[Squeakland] Looking for good souls

stéphane ducasse ducasse at iam.unibe.ch
Tue Apr 25 14:44:20 UTC 2006


Hi offray

Excellent, I can help you.
	- videos: http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/Videos/
	- DVD: http://www.squeak.org/Download/SqueakDVD/
	- free Smalltalk books: http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/FreeBooks.html
	- my lectures
		http://prog2.vub.ac.be/smalltalk/news.php (we will be launching a  
new program soon so that all
		smalltalk teachers can share their lectures)
		You can find old slides in ppt at: http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/ 
Web/ArchivedLectures/

You have also
	http://smallwiki.unibe.ch/botsinc/

Stef

On 24 avr. 06, at 15:16, Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas wrote:

> Hi all,
>
>
>
> Markus Gaelli wrote:
>
>> Hi Stef,
>>
>> The squeakland website and image (both the image and the image)   
>> currently does not fit for tool building smalltalk learners. This  
>> is  correct.
>> Likewise the geeky and technical image of squeak-dev does not fit  
>> for  education of object oriented programmers nubs.
>>
>> Your tutorial in squeak 3.8 image helps here. Why should this not  
>> be  part of the squeakland-image?
>> Why shouldn't we have a button in the squeakland image which  
>> beams  the newbie over the fence into a good smalltalk teaching  
>> environment?
>>
>>
> I even didn't know the squeak-dev image, but this last question  
> seems a good one. Most of the time Squeak has been oriented toward  
> childs, and I mean, really young childs, so what about "a system  
> for children of all ages"?. I'm trying to use Squeak with a pretty  
> eclectic groups of students in university (the only thing they  
> share is that all them are pregrade students) and I come to squeak  
> after having  previous experience with Scheme and Python (that were  
> previous sucessfull experience with students with a more common  
> background and interest in "Computer Science", which I prefer to  
> call "Informatics"[1]). It was a pretty good thing to choose Squeak  
> this time, I'm proud of that choice and I will stick to it in the  
> future. This construction was not an easy one and is still being  
> made. We need more content that can be used for the students  
> profile I talked before, here in LatinAmerica, and we're trying to  
> produce a selection of lectures and in the end some kind of  
> original material.
>
> [1] http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/informatics.shtml
>
> Now we can even make a little exploration of E-toys, but my feeling  
> is that the time is comming when we need to start learnings and  
> asking questions about Smalltalk.
>
>> What I like about the french list, is that this distinction is not  
>> so  serious.
>>
>> I'd like to have one english speaking list about the use of  
>> Squeak  for and in education, and this would include both etoys  
>> and smalltalk.
>> And I suggested to use squeakland for this, as there are already  
>> lots  of good souls there, who do focus on education.
>> Actually I think that open minded future software engineers can  
>> learn  a lot from the etoys paradigm.
>>
>>
> I'm agree with this also. I think that both themes are not disjoint  
> and is a bridge for making "a system for children of all ages".  
> Sorry if this mail is taking too long, but I will try to talk more  
> about bridges and my previous experience teaching "Introduction to  
> Informatics" (anyway I read all of you a lot, so its time for  
> revenge :-P )
>
> In that course we try to make a first exploration of informatics  
> from the point of view of a "first in width" instead of the  
> classical one (at least here), the "first in depth" (you know, the  
> one where the students firs encounter with informatics is  
> procedural structured programming, in C/C++, then Object Oriented  
> Programming, In Java/.Net, then Data Base, etc... and in the end of  
> their career studies they come with some kind of revelation and  
> they join the pieces and say "Ohhh this is informatics"). In our  
> first in width approach we try to know something about story,  
> social context, subfields in a panoramic way and the course then  
> goes to programming (because they need to being motivated and  
> prepared about the "now in depth" approach of the following  
> courses). In my previous semesters I tried to follow the path  
> proposed by the people of Teach Scheme Project, about:
>
> 1) Keep away from Machine Details (C/C++ is not enougth far from a  
> beginer point of view in my student and teacher experience) and
>
> 2) Focus on correctness instead of eficiency (focus on program  
> desing).
>
> and they key was the K.I.S.S. principle (Keep It Simple  
> Sintactically). Was really nice to see all the class having their  
> first program working and understood. And the teach scheme project  
> has a emphasis on learned oriented programming environments, so was  
> nice to see programming seeing as a "liberal art" instead of  
> something teached for programers by programers (in the same way  
> that mathematics is not only for mathematicians). To make a long  
> story short, then I probed python because it maintain the same  
> K.I.S.S. principle and will be more like the program languages they  
> will find or have found in the rest of ther studies. That was nice  
> if all the people were students of informatics but...
>
> This semester I have and eclectic group (the course was made an  
> open one), people from biology, informatics, engeenering,  
> nutrition, some of them are just starting their studies, some of  
> them were finishing them... and scheme and python were not the  
> solution for that group. The programming environment was  
> "deprived"... was something like a "wordpad with sintactical  
> hightlighting"... their motivations where different, so I need to  
> appeal to a shared cultural background this time, and computers  
> where nice multimedia, connected, feature rich machine for them. In  
> that context Squek/Smalltalk was the answer. It provides a bridge  
> from computers in the world to computers in the classroom, and  
> different people were more motivated.
>
> Now we need to start to make bridges from computers in the classrom  
> to programming as a part of a scientific discipline and even part  
> of life, and young children materials are not filling the gap for  
> my students. We need to make a bridge between our classroom and  
> your community... that's the reason why I'm here and I hope you  
> help me.
>
>> I also made the experience that people learn Smalltalk much  
>> faster,  when they have been introduced to EToys first.
>>
>>
> Thanks for the advice. I will try to follow it, this week.
>
>> Finally I have the feeling that the lack of technical questions/   
>> discussions about Smalltalk on squeakland hindered the development  
>> of  EToys.
>>
>>
> I feel that few bridges between communities are making education a  
> mission impossible... but I have made a log mail already...
>
> Cheers,
>
> Offray
>
> -- 
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