suggested 1 hour squeak exercise for various student age groups?

Looks like our local university will have the opportunity to lead a 1  
hour programming class for various age groups (5-8, 9-12, 13-16) for  
the local science club.  We're considering using squeak instead of  
something like visual basic / real basic, but I'm not sure where to  
find what's been done before.  The class will be taught on networked  
laptops, so something motivating like be the first to construct an e-
toy that achieves some goal, etc., is the kind of thing that might be  
scalable across age ranges.  Any suggestions or pointers to short  
courses that have been given in similar circumstances?

   Thanks for any input or pointers to more appropriate forums.

   Best regards,

-- DanG
Daniel Green
William Jewell College / Park University
Kansas City, Missouri
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Hi, Daniel -

I suggest you use the "Powerful Ideas in the Classroom" book and
start the kids off with the "Drive-A-Car" Etoys would be ideal.

http://www.squeakland.org/sqmedia/books/kimbjbook.html

Give them a little while to get comfortable with the painting system
and then let them create a car and play with driving it around.
Then, they can make a steering wheel to navigate the car, and go on
to make a road and drive it along the road.  The older kids may get
to the point of creating a "robot car" that will drive along the road
on its own .  This is all in the book and our suggested starting
point. An hour is pretty short -- you might see if there's any way to
extend your time to at least 90 minutes.

Also, showing a portion of the Squeakers DVD (at the end, perhaps)
could be interesting for the kids to see what other kids have done
(i.e., "Jenny's Pig Race").

http://www.squeakland.org/sqmedia/movies/html/clips.html

Thanks for your interest -- let us know how it goes!
  -- Kim



At 3:15 PM -0600 2/4/06, Daniel Green wrote:
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Hi Daniel,

I'm taking 8-15 yr. olds through Kim Rose's "Powerful Ideas" book (see the Squeakland site). They seem to like it. I'm taking the 11-15 yr.olds directly to charting, after they master motion, since they need charting for a "project based learning" health project.

I have some 5-7 yr. olds whom I'm just letting paint with Squeak. I'll see what they can do, but I'll introduce concepts gradually.

Cheers,
Darius
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