Kim,

I marked your messge last week thinking I should comment on my experience using Squeak for couple of months with my 12 years old kids ( 2 months elapsed, not man-months : it really was about 10 full days for me and 3 days or so working with my girls in Squeak ).

As you see, we have not used Squeak all that much but there are things where Squeak makes for great fun and learning, there are others where it gets frustrating and/or where I would like it to work differently. Let me talk briefly about both, but I guess you'd like to hear more about where it may get frustrating so I will concentrate on that.

First, I have been searching for a long time for a tool to teach kids working with computers and program in some sort of visual and interactive ways. I don't really know why, I am a developer, not educator, but perhaps there is a piece of an educator in my blood :) I tried Python, Tcl, Beanshell (sort of a interpretted Java) but always figured if I cannot "get it" in a few days, kids cannot either, Squeak was the first environment that does fit the bill, in fact is way more beautiful that what I thought I'd find...

Having found Squeak late this summer(actually I was on a squeak list some 4 years ago but unsubscribed before my holiday and never had time to get back) I started playing with it and after a few days of searching for interesting mini-projects" to do, my girls and I got together and found notes from a school in the Toronto area who worked with Squeak, got some ideas from their web site a built 2 "games" (An Aquarium Screen Saver and a Earth circling Sun). It was I must say a great experience and I was surprised how quickly my girls picked it up and were able to build simple scripts for moving this fish around! Of course the biggest fun was the Paint, but that was expected :-) There were things that were really hard to figure out but considering we did not use any book just the Squeak sites and Google, it went reasonably well, I cannot imaging any other environment where one could built this sort of application. As well, I appreciate that Squeak teaches naturally an an "Everything is an Object" approach.

A few days later one of the girls started to do things on her own, mostly painting, "building an office" etc. This included getting images from the internet, she wanted to do her "Poem presentation" in Squeak etc.

This is where we hit more of the things that are frustrating, in essence it seems that Squeak does not "play well" with the rest of the applications, is inconsistent often withing iteslf and completely differnt from "usual" applications. In Konqueror, Jacqueline found some images on the internet and wanted to repaint / manipulate them in Squeak. How to do it? One cannot do "Open Image from the OS File Manager" (actually we can now, with squeak developers help but that's not built-in). In Squeak, one can use "Find" .. OK but how ... hold mouse down for a few seconds ... then find the file and click on it , followed by CTRL-LEFT-CLICK. This is a hugely complex way to open a file, unlike anything else, even in Squeak as in other places one can get "application menu" by doing CTRL-Right-Click, yet other places can use Escape (Workspace) etc. (This is on Linux but I assume Squeak navigation/menu is "equivalently complex" on other OSes.) The other problem is that the menus mix actions that could be considered "application actions" with "development actions" - for example Workspace has "find text" and "inspect it" in the same menu. This adds to the confusion, things like that should be separated in submenus.

Other problem was to create and print Jacqueline's nicely looking "Poem Presentation", we did not yet found a way to make and print it (the print part may be Linux-only, perhaps it works on other OSes).

Basically, navigating through the mutlitude on ways of how to get a Menu of "What can I do here" and the complexity of it and multitude of ways of how to do it, is still the single most frustrating thing for my kids (and me as well). we lost pieces of our work on occations because of the compexity

By the age of 12, even without doing anything at home, schools teach kids how to use applications, yes, they brainwash them with MS applications (at least around here) the kids can basically use a word processor, spreadsheet, browser, File Manager and make reasonable sense out of the basic Navigation and inter-application operations. It seems to me that a basic "Navigation Paradigm" has standartized on Windows, Linux (both KDE and Gnome) by now is based on the following (from the little I know about mac it's similar):

#1) Files can be browsed using Tree-based File manager and opened in a "matching" application by clicking or d-clicking on them. #2) File Properties, Type, Applications that can Open the file etc are available on r-click. #3) Once Opened, applications have menus which "top level" is available without a specific action (click etc) #4) Menus make reasonable good job on organizing available actions. #5) Applications can exchange text, images etc by a) "copy/paste" b) Saving it as a file in filesystem and open it in other app using File Manager from #1

It seems to me that Squeak is breaking this paradigm on all counts and it sometimes is confusing to (my) kids (and to me). I am not saying this is always a "Bad thing" and I don't know how much of it is intentional. In some cases, that may be a "good thing" (such as ability to display Project trees in more graphical way) but in many cases it seems quite unnatural. As well, I am not saying Squeak is inconsistent within itself (apart from confusing menus etc) but on the "contact points" with the Operating System, it should do a better job. Examples: - Open a file in Squeak directly from OS File Manager - Any time a file is read or written in Squeak, a Tree-Based "File Open" dialog should be offered (e.g. New Morph-->From a File can read from one directory and it's not clear at all what that directory is, takes a while to figure out :-( ) - copy/paste from OS buffer does not work (this may be Linux only)

Well, this is longer than it's worth ... but I thought I should give some feedback and it's more valuable to talk about things which are not so great (in my opinion) ... in closing I'd like to say, Thanks for Squeak !

