An opportunity to promote Squeak in Singapore

Hi.  I have been trying to find an avenue to help promote programming using
Squeak in Singapore and I think I now have an opportunity to do so.

I am part of the Singapore IT Standards Committee (www.itsc.org.sg) which
is the national body that looks are IT standards for the country.  Last year,
we hosted the ISO SC 22 (programming languages) committee meeting in
Singapore as part of that we ran a 24-hour programming contest.  It was a
great success and we have decided to run it again this year.

For 2008, we have added a category solely targeted at the 12 and under
age group and I am very keen on introducing Squeak into the picture.  The
other proposal we have is Alice.

I am looking for advise/help in the following areas:
a) a master trainer to train-the-trainer on Squeak.  I have not spent enough
time with Squeak to be a master and would love to get some instructor-led
(perhaps over the web) learning if that is what it would take.
b) suggestions on what kinds of contest we can run?  This would include
topics and problems to solve within a reasonable (3-4 hour) session especially
after the participants have been given some training.

We are looking at running the contest during the June timeframe which is
the school holidays period in Singapore.

Looking forward to suggestions.

Thanks.
--
Harish Pillay [hidden email] gpg id: 746809E3
fingerprint: F7F5 5CCD 25B9 FC25 303E 3DA2 0F80 27DB 7468 09E3

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> b) suggestions on what kinds of contest we can run?  This would include
> topics and problems to solve within a reasonable (3-4 hour) session
> especially
> after the participants have been given some training.

Look at http://www.acmi.net.au/screenit.htm and
http://www.acmi.net.au/screen_it.htm which had game programming categories
in Game Maker and Flash for primary and secondary students


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Hi Harish,

We've done two 3-4 hour Squeak-for-beginner sessions in Kathmandu
recently. There've been about 25-30 participants in each and from a
range of backgrounds (kids, teachers, programmers, our family members,
etc). Only a few of our participants have been under 12 (six of them
I'd estimate) and they've done at least as well as the adults. People
had a LOT of fun at the one last saturday.

The format is a computer lab where each student has their own computer
and the instructors share a machine that's hooked up to a projector.
We've had about five instructors each time: we take turns
demonstrating Squeak features on the projector and otherwise wander
around the room helping people out and answering questions.

The program we've used is based on the "drive a car" example from Alan
and Kim and we've found it very well matched to complete beginners.
Here's the agenda we used last saturday:

1. Introduction to Squeak (30 minutes). Demonstrate how to use
halos&handles and how to paint sketches. The students follow along and
have a 15 minute practice session to draw a car that they'll be
scripting.

2. Scripting (30 minutes). Introduce the concept of scripting and
build up to a car that can be driven. Usually we draw a steering wheel
and write a script that turns the car based on the wheel's heading.
It's also possible to e.g. have the car follow some object that you
can pick up with the mouse and other variations.

3. More advanced scripting (30 minutes). We create a simple car game
by drawing a racetrack on the background of the screen (painting a
curvy line with the largest brush setting) and adding some simple
scripts: (a) car moves fast on the road but slowly when off road
(introducing test/yes/no 'is over color' tiles), (b) car makes a
"brrrrbrbrbrbrr" sound when it's driving off the road (introducing
sound recorder and 'make sound' tile -- important to have microphone
and speakers on each machine!), (c) cheering sound is made when the
car crosses a differently-coloured finish line.

4. More practice followed by Q&A and demonstration of some fancy
projects that we had already prepared.

In the first workshop we had one additional segment but we reckon this
shorter agenda is better - it left people wanting more instead of
being a bit tired. (It also meant we could fit the whole thing in
before lunch instead of having a long break in the middle.)

There's a LOT of room for improvisation both on the projector and on
each person's own computer.  On saturday we showed a couple of people
individually how to program the car to drive around the road as a
robot and that was pretty clear to them (proudly one was my mum :-) a
born programmer if only she knew it!).

NB: We use the XO image on normal PCs for this.

Let us know if you have any questions. We're quite close to one
another so we could possibly cooperate a little bit. I passed through
singapore in december and january and I'll be sure to let you know if
I'll be there any time soon.

For more info see these blog entries:
http://blog.olenepal.org/index.php/archives/132
http://blog.olenepal.org/index.php/archives/107
http://blog.olenepal.org/index.php/archives/106

Cheers,
-Luke

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Thanks, Luke, Tony and Eric for your responses.  It is certainly encouraging
to see the offers of suggestions and ideas.

The contest the ITSC is running, called code::XtremeApps:: 2008 has two
categories - an open and a junior.  The junior category is what I alluded to -
for 12 and under.  THe open category is for just about anyone to take part
and is pretty much what we did last year:
              http://www.itsc.org.sg/codeXtremeApps.html

For the junior category, there exists some local expertise in Alice and a
decision has to be made as to whether Alice or Squeak is to be the chosen
platform.  If anyone of you have worked with both, can I ask for a considered
opinion on the merits of them?  I have found out that stuff created in Alice
cannot be "exported" and worked on by others.  That could put a constraint
on how the contest is run.  Squeak, on the other hand, can easily import and
export stuff giving the children their own space to work and then for the teams
to combine.  Please confirm that this is doable.

I need to report back to the organizing committee this coming Monday as to
which platform to use and I would love to have Squeak as the one.

I will look into all the links provided by the Luke and Tony to understand
better.  I am a coder myself, but I haven't had a chance to teach programming
to young children and am trying to get my head around to the merits of Alice
and Squeak for this task.

Appreciate your inputs and suggestions.

Thanks.
--
Harish Pillay [hidden email] gpg id: 746809E3
fingerprint: F7F5 5CCD 25B9 FC25 303E 3DA2 0F80 27DB 7468 09E3

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Hi Harish,
Have you looked at the materials K-5 Technology Passport at
www.Squeakcmi.org
I wrote them as introductions to Etoys in the classroom and have used them
with many young beginners. The site also has some children's projects in the
Library Collection tags: letter slates, number slates, Aesop's Fables,
Science Books, and others.
Regards,
Kathleen
----- Original Message -----
From: "Harish Pillay 9v1hp" <[hidden email]>
To: "squeakland" <[hidden email]>
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 1:28 AM
Subject: Re: [Squeakland] An opportunity to promote Squeak in Singapore


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Kathleen -

Hi!  Thanks for the reply.

>  Have you looked at the materials K-5 Technology Passport at
>  www.Squeakcmi.org
>  I wrote them as introductions to Etoys in the classroom and have used them
>  with many young beginners. The site also has some children's projects in the
>  Library Collection tags: letter slates, number slates, Aesop's Fables,
>  Science Books, and others.

I am now exploring it.  I have given my 8 and 10 year old sons the
task of checking
it out for themselves.

Thanks again.
--
Harish Pillay [hidden email] gpg id: 746809E3
fingerprint: F7F5 5CCD 25B9 FC25 303E 3DA2 0F80 27DB 7468 09E3

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