From robert.hirschfeld at gmx.net Wed Jul 1 10:24:22 2009 From: robert.hirschfeld at gmx.net (Robert Hirschfeld) Date: Wed Jul 1 11:57:02 2009 Subject: [Squeakland] [Fwd: [Squeak Announcements] PhidgetLab and NXTalk going live] Message-ID: <4A4B9BC6.8090807@gmx.net> -------- Original Message -------- [...] Hi, perhaps this is interesting for some people. We hope so. :-) I am glad to announce the availability, as of today, of two Squeak-based projects that both deal with letting Squeak interface with the surrounding world. 1. PhidgetLab Phidgets are sensors and actuators that can be connected to a PC via USB. So far, support for them in Squeak was not freely available - this changes now. :-) A group of students in our group - Lysann Kessler, Stephanie Platz, Thomas Klingbeil, Philipp Tessenow, and Frank Schlegel - have developed PhidgetLab in fulfilment of a coursework assignment. It provides a "low-level" Phidgets API in Squeak, but is also integrated with Etoys. Behold: http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/swa/projects/phidgetlab/ 2. NXTalk Over the past few years, we've made the occasional announcement of this: it's Smalltalk on Lego Mindstorms NXT. It's a real Smalltalk VM running on the NXT, with an image being interpreted. Now it's finally available, including the VM source code. NXTalk is the outcome of Martin Beck's MSc research; Martin is a former student in our group. Behold: http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/swa/projects/nxtalk/ Both projects' source code is MIT licensed. They both are based on (L)GPLed software, though: PhidgetLab uses the Phidgets API from the vendor, which is under the LGPL, and NXTalk uses NXOS, which is under the GPL. We would be grateful for any suggestions for improvement - for both the projects and the respective web pages alike. Experience reports are, of course, most welcome too. Unfortunately, we cannot make the required hardware available as easily as the software. ;-) Please let us know what you think! Best, Michael -- Robert Hirschfeld Hasso-Plattner-Institut hirschfeld@hpi.uni-potsdam.de www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/swa From rita at isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de Thu Jul 2 14:02:35 2009 From: rita at isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de (Rita Freudenberg) Date: Thu Jul 2 14:03:35 2009 Subject: [Squeakland] deleted scene from Squeakers DVD now online! Message-ID: <1F98F679-DE29-438E-A59D-6C9E558F2183@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de> Dear Squeakers, one of the scenes, that got edited out of the DVD was the Galileo moment when a girl pointed out the "trick". Now you can watch that scene here: http://squeakland.org/resources/audioVisual/movie.jsp?id=41 Greetings, Rita From yoshiki at vpri.org Thu Jul 2 14:18:43 2009 From: yoshiki at vpri.org (Yoshiki Ohshima) Date: Thu Jul 2 14:20:01 2009 Subject: [Squeakland] deleted scene from Squeakers DVD now online! In-Reply-To: <1F98F679-DE29-438E-A59D-6C9E558F2183@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de> References: <1F98F679-DE29-438E-A59D-6C9E558F2183@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de> Message-ID: At Thu, 2 Jul 2009 23:02:35 +0200, Rita Freudenberg wrote: > > Dear Squeakers, > > one of the scenes, that got edited out of the DVD was the Galileo > moment when a girl pointed out the "trick". > > Now you can watch that scene here: > > http://squeakland.org/resources/audioVisual/movie.jsp?id=41 Thank you, Rita. Imagine a story line like this: 1. Kids trying to measure the fall time by stop watches. - "0.99999 seconds..., measuring is so hard!" 2. Kids are depressed, and the atmosphere goes somber. Some kids started crying... (Well, some dramatization needed). 