Large attendance, and many different Squeak and Etoys presentations and 
activities, that's great to hear, thanks for sharing!


On August 3, 2009, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
> Forwarding a message from Marta, member of Squeakland's education
> team, who organized an awesome Squeakfest in Porto Alegre last week.
>
> - Bert -
>
> ------------------------------
>
> From: "Marta Voelcker" <marta at pensamentodigital.org.br>
> Date: 3. August 2009 00:45:30 MESZ
> To: <squeakland at squeakland.org>
> Subject: [squeakland] Hello from Porto Alegre
>
> Hello,
>
> I would like to thank the Etoys team that came to Porto Alegre and
> have joined us at Squeakfest Brasil and World Conference on Computers
> in Education www.wcee2009.org
>
>  From July 23 to 25th we had around 300 people attending Sqeuakfest
> Brasil at UFRGS Porto Alegre.  The conference was held in an
> auditorium for 250 people and 3 rooms ( located near the auditorium)
> each room with 20 laptops each. Hands on workshops on these rooms were
> always crowded. Colleagues from our local  research group, Teachers
> from Uruguay, Kathleen Harness, Kathleen Smith and Avigail Snir ( from
> Etoys Illinois) and Randall Caton and children form Luciana de Abreu
> School, have conducted hands on workshops. One of the rooms had focus
> for developers ( since most attendees were educators), there Yoshiki,
> Scott Wallace, Alex Warth, Bert and Rita Freudenberg, plus Gonzalo
> Sabala ( Argentina) and Jecel ( Brasil) conducted activities for
> developers or activities related to robotics.
>
> On the main room there was several kinds of presentations, from a PhD
> Thesis (Edson Lindner) to high school student sharing their experiences.
> Local reports like Sdenka Salas Pilco from Peru, and many friends from
> Uruguay where great! Lea Fagundes pleased us with a great presentation
> “Why powerful ideas?” and ended the conference with many plans to
> disseminate the one to one modality among the more than 20
> municipalities attending the conference.
>
> The Squeakfest had a great and  friendly atmosphere. This was the
> first time that I organized a conference like this, I could be
> nervous, but I had the constant feeling that I was among friends!
> I look forward to lead the organization of  the second Squeakfest
> Brasil for July 2010!
>
>  From July 27th to 31st I, Tim, Rita, Bert, Scott, Yoshiki, Alex
> Warth, Kathleen Harness, Kathleen Smith, Avigail Snir attended WCCE in
> Bento Gonçalves, a city near Porto Alegre. There, we have interacted
> with many other researchers and students working in different areas on
> ICT for Education. We  conducted a Workshop and a Panel about Squeak
> Etoys.
>
> Well,  two weeks ago few people in Brasil new about squeak etoys.
> Now we end the week with a new mailing list America-latina at squeakland.org
>   with more than 230 participants and many plans for this new local
> community, for that and for your friendship and support  I want to say
> thank you for all those that came to  Proto Alegre, and for those that
> couldn´t come, you can start planning for 2010 J, cause we are
> certainly going to   gather again!
>
> Kind regards
>   and a I wish you a great Squeakfest in Los Angeles,
>
>
> Marta
>
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