CodeWeek – Squeak and Etoys – SAP Innovation Center
17 October, 2015
Cool, Interesting – WAIT – is that SCRATCH!!
12 May, 2015
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598272670/chip-the-worlds-first-9-computer
The wildly popular C.H.I.P. comes pre-loaded with Scratch!
Nice play C.H.I.P.!
SqueakJS runs Etoys now
5 July, 2014
From Bert Freudenberg:
Hi all,
my SqueakJS VM has reached a major milestone. It is now sufficiently complete to run a full Etoys image (and possibly other non-closure images, too). It has support for most BitBlt modes, WarpBlt, even some Balloon2D rendering (for TTF fonts), a virtual file system, image saving etc.
Try it: http://bertfreudenberg.github.io/SqueakJS/etoys/
(Safari and IE are significantly faster than Firefox and Chrome, best is Safari Webkit nightly, works on iPad too, hopefully Android)
For more details, see my blogpost:
http://croquetweak.blogspot.de/2014/07/squeakjs-runs-etoys-now.html
Feedback and contributions welcome 🙂
– Bert –
OLPC is not dead! Long live OLPC!
12 March, 2014
Check out OLPC XO-4.
I would hate to add to the speculation that OLPC is dead because it’s not. Wayan Wota has been calling OLPC dead for 5 years. This is not news. He has not been involved with the project in a long time. His article is about the XO-1, apparently he doesn’t even know the XO-4 was officially introduced at this year’s CES, alongside the tablet.
If you really want to know what’s going on with current OLPC community projects see Adam Holt’s http://www.unleashkids.org/
Full OLPC Statement (from: http://gizmodo.com/one-laptop-per-child-isnt-quite-dead-yet-1541430670):
OLPC’s mission to empower the world’s children through education is far from over. OLPC is thriving and making more inroads at bringing education to those who can’t easily access it. OLPC recently formed a strategic alliance with the Zamora Teran family through many of their enterprises and their philanthropic foundation, the “Fundación Zamora Teran to deliver XO laptops not only to Central and South America, but also to Africa.
Aside from distributing more laptops in several schools in Costa Rica, Uruguay is receiving its first 50k units of the XO-4 Touch (running Android) in a few weeks’ time. In addition, the XO Tablet is currently available directly through governments and NGOs, as well as in Europe and Canada and through all major retail outlets in the United States including Walmart, Amazon, Toys ‘R Us among the others.
OLPC also has outsourced many of the software and development units because the organization is becoming more hardware and OS agnostic, concentrating on its core values – education. As an example, we’ve partnered with the Smithsonian Museum to bring feature-rich, interactive and more targeted content to our young learners.
We have more exciting things planned in the horizon including the implementation of very large scale projects in several regions of the world, so be sure to stay tuned.
OLPC is a concept, it is a movement, it is a community and it is about helping children. Sure the grand vision may be delayed, but the benefits of education and technology, of improving the human condition is not dead. We all knew that it’s not profitable to teach third world children. Still, no one thought that companies would compete against OLPC. Countries opted for different technologies for hardware but never matched the promise or the vision of the software. Had the world united around this platform children would have benefited and the world today would be a better place as we develop together and stamp out ignorance. There is nothing like education to improve the world and that mission is not dead. OLPC is evolving, finding new ways to reach more children, making more with less, and finding ways to make a real difference in the world.
Support OLPC! Long Live the vision.
Spur Memory Manager Object Format Explained
19 January, 2014
Clément Béra just posted an excellent article explaining the new Spur Object format. Definitely worth a read!
Eliot Miranda has also mentioned that Spur is coming to life in Newspeak as we speak and then Squeak 5.0.
Find out more about the Squeak VM called Cog and the new memory manager called Spur at Eliot’s Cog Blog.
Etoys at Maker Faire in Hannover
6 August, 2013
Etoys, children, a funny hat and a handmade Smalltalk balloon. What more could you ask for! Looks like a great day for everyone.
Read more about it here: http://squeaklandnews.blogspot.de/
Don’t miss Tim’s interview with SmalltalkInspect! You can find it here: Smalltalk under the Pi: an Interview with tim Rowledge
In this episode we talk to tim Rowledge about his work on Smalltalk VMs over the years, especially for the RISC OS Platform and ARM machines.. The latest and probably hottest thing in this arena is his port of Squeak to the Raspberry Pi. This is not only cool in itself, but more importantly enables Raspberry Pi users to use Scratch and EToys on this little machine on RISC OS (the Raspbian Linux version existed before). You can probably imagine how much fun we had in recording this session.
Squeakfest 2013 in Uruguay
23 May, 2013
It’s that time again. Time to pack up the kids and join us at SqueakFest 2013. Don’t forget to bring your XO computer!
If you can’t make it please consider a donation to help cover travel costs: Donate
For more information see: Squeakfest 2013
From Rita:
There will be a Squeakfest again in Uruguay at June, 7th – 9th, this time in Atlantida. Etoys will cover the major part of the event, but there will also be workshops in Python, turtle art and robotics. After all, Uruguay is the country with XO-laptops in every elementary school and teachers are using the software which comes with Sugar.
http://squeakfest2013.weebly.com/
From our education team, Randall Caton and myself are going to present Etoys workshops. This year, I’ll introduce Kedama. I’m looking forward to an inspiring event!
If you want to help or know someone who would like to, I created a crowdfunding page to collect money to help to cover our travel cost. Please share as you like!
http://crowdfundedu.com/fundraiser/educators-to-squeakfest
Greetings,
Rita
Great Women in Technology – Dr. Cynthia Solomon
24 April, 2013
Dr. Cynthia Solomon
Cool pictures at: http://incolor.inetnebr.com/bill_r/tasman_turtle_page.htm from bill_r
Great article on the History of Logo.
“If Seymour Papert is the Father of Educational Computing, then Cynthia Soiomon is the Mother of Educational Computing! Not only did Cynthia help create the first programming language for children, but she developed many of the pedagogical approaches and activities we still use to teach children to use computers. Forty five years later, Logo is still in use by millions of children around the world in the form of Scratch, MicroWorlds, Snap! and other dialects. The Twenty Things to Do with a Computer paper written by Solomon and Papert in 1970 or ’71 remains provocative today and lays the foundation for the maker movement sweeping the globe.”
See the full article: Time to Honor a Technology Pioneer!
Computer Environments for Children: A Reflection on Theories of Learning and Education
Designing Multimedia Environments for Children
Wouldn’t it be fun to have the Girls For Raspberry Pi read Twenty Things to Do with a Computer 🙂
Imagine Invent Inspire – Etoys
25 March, 2013
Don’t miss the new Etoys book: http://wiki.squeakland.org/index.php/LearningWithEtoysI3.
Etoys is:
- an educational tool for teaching children powerful ideas in compelling ways
- a media-rich authoring environment and visual programming system
- a free software program that works on almost all personal computers
All school children should have the opportunity to engage with computers in the most meaningful way. Learning to think and using the computer to discover and work with powerful ideas is the knowledge of true value. The community of Etoys users is working toward the dream of having all students become computer literate. This book only covers a small portion of those items. As you and your students learn some of the basic techniques, you will find more and more uses for them. The process of learning Etoys is just that, a process; the learning is on-going even though projects are begun and finished. Students will enjoy becoming experts and sharing their knowledge with others in the classroom.
Imagine this: A group of learners want to visualize what they Imagine so they go to Etoys to Invent their dreams and Inspire each other by building on their various Etoys projects. Today’s learners need this kind of experience to be prepared for the future.
For more information about Etoys visit www.squeakland.org