The Weekly Squeak

On the Squeakland list there is an ongoing thread about Etoys documentation and how to use it for teaching.

Guyren Howe started it by writing:

Hi,

I am volunteering at a local school, and will be doing squeakland once a week with some fifth graders.

Squeakland (etoys?) seems ideal for these kids, except that I’m frustrated by the lack of documentation.

And, among others, Alan Kay answers by pointing to the more complete Japanese and Spanish material. Very interesting for those who want to use Etoys for teaching is the long background he gives:

Etoys is all about children being able to make fun working versions of interesting ideas from scratch, and learning much more about the ideas than when force-fed with them. Considerable thought on the part of the children’s mentors is often required to set up a curriculum that is a nice balance between the way children think and do, the ideas, and what is most natural to do in Etoys. […]

Hilaire Fernandes points to the material available in French:

A lot of these documents are step by step tutorials to produce specific EToys project. Also most of the time the related Etoys .pr projects can be downloaded directly in your plug-in.

Many thanks to Matthias Berth for submitting this news item.