looking for some advice on teaching Squeak to advanced high school kids

>Hi Folks,
>
>I teach at University level, not high school, and have no previous
>experience teaching high school kids.
>
>At the end of January we will have a day and a half with a bunch of
>high school kids who are finalists in the Swiss Scientific Olympiads
>( http://www.olympiads.ch/  ) and have the opportunity to get them
>excited about computer
>science. We will have various sessions to show them different things.
>(I will not be the only one to offer something.  A colleague will be
>introducing the ones who have no background in programming to Scratch.)
>
>I wanted to take the ones who have done some programming (i.e., those
>who have done the Swiss Olympiad in Informatics - http://www.soi.ch/ )
>and introduce them to Squeak.  For the Olympiad they have been working
>with languages like Pascal, C and C++.
>
>I would like the session to be mainly hands-on, and get the kids to
>actually build something in teams of two with help from some monitors.
>
>Does anyone have any experience like this?  Can you recommend some
>specific exercises that would be fun and would produce a real result
>in a few hours?  My concrete goal is to show them how different a
>dynamic language and environment like Squeak can be from the languages
>they are used to.
>
>Any hints would be welcome.
>
>- on
>---
>Prof. Dr. O. Nierstrasz    -- [hidden email]
>Software Composition Group -- http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~scg
>University of Berne        -- Tel/Fax +41 31 631.4618/3355
>vcard:  http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~oscar/oscarNierstrasz.vcf
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Squeakland mailing list
>[hidden email]
>http://squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland

>
> Hi Folks,
>
> I teach at University level, not high school, and have no previous  
> experience teaching high school kids.
>
> At the end of January we will have a day and a half with a bunch of  
> high school kids who are finalists in the Swiss Scientific  
> Olympiads ( http://www.olympiads.ch/ ) and have the opportunity to  
> get them excited about computer science. We will have various  
> sessions to show them different things.  (I will not be the only  
> one to offer something.  A colleague will be introducing the ones  
> who have no background in programming to Scratch.)
>
> I wanted to take the ones who have done some programming (i.e.,  
> those who have done the Swiss Olympiad in Informatics - http://
> www.soi.ch/ ) and introduce them to Squeak.  For the Olympiad they  
> have been working with languages like Pascal, C and C++.
>
> I would like the session to be mainly hands-on, and get the kids to  
> actually build something in teams of two with help from some monitors.
>
> Does anyone have any experience like this?  Can you recommend some  
> specific exercises that would be fun and would produce a real  
> result in a few hours?  My concrete goal is to show them how  
> different a dynamic language and environment like Squeak can be  
> from the languages they are used to.
>
> Any hints would be welcome.
>
> - on
> ---
> Prof. Dr. O. Nierstrasz    -- [hidden email]
> Software Composition Group -- http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~scg
> University of Berne        -- Tel/Fax +41 31 631.4618/3355
> vcard:  http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~oscar/oscarNierstrasz.vcf
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Squeakland mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland

> Hi Oscar --
>
> Let's exchange a few emails about this.
>
> First, what would you do if the kids were University students with  
> the same experience? You have a day and a half, and you want to get  
> them to see what is interesting about a dynamic object environment  
> with a metasystem.
>
> How much time (and how to use it) would you allocate to learning the  
> language, debugger, stuff in class library, and metastuff? What  
> kinds of dynamic changes would you get them to do? (E.g. how about  
> changing the shape of objects that are dynamically in use? We once  
> added a few instance variables to Morphic, etc., and it was  
> interesting how well this worked ... .)
>
> A problem with the short time (i.e. let's learn to play piano in a  
> day and a half) is that it will be difficult to come up with a  
> convincing example that is not fairly easy to do in a static early  
> bound language (dynamic languages excel when dealing with difficult  
> complex systems that are hard to debug otherwise). (One of the  
> reasons Simula was not appreciated as it should have been in the 60s  
> was that the example in their ACM paper (that was small enough to  
> put in a paper) was fairly easy to do in Algol -- most people missed  
> that Simula really scaled for many important problems where Algol  
> did not.)
>
> What are your thoughts so far?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Alan
>
> At 01:09 AM 11/26/2007, Oscar Nierstrasz wrote:
>
>> Hi Folks,
>>
>> I teach at University level, not high school, and have no previous
>> experience teaching high school kids.
>>
>> At the end of January we will have a day and a half with a bunch of
>> high school kids who are finalists in the Swiss Scientific  
>> Olympiads ( http://www.olympiads.ch/  ) and have the opportunity to  
>> get them excited about computer
>> science. We will have various sessions to show them different things.
>> (I will not be the only one to offer something.  A colleague will be
>> introducing the ones who have no background in programming to  
>> Scratch.)
>>
>> I wanted to take the ones who have done some programming (i.e., those
>> who have done the Swiss Olympiad in Informatics - http://
>> www.soi.ch/ )
>> and introduce them to Squeak.  For the Olympiad they have been  
>> working
>> with languages like Pascal, C and C++.
>>
>> I would like the session to be mainly hands-on, and get the kids to
>> actually build something in teams of two with help from some  
>> monitors.
>>
>> Does anyone have any experience like this?  Can you recommend some
>> specific exercises that would be fun and would produce a real result
>> in a few hours?  My concrete goal is to show them how different a
>> dynamic language and environment like Squeak can be from the  
>> languages
>> they are used to.
>>
>> Any hints would be welcome.
>>
>> - on
>> ---
>> Prof. Dr. O. Nierstrasz    -- [hidden email]
>> Software Composition Group -- http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~scg
>> University of Berne        -- Tel/Fax +41 31 631.4618/3355
>> vcard:  http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~oscar/oscarNierstrasz.vcf
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Squeakland mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland
>

>
> Hi again,
>
> Is anyone on this list teaching Squeak *Smalltalk* to high school kids?
>
> Sorry for not being more specific in my previous posting -- I did not
> realize that for many people, Squeak = eToys.
>
> I realize the advantages of starting with eToys, but I will be dealing
> with a group of kids who have already seen some other programming
> languages.  I was wondering if anyone has experience with getting kids
> quickly started with some simple but interesting Smalltalk stuff.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Oscar Nierstrasz
> ---
> Prof. Dr. O. Nierstrasz    -- [hidden email]
> Software Composition Group -- http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~scg
> University of Berne        -- Tel/Fax +41 31 631.4618/3355
> vcard:  http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~oscar/oscarNierstrasz.vcf
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Squeakland mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland
>