[ANN] Have fun programming with your kids

Hi

If you are a parent, an educator or a programmer having kids this is for
you! After 4 years of work, my new book "Squeak: Learn programming with
Robots" will be out soon
Have a look at: http://smallwiki.unibe.ch/botsinc/

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1590594916/qid=1117218524/
sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-5642974-5143261?v=glance&s=books

With Bots Inc you will learn how to program robots in an interactive
environment. Bots Inc proposes three teaching approaches: direct command
of robots, scripting robots and programming robots. The book contains 24
chapters going step by step over topics with a lot of examples. Bots Inc
is fun but it is not a toy, it teaches you 100% real programming in
Smalltalk: a pure object-oriented programming language that has been
copied by Java. Bots Inc is built on top of the rich open-source
multimedia Squeak environment that you can also discover.

My goal is to explain key elementary programming concepts (such as loops,
abstraction, composition, and conditionals) to novices of all ages. I
believe that learning by experimenting and solving problems with fun is
central to human knowledge acquisition. Therefore, I have presented
programming concepts through simple but not trivial problems such as
drawing golden rectangles or simulating animal behavior. The ideal
reader I have in mind is an individual who wants to have fun programming.
This person may be a teenager or an adult, a schoolteacher, or somebody
teaching programming to children in some other organization. Such an
individual does not have to be fluent in programming in any language. As
a father of two young boys I also wrote this book for all the parents
that want to have fun programming with their kids in a powerful
interactive environment. Programming in Smalltalk is an interactive, fun
but deep experience.

Testimonies

"I am using the version of the book on your web site to teach my oldest
daughter Becca some programming. She absolutely loves it. We are doing
the Bot graphics right. My other kids are showing interest as well. My
Fall semester schedule leaves me with almost no time free but in the
Spring I hope to bring Squeak and your book to our elementary school's
"gifted" program." C. David Shaffer

"I'm using the Bot Lab environment for three years and found it really
valuable in teaching computer science concepts for a young audience (and
even less young !). The bots commanded through balloon (as in comic
strips) is a very nice introduction for young children, and when this
aspect is well understood, you can use the Bot Workspace to teach the
notion of script, a first step in programming languages. The Micro
Browser allows children to add new behavior for their bots, and have fun
with their creation. This three-layers tool - Balloon, Micro Workspace,
Micro Browser - offers to the teacher a fun way to introduce gently the
basis of object-oriented programming concepts. With Bots Inc, learning
is playing ! ;-)" Samir Saidani - University of Caen - France

"I recently started a course with 7th-graders (age about 13 years) with
Stephane's book --- they love it. They all know about syntactic issues
from maths --- in a way they know that an expression in a formal
language must be well formed. So they easily grasp the fact such as
"there must be a colon after the message-name if an argument follows".
Of cause they don't really read the error-messages, they just see "there
must be some error" and they remember the simple rules. Don't
underestimate Smalltalk --- it's easy understandable because it has a
simple and straight-forward design." Klaus Fuller - Germany

Have fun...

Stef


http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/
 "if you knew today was your last day on earth, what would you
 do different? ...  especially if,  by doing something different,
 today might not be your last day on earth" Calvin&Hobbes

Hi Stef,

Congratulations! High time for a new Smalltalk book. I've very much
enjoyed the chapters you sent me before and even though I don't have
kids, I've got your book on order.

Regards,

Ted