Donald,

This is a perfect question for the Squeakland mailing list.
You can sign up for that mailing list at www.squeakland.org.
Some of the folks on that list are teachers who have taught
Squeak to 5th-9th graders. (This list is also a good place to
ask, but some of the teachers don't read this list.)

I suspect that your students would get much more out of exploring
the EToy programming environment. If you aren't familiar with this
environment, its a way to program by dragging and dropping tiles
representing commands. A great starting place is the "Drive a Car"
tutorial available on the Squeakland site. The best way to run this
is to install the Squeak browser plugin. There are some errors in
the instructions, so I recommend working through it yourself before
trying it with the kids. One hint: be sure to go full-screen using the
"Escape browser" button; otherwise, certain things you need to click
will be off the screen.

I think your class will really love this environment. You can
do lots of interesting things such as turtle graphics, feedback
systems, gravity simulations, and simple games with very small
programs, and it allows you as the teacher to get the kids to
think about some big ideas.

Another source of projects would be some Mark's set of active essays
on computer music. These were aimed at college kids, but I think you
could pick out some of the basic ideas and do a lot of exploration--
if you're interested in sound and music.

	-- John




At 11:40 AM -0800 3/12/02, Donald MacQueen wrote:
>I am teaching Squeak to nine kids at my local school.  The students
>are three 8th graders and 6 7th graders.  We are using the book
>“Squeak – A Quick Trip to Objectland”.  We have classes once a
>week for an hour in the school computer lab, and have been meeting
>for just over a month.
>
>It is difficult to tell how things are going. I ask if they understand
>what’s going on and get blank looks.  I ask if anyone is completely
>lost and get the same look.  They all seem to like the Squeak
>environment, especially the music and games. My twelve year old
>daughter is in the class and she says she know what’s going on, but
>I don’t think she see any use in what she has learned.
>
>I think what is needed is some kind of project that would not only be
>‘cool’ but also teach them something.  We did John Maloney’s TestMorph
>tutorial and they thought the rainbow morph was ‘cool’ as it bounced up
>and down, but even something this simple was a bit over their heads at
>this point.
>
>I looked at doing Dan Shafer’s counter tutorial, but I think scripting
>would just confuse them right now.  I’d like to find some kind of project
>involving sound and animation that they could do without too much trouble.
>I thought about doing at tic-tac-toe game, but the graphics involved in
>displaying the board might be too hard.
>
>I’d appreciate any project ideas.  Thanks.
>-- 
>Donald                           
>
>Donald M. MacQueen
>Registered Smalltalk Bigot, [|]