3. Then, here comes the savior: - "How about if we drop two totally different ones at the same time!?" 4. The young scientist solves the world problem! (And that was practically the same idea by the pionieer of modern science.) -- Yoshiki From rita at isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de Fri Jul 3 09:43:20 2009 From: rita at isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de (Rita Freudenberg) Date: Fri Jul 3 09:44:12 2009 Subject: [Squeakland] Kathleen's notes from NECC References: <3ED74450-A4CE-4F3C-8826-8D1D2318E939@squeakland.org> Message-ID: <32ED9A2F-0D30-4E99-90C9-E680DD91ACE1@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de> Von: Rita Freudenberg Datum: 3. Juli 2009 18:35:24 MESZ An: squeakland@squeakland.org Betreff: Kathleen's notes from NECC Hello All, I wrote these notes/email during the NECC conference. Rita thought they might be of interest to others on the Squeakland list so, here they are. kh June 30 It is a big conference, really big, and the exhibit floor is full of expensive fantastic technology everything from thin client to ways to keep track of student's every keystroke. I saw a demo of the Polyvision gadget I will use this morning and it is a short throw projector and a board, $1500 for a classroom model with an Eno. I went to hear the Starlogo group yesterday but none of them showed, I thought just one had food poisoning and that the others would be there. The room was large and must have had 75 people waiting to hear. I talked to three people in the DC OLPC Learning Club. One of them is starting a summer school lab program of enrichment using OLPCs at a Boston school. He is part of Walter Bender's volunteer army. He had not looked at any of our materials but I think he might after I talked about the kinds of projects there. We are all Sisyphus. July1 The poster session went very well. The Polyvision is not an interactive board like a smart board but it made a great LCD screen about 5x6, bright and clear. There were a lot of people looking for materials for elementary schools. Lots of knowledgeable people, lots of good questions, and favorable comments. Very interested in the lesson plans and the web site library collection. When I mentioned that I hadn't found many programming materials for young students, that most seemed to start at 11th grade even though they were labeled K-12, lots of heads agreed. The postcards were very popular and many commented that they were a smart way to show and to provide our web address. I brought about 150 I think and they were all gone in the first 90 minutes. I started early though, since the space was available when I got here at 8:15, I was up and running by 8:20. Built the poster wall with push pins and examples of postcards, lessons plans and ads for Squeakfest LA. I had people take things off the board or off the table top. When I ran out of pretty cards I handed out the blank postcards and many people noted the web site on their program or a notebook they were filling with ideas. I wrote on scraps of paper, and programs. I saw board members, classroom teachers, administrators, tech managers, from all over the US and a few from other countries . . .Minnesota, Turkey, India, Japan, WV, Indiana, Illinois. Oklahoma. Many people were so happy to know it (Etoys) was free and that the materials were free and that they had been used by young students and that the students could do well. Many people said things along the lines of. . . that was done by a 2nd grader! I think they might have been over stimulated with sell, sell, sell. Elvis was singing on the exhibit floor and there were so many sounds, lights, flashy demos and sales reps hoping for big orders, it felt very competitive. Maybe a few of these people will go ahead and look at our site and our materials. Right now I feel like it was worth the trip. July1 PM I did not have time to meet the Scratch-ed presenter this morning, I will send her a note. I think it was good for us to both be there because we echo each other and amplify ideas. I talked to a prof from Lehigh who had his students write reports about 1:1 computing and most of them are about OLPCs. He said he posted them on wikibooks one-to-one but I can not find it. I know it is there, one of the reports we glanced at is about the Birmingham school 14000 adoption, another about NYC, Peru, Portugal etc. He knows Tim Falconer and is meeting him next week so I can still track this down through Tim. from a response to Tim's questions . . . I estimate I could have given away another 100+ handouts. it was a good crowd and they were very interested in the kinds of learning they could see in the student projects. Numerous people commented about the kinds of thinking and the age of the students. Close questioning about whether these were done by gifted students or not.