some news

Alan Kay alan.kay at squeakland.org
Sat Apr 22 11:08:43 UTC 2006


I agree that content is really important, and even more so is mentoring. 
The language is less so providing it doesn't develop limited ideas (like 
BASIC did).

Squeak was 10 years ago to make a system for children, parents and teachers 
that could allow learning by doing, but also as a publishing and 
communications medium: specifically, the goal was to get 1000 pieces of 
21st century content out on the net in a form that would allow learning by 
doing and collaboration.

This didn't happen -- but I'm hoping it will, even 5 or more years late. It 
would be great if more people (programmers) were interested in the larger 
destinies of computing.

This is why it is not important whether it is Squeak or not. If the Python 
folks come up with the energy and will to do this, I will certainly help 
them. Surely, real progress is more important than taking one's identity 
from the low level language one programs in.

Cheers,

Alan

At 12:14 AM 4/22/2006, stéphane ducasse wrote:
>If you think about it the sad part is not really there.
>I do not believe that teaching etoy, logo, botsinc really help kids
>learning maths as with a teacher: They have fun, they are emerged
>into maths, they are not afraid which is already a lot.  Instead of
>investing in language people should invest
>in contents: the right exercise to teach the right concepts.
>Right now what you see (even if etoy) is that they are really few
>good material. I translated the book of Kim and some french teachers
>were happy and then asked the killing question: the start was fun so
>what where is the contents?
>Besides driving a car....(i pointed them to the graph basket ball
>thingies but this is not enough).
>So if Ubuntu people think that they can substitute the writing and
>development of a math curriculum, with
>a "come with me play stuff" developed in any language, this means
>that this is a view of programmer (bold of course and full of
>enthousiasm) and I wish them success, because I think that the
>contents in any format is more important.
>
>May living and being surrounded by teachers biaised my view of the
>world...





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