I would like to announce here the Classroom package I have prepared to be used in Squeak 3.8. Maybe it should be announce in squeak-devel, but I have done it thinking in teaching, so I hope there will be here more people interested in it. First, I must say I know the constructivist teaching spirit that impulses Squeak use in education, and that I share most of its ideas. But, I also think that there are some things that can not be taught in that way. And, most important, I think that many teachers do want/need/desire are not going to use Squeak because they see it as too "radical" for them. Taking in mind all this preamble, I will introduce the Classroom package. I have developed it trying to learn smalltalk, as the beginning of two bigger projects that use these tools as a part of them. It is available in Squeak via SqueakMap Package Loader. Classroom has two parts: - Three kind of exercises generators (Matching pairs, Filling blanks and Quiz). These generators can import hotpotatoes (http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/halfbaked/) Match, Cloze and Quiz exercises. HotPotatoes is widely used in Spain, specially by foreign language teachers, so importing its exercises was an important feature for me. To use them you can evaluate: GeneradorParejas abrir GeneradorPreguntas abrir GeneradorHuecos abrir or if you want to see an example: GeneradorParejas ejemplo GeneradorPreguntas ejemplo
- A communication tool to be used in a networked classroom with computers at teacher and students desktops. To test it, at the teacher image you can evaluate "Profesor new openInWorld", a new "Teacher morph" will appear in the screen with the network teacher computer name (or network address if no name server is available) . Then, at student image, evaluating "Alumno nuevo" that network name or address will be asked. After keying it the teacher will see the list of the connected students in his morph. Now the teacher can drop any morph in his "Teacher morph" and it will appear automagically in the students image. I have tried to do this protocol as easy as possible. Teachers and students do not need to know anything about networks or ip addresses. I think this is the easiest way but, of course, if anybody has a better idea I will adopt it.
That's all. I am thinking to add another feature, the student could send something to the teacher, but I am not sure about the need of such thing.
Of course, the easiest way to use classroom will be adding its morphs to a flap or some button. Evaluating smalltalk code is not a good idea, but I think this is enough for testing this package. That's all, suggestions, critics and help are welcome. Regards.