(not identified as gifted but you look at their projects and wonder why not kh 070309) Also questions about length of lessons and how many years worth of learning to produce the projects I showed. Many of the projects I chose to show were done by 2nd graders, it made it very easy to show beginner projects done by children using Etoys starting in 2nd grade with a 40 minutes lesson, once a week. The CS4K5 lesson plans I showed include NETS, NCTM Focal Points, and Blooms Cognitive domain as reference standards. It meant some thing to a lot of people to see the standards there, although I don't think the NETS standards are really for programming but rather broadly focused on computer literacy. Anyway it was worth the time and thought to include them. One of the handouts was a postcard with an screen print of a student project and the projects I showed on the Polyvision screen were only those 30 projects so that it was easy to see connections and the postcards are beautiful and have the EtoysIllinois web site address on them. I was hoping beautiful would stand out from commercial and would be more likely to be taken home rather than discarded at the end of the day. People chose the card they wanted from among all of them scattered on the table top. I am assuming their choice was meaningful to them either by project, subject or beauty. I also handed out lesson plans and SqueakfestLA posters. One man I met in the presenters lounge teaches at Lehigh and has a meeting with you, Tim, next week. He is from Bethlehem PA. I can't think of his name. His students did reports about 1:1 computing and he was going to email me the URL in wikibooks. I didn't get anything from him yet so please make sure you get it when you meet with him, the brief glance I had at it looked like it would be interesting reading for the ed team. Regards to you all, Kathleen From yoshiki at vpri.org Tue Jul 7 10:01:22 2009 From: yoshiki at vpri.org (Yoshiki Ohshima) Date: Tue Jul 7 10:02:24 2009 Subject: [Squeakland] testing the new server Message-ID: Hello, Per Tim's request, I'm sending an email to test the new server. -- Yoshiki From yoshiki at vpri.org Tue Jul 7 10:06:17 2009 From: yoshiki at vpri.org (Yoshiki Ohshima) Date: Tue Jul 7 10:07:20 2009 Subject: [Squeakland] server change with more info Message-ID: I was supposed to send this text instead of the previous one. Please don't ignore ^^; ---- Hi everyone, We're changing the mail server for the Squeakland community mailing list (squeakland@squeakland.org) If all goes well, another email will follow this one to say that it's done. If no emails follow within 48 hours (before 17:00 GMT, July 9th) , then please re-subscribe at http://squeakland.org/discuss/ ... but not until then. ---- -- Yoshiki From Kathryn.Hewitt at vpri.org Tue Jul 7 13:57:30 2009 From: Kathryn.Hewitt at vpri.org (Kathryn Hewitt) Date: Tue Jul 7 13:57:25 2009 Subject: [Squeakland] server change with more info In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hello, everyone - Doing a little sleuthing here... In response to this email, did anyone do anything? Kim and I have both heard reports that emails are getting bounced. She would like me to find out what, if anything, has occurred but to ask that no on fiddle with it. Ian will address the issue shortly. Thanks! Kathryn Viewpoints Research Institute Kathryn C. Hewitt Phone: 818-332-3001 Fax: 818-244-9761 1209 Grand Central Ave., Glendale, CA 91201-2425 Viewpoints Research is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to improving "powerful ideas education" for the world's children and advancing the state of systems research and personal computing. Please visit us online at ******************************************* Envelope-to: kathryn.hewitt@vpri.org Date: Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:06:17 -0700 From: Yoshiki Ohshima To: squeakland@squeakland.org X-BeenThere: squeakland@squeakland.org List-Id: Squeakland Discussion Forum List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: squeakland-bounces@squeakland.org I was supposed to send this text instead of the previous one. Please don't ignore ^^; ---- Hi everyone, We're changing the mail server for the Squeakland community mailing list (squeakland@squeakland.org) If all goes well, another email will follow this one to say that it's done. If no emails follow