspired by what you write and I read. So thank you.
marsha ratzel