My name is BJ Conn and I teach 4th and 5th grade at the Open Charter School. I have had 2 years experience using Squeak in my class of 62 kids. I would suggest that you work with the kids in pairs as it is great when they can problem solve together. I have some activities you might be interested in, but one in particular that involves creating a car and programing the car to drive itself along a road, leads to the kids creating their own race car and racing against each other. It is really motivating for the kids and could be great for your age group as well.
At 4/19/2001 08:55 PM, Origbj@aol.com wrote:
My name is BJ Conn and I teach 4th and 5th grade at the Open Charter School. I have had 2 years experience using Squeak in my class of 62 kids.
It sounds like I found the right person who could help me start my teaching career with Squeak!
I would suggest that you work with the kids in pairs as it is great when they can problem solve together.
That feels right to me, based on my experience programming with others.
I have some activities you might be interested in, but one in particular that involves creating a car and programing the car to drive itself along a road, leads to the kids creating their own race car and racing against each other. It is really motivating for the kids and could be great for your age group as well.
I saw Alan demo Chyan & Janae's RoboCars during his recent keynote talk at Smalltalk Solutions. It looked like a fun project for the kids.
In addition to the activities, I was wondering what related concepts to present and how to best present them to children.
I'm trying to get a feel for what format would work well for a course offered in the summer, where kids have more time to spend thinking about new ideas but where people might be coming and going on vacation. Should I do a more intensive series over a two week period or perhaps once a week for four weeks? My wife, Susan, suggests that sessions should be no more than two hours in length.
How long are your Squeak sessions in your classes? Do single activities take more than one session to complete?
By the way, I'd like to explore the guided tour of the experience at the Open Charter School at http://squeakland.org/learn/elementary.html. Will this be available soon? Although many project links are active on that page, the guided tour is not yet active.
So BJ, how is the Elementary Squeaking textbook coming along? You are working on one, I hope! Can I see your rough draft? :-)
-Mark Schwenk WellThot Inc.
squeakland@lists.squeakfoundation.org