Milan

On November 9, 2003 09:37 am, Kim Rose wrote:

Dear Marsha,

I want to thank you for taking the time and courage to write to us. Your feedback is most important to those of us at Viewpoints Research/"Squeak Central/Squeakland" and to your fellow teachers who are also exploring Squeak and participating on this mailing list. Without reports such as yours it is impossible for us to know what is happening in classrooms, computing centers, etc. around the world. We only have a vague sense of who is using Squeak, which is a strange phenomenon given the way people can get Squeak off the web and then use it quietly, or with more communication.

In case you don't know who I am, I have spent several years developing and testing Squeak-based curriculum in classrooms -- most of the "real time" has been spent in Los Angeles public schools. I have been working most closely with BJ Allen-Conn a 4th and 5th grade teacher at the Open Charter School. BJ and I have shared both the pleasure and pain that you have experience. The victories send you home believing that our world has a positive future in the hands of our children, and the frustrations make you wonder if the time and effort are worth it. From my experience (I've been working in this area with Alan Kay for 17 years now) it *is* worth it, but the kids' tears are tough to take. Thank goodness, this part is occassional. (I tell myself the same frustrations occur to learners attempting to learn a musical instrument or new language, however, the instrument itself should not break!)

When this scenario happens to me, I remind myself that what I am doing is *research* and forging new territory in creating new tools for learning. In the classrooms I've been involved in using Squeak we have let the kids know that they are part of something new, an experimental program and something that is not yet a "product". When the kids hear this and also learn that their reports, remarks, feedback are taken to the designers, developers and engineers they are generally entusiastic and delighted to participate in the creation and change. In the first years of the Etoy system's development we would often make changes in user interface and functionality based on teacher and student feedback. When the teachers/students saw those changes materialize a short time after making the recommendation they felt a great reward and pride in participating.

Here is some concrete info on how you can help.... What will help the developers greatly is if you, and others reading this mail (which is why I chose to send my reply to the group and not just Marsha) will do this:

When you have a problem, please let us know! Unless people make reports we believe things are going well. Please don't continue to be frustrated and feel alone. Although we are geographically separated, we can use this list and direct email to help, troubleshoot. and hopefully solve the problem or change the system to improve it. Using this mailing list can help identify colleagues in your area. Recently, a group of "New York City Squeakers" decided to meet face to face in a user group meeting. This will get people together to exchange and share project ideas, problems, victories and defeats.

When reporting a problem, please let us know what computer platform you are using -- there are so many possibilities today, it is important for us to know and we are trying to make Squeak work on each and every one but there are differences...if it is Windows or Mac please let us know which version -- i.e., 2000, XP, home version, or Mac OS 9.xx, OSX...OSX.??

Also if you have problems installing, it is important for us to know which browser and browser version you are using.

Then, if you have a project which will not save or load or loads and appears "broken" or different from the previous time you loaded it, please send us mail and attach the project (the .pr file). Look into your "My Squeak" folder to see if there is a "Debug Log" file with the time and date that you tried to save the project and send us that text file as well. This will give us specific information to evaluate. Withouth these specifics we are rather helpless.

Also, be sure you are using the latest version of Squeak and have it fully updated. We just posted an announcement of new installers which are now available via Squeakland.org. To get this version you must do a new installation of Squeak from our website. This install will also give you a new "VM" (Virtual machine) which is needed to run the application. Then, it's always a good idea to check for updates now and again. (When we issue something significant we send mail to the list but sometimes small updates are issued via the website). To get updates go to Squeakland.org and on the homepage you can "Get Squeak Updates" from the "Download Squeak" button in the center of the page.

I am curious, Marsha, to learn more about you and your students -- where are you? What age students are you working with?

We want to support you as we have been with others who have been courageous enough to try something new, and changing. I hope you will continue to use Squeak and to help us by creating new project ideas, sending us feedback so that we might continue to change and improve it, etc. Last summer about 50 "Squeakers" gathered from around the country and Canada for a 2 1/12 day "SquaekFest" in Chicago. This was successful for a number of reasons...to meet, to share, to build community, etc. We are planning a SqueakFest for summer 2004...details will be coming. I hope you might be able to join us.

Thank you again for being part of this beginning (including the growing pains). We are encouraging the use of the system to gather useful experiences (including bugs) and to provide perspective-changing experiences for endusers like you. Please continue to correspond with us, share ideas and problems and be part of our great adventure.

regards, Kim

...

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

_