within 48 hours (before 17:00 GMT, July 9th) , then please re-subscribe at http://squeakland.org/discuss/ ... but not until then. ---- -- Yoshiki _______________________________________________ Squeakland mailing list Squeakland@squeakland.org http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://vpri.org/pipermail/squeakland/attachments/20090707/b95cd7c1/attachment.htm From kim.rose at vpri.org Mon Jul 20 09:37:33 2009 From: kim.rose at vpri.org (Kim Rose) Date: Mon Jul 20 09:37:34 2009 Subject: [squeakland] Four year old and her older sister win a Squeak-based programming contest in Singapore In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8AB2BDBE-6414-4815-9404-F174107F8F40@vpri.org> Thanks, Harish for sharing with us! This is very cool! May we have your permission to include as part of our Squeakland blog or news? regards to you, Kim Rose On Jul 20, 2009, at 7:54 AM, Harish Pillay 9v1hp wrote: > I thought I should share this success story on this list. > > http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_405695.html > > I am a concil member of the Singapore IT Standards Committee[1] and an > organizer of the > code::XtremeApps[2] programming contest. We have had a Junior > Category since 2008 > and it is targeted at children 12 years and below. Last year we used > Alice and this year > we used Squeak. We had about 31 teams with about 80 children > participate in this contest. > > The link above is about a two-person team (a 4 year old and her 8 year > old sister) who > wrote an application on healthy lifestyle focusing on anti-smoking > messages. > > Thanks. > > [1] http://www.itsc.org.sg > [2] http://www.itsc.org.sg/codeXtremeApps2009.html > -- > Harish Pillay h.pillay@ieee.org gpg id: 746809E3 > fingerprint: F7F5 5CCD 25B9 FC25 303E 3DA2 0F80 27DB 7468 09E3 > _______________________________________________ > squeakland mailing list > squeakland@squeakland.org > http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland From kim.rose at vpri.org Wed Jul 29 07:06:14 2009 From: kim.rose at vpri.org (Kim Rose) Date: Wed Jul 29 07:06:17 2009 Subject: [Squeakland] Re: [etoys-dev] Agenda for Squeakfest LA? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi, Milan - We will have an agenda online next week. We will begin at 9 AM on the 10th (registration opens at 8 AM) and end at 5 PM on the 12th. -- Kim On Jul 28, 2009, at 8:02 PM, Milan Zimmermann wrote: > I cannot find an agenda for Squeakfest LA 2009. Is it defined at > this point - > at least I'd like to know what time it starts on the 10th and what > time it > ends on the 12th. > > Thanks, Milan > _______________________________________________ > etoys-dev mailing list > etoys-dev@squeakland.org > http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/etoys-dev From kim.rose at vpri.org Wed Jul 29 07:07:28 2009 From: kim.rose at vpri.org (Kim Rose) Date: Wed Jul 29 07:07:30 2009 Subject: [squeakland] Agenda for Squeakfest LA? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <616B248E-036B-441E-BE55-052A28C85155@vpri.org> Hi, Milan, We will have an agenda for Squeakfest online next week. We will begin at 9 AM on the 10th and end at 5 PM on the 12th. -- Kim On Jul 28, 2009, at 8:02 PM, Milan Zimmermann wrote: > I cannot find an agenda for Squeakfest LA 2009. Is it defined at > this point - > at least I'd like to know what time it starts on the 10th and what > time it > ends on the 12th. > > Thanks, Milan > _______________________________________________ > squeakland mailing list > squeakland@squeakland.org > http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland From kim.rose at vpri.org Thu Jul 30 08:04:25 2009 From: kim.rose at vpri.org (Kim Rose) Date: Thu Jul 30 08:04:27 2009 Subject: [Squeakland] Squeakfest USA - Early Reg ends Aug 1st! Message-ID: <8E10A154-BEF2-458C-9DDF-57C55BBDC67E@vpri.org> Register now for Squeakfest USA UCLA, Los Angeles, August 10, 11 and 12 Early Registration ends August 1st! http://squeakland.org/squeakfest/usa/register/ PLEASE register NOW even if you plan to pay at Squeakfest -- it will be most helpful for us to get an accurate count to plan for food and beverage. Hope to see you in Los Angeles! Kim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://vpri.org/pipermail/squeakland/attachments/20090730/b5ee5fc0/attachment.htm