I am teaching a Squeak class to gifted elementary students. They love it and are highly engaged in it; however I gathered a few problems that they seem to encounter while working on their projects.
* We installed Squeak on all our Dell computers in the lab last year. This year we updated the machines with the new version. The technician who made the updates did not notice that on some of the machines the updates did not execute well. I detected the same thing when I installed the update on my XP system. The prompt informs the user that an update is due and reports a successful update, but it never executes because when you check the supplies flap it contains the same old text object. At my house, on my Windows 2000 operating system the update performed well, while on another machine that has the XP operating system it didn't. As far as I know, all the machines at school have the same Windows 2000 operating system, yet not all updates performed well. * Students were complaining several times about objects disappearing from session to session. I was convinced that they forgot to publish and therefore could not account for some objects they created. However these complains kept repeating and from multiple sources. Finally, I experienced the same thing one time. I asked students to tally their objects before they publish and compare it to their project when they reopen them next time. Some kept missing objects, while others regained them. I am sure that there is something I don't know about how to reclaim objects that disappear. Please enlighten me. * Students save their projects using a certain name and each time they publish, Squeak adds a number to the name. Some students insist on keeping the original name and change it back. Does this have an effect on the project and is it O.K. to do. * What is the difference between creating a sibling and between copying an object to the buffer and pasting it from the buffer by activating the new morph command. I like to use the last one because it replicates the object with its scripts but the object has its own identity and cannot be confused with the other. Am I confused here, please let me know. I could not figure out yet how to utilize siblings. I will appreciate your help.
Thanks,
Miriam Bogler
squeakland@lists.squeakfoundation.org