[Edu-sig] Shuttleworth Summit

[francois schnell]

<Some informations about E-Toys>

While reading the thread I realised that maybe some of you don't have a
clear idea of what a Squeak E-Toy is (obviously there is the official
http://www.squeakland.org/  for that)

But if you only have five minutes, and want to see an example "was live",  I
did a "draft screencast" 2 years ago (when I discovered Squeak/E-Toys). It
shows in 5 minutes how to create 2 D objects and visually make a little
script to teach an animal "bug" to find his way out of a maze.

The screencast is not a slick "production" (it was a quick test, bad
english, 2 years ago, not very fluid,  etc) but It should give you a quick
idea if you're not familiar with E-Toys :

http://francois.schnell.free.fr/bazar/squeak/Etoys_lab_demo_GB/EToys_lab-demo_GB.htm

Since I didn't show it on the screencast I also wanted to mention that on
the head of each script there is a little square (right of (!)(O)). When you
click on it you switch from the visual tile presentation of the script to
its plain code (here smalltalk under the hood), code that you can also
change if you want (it also allows you to do more complex things than just
with "tiles").

This little square was helpful for me to learn some smalltalk without
actually knowing  first any syntax. I also think this kind of behaviour
(visual-tiles/objects/UI and possibility to see what's under) is valuable
for kids when they grow older to program a 'normal' Python script in a
'normal' environment (helpful for the transition  for the age 11-14 to 15-18
in the possible curriculum I believe).


francois

On 21/04/06, kirby urner <kirby.urner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I ran my slides for the London Knowledge Lab from within Pygame, which
> allowed me to feature scrolling, bouncing, slides-within-slides, and
> audio/video clip playing (plus there's a swooshing noise when I go
> from slide to slide).
>
> That's all very fun, but it's not anything like the Squeak experience
> (wasn't supposed to be).
>
> I did it to avoid using PowerPoint on Windows @ OSCON, a fate worse
> than death.  Since then, I've had a few gigs where the same source
> code proved useful.
>
> I'd more like a stable of laptops though, so I could bring the right
> distro of the right OS to the right meeting, at least more often than
> not.
>
> Kirby
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