[squeak-dev] Teaching Recommendations

I am planning an introductory course in Smalltalk for high school students. This will be starting from scratch; no previous programming experience required. The goal is to be able to create self-made personal software.

To this end I have been working through The Laser Game Tutorial and Squeak by Example. Neither seem right for beginners.

Can anyone recommend any other books or teaching materials? Maybe a successful syllabus?
--
Gary Dunn, Honolulu
[hidden email]
http://openslate.net/
http://e9erust.blogspot.com/
Sent from a Newton 2100 via Mail V

Gary Dunn escreveu:
> I am planning an introductory course in Smalltalk for high school students. This will be starting from scratch; no previous programming experience required. The goal is to be able to create self-made personal software.
>
> To this end I have been working through The Laser Game Tutorial and Squeak by Example. Neither seem right for beginners.
>
> Can anyone recommend any other books or teaching materials? Maybe a successful syllabus?
>  
I know that there are some people from Spain with an extremely rich
experience in this topic. People from Conselho de Extremadura and I
guess some of them are present at this list.

On Saturday 30 May 2009 07:15:00 am Gary Dunn wrote:
> Can anyone recommend any other books or teaching materials? Maybe a
> successful syllabus?
http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/5699 (Terse guide to Squeak)
SmalltalkIntroduction project in Squeak 3.8.1 image (see example on a postcard
page)

You could start with Etoys and introduce Text object for simple expressions.
SimpleButtonMorph is handy for experimenting with simple methods (in text
mode). As you advance, you can introduce etoyFriendly and simple menus options
in preferences to get the full Smalltalk environment.

Subbu

Casimiro de Almeida Barreto a écrit :
Hello Gary

I think the Spanish friend of Extremadura are focusing on Etoys use.

What about using a dedicated Smalltalk environment to learn Smalltalk
programming?

Come to my mind:

- BotsInc and the book Learning programming with robots?
http://scg.unibe.ch/wiki/botsinc/

- Related to mathematics teaching in secondary education, DrGeo
(http://wiki.laptop.org/go/DrGeo) is a Smalltalk environment for
interactive geometry with dedicated programming facilities (scripting
and programmed figure)
See this example of Smalltalk scripting with DrGeo
http://blog.ofset.org/hilaire/index.php?post/script-drgeo
(a google translation link is provided at the end of the document)

DrGeo scripting is a very lovely way to introduce problem solving
methodologies in a quite comfortable way. Well, I am a math teacher...

For a polished general introduction to DrGeo, read this English document
http://blog.ofset.org/public/drgeo/drgeo-EsugAwards2008.pdf

Previous version of DrGeo was written in C++ with an embedded Scheme
interpretor for scripting and user programming. Really the DrGeo
Smalltalk version is much more user friendly when it comes to user
programming, thanks to the  Smalltalk IDE tools and image experience.

You are nice to your learner planing to use Smalltalk, a big boost in
ease to learn programming.

Unfortunately, I have not yet re-written the companion book for DrGeo
programming in Smalltalk. (A previous version in Spanish for the C++
version http://documentation.ofset.org/drgeo/es/drgenius.html)

Any organisation willing to support its rewrite?


Hilaire

Hi Gary,

We are developing a course in Squeak for absolute beginners / junior high /
high school students here at the Hawthorne Center for Innovation in the L.A.
Area. We just got the 1st 5 lessons onto a Live CD. Let's connect up.

Donna Schrokosch,
Founder, Hawthorne Center for Innovation
[hidden email]


----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Dunn" <[hidden email]>
To: "Squeak-Dev List" <[hidden email]>
Sent: Friday, May 29, 2009 6:45 PM
Subject: [squeak-dev] Teaching Recommendations


I am planning an introductory course in Smalltalk for high school students.
This will be starting from scratch; no previous programming experience
required. The goal is to be able to create self-made personal software.

To this end I have been working through The Laser Game Tutorial and Squeak
by Example. Neither seem right for beginners.

Can anyone recommend any other books or teaching materials? Maybe a
successful syllabus?
--
Gary Dunn, Honolulu
[hidden email]
http://openslate.net/
http://e9erust.blogspot.com/
Sent from a Newton 2100 via Mail V

Hello Gary,
  You may want to complement the usage of learning environments with
some material or ideas from the David Taylor's "Object Technology"
book (forget about the "Manager's Guide" part of the title, it is a
good reading for everyone involved in object technology).

http://www.amazon.com/Object-Technology-Managers-David-Taylor/dp/0201309947/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243701038&sr=1-1

  There is another useful lecture called "A Smalltalk for Students: A
giant step to studentkind"

http://homepages.ecs.vuw.ac.nz/~tk/publications/papers/smalltalk.pdf

  And a lot of resources for teaching, in the Pedagogical Patterns
Project site here:

http://www.pedagogicalpatterns.org/

  Finally, a "Recommendations for teachers" section is a must read,
the paper is called "An effective approach to learning
Object-Oriented" and it was written by two very experienced teachers
in object technology:

http://www.lifia.info.unlp.edu.ar/~casco/papers/ecoop98.html

Cheers,

Hernán

2009/5/29 Gary Dunn <[hidden email]>: