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notes-1-19

The secretary for the day will change these to reflect what we did.

The plan for the afternoon was:
  1. Go over administrative details
  2. Check the local computational infrastructure, and determine individual computational resources.
  3. Go over basics of Squeak/Etoys, following the trajectory described on the hw-1-19 page.

Secretary: Erik Volkman (evolkman)

Class began with a short discussion about how people found the room since it wasn't listed in selfservice. Following that, Professor Pitt gave a demonstration of how the lab worked, so don't be playing video games in class because he can know without leaving the monitoring station.

After that we went over the materials currently on the course website, which included clarifications of the Course Description.

The Computer Science Teachers Association has come up with a model curriculum for grades K-12 broken up into 4 levels. The first level is aimed at Grades K-8 and focuses on basics such as keyboard use and simple algorithms, like the right hand rule in navigating a maze. The second and third levels contain "pre-AP" material which is focused at Grades 9-11. Level 2 is "Computer Science in the Modern World". Topics at this level at intended to acquaint the student with the principles, methodologies and applications of Computer Science. Level 3 is "Computer Science as Analysis and Design". Topics at this level include algorithm design, problem solving, and programming. A fourth level course is intended to cover all the materials standard to the Computer Science AP exam.

Our goal is to create a CS breadth course with a programming focus. We will be using the Etoys (commonly referred to as squeak) to create a series of lessons and projects. It is likely that we will be working with students currently enrolled in C&I 436: Computers in Mathematics Education. At the same time, we will be writing "A Squeaky Introduction to Computer Science" based on what we learn and create this semester. The current thought is three main themes:
  1. Introduction to Programming (taken as a whole, the book will act as an intro programming book)
  2. Introduction to Squeak (Etoys) (the book will also act as a robust user guide to getting up and going with etoys).
  3. A Tour of Computer Science (the book's topical coverage will include explorations across CS, aimed at the middle school student).

The two main goals are to provide a number of useful examples and tutorials along with providing documentation for the Squeak (Etoys) environment.

While attendance is always important because missing one class is missing an entire week, it is critical that you attend class during the first few weeks because we'll be learning the tools that we're going to depend upon for the remainder of the semester. Later in the semester it might be possible to work from your dorm room or apartment on occasion because we'll be programming our projects.

Squeak Background


"Squeak forces you to think about programing in a funny way."
    • Professor Pitt

Squeak is an implementation of smalltalk, one of the first Object Oriented languages. We will be using a program called Etoys which provides a scripting language built on Squeak principles. When K-12 instructors refer to Squeak they often mean the Etoys interface.
Further information, and the Etoys/Squeak environment can be found at
http://www.squeakland.org.

After this, Professor Pitt provided a demonstration of what you could do with Squeak, then the class worked on the tutorials mentioned in this week's homework. Here are some things to note about working with Squeak:
  • If you'd like to save your work, use "Publish It!", the Save function will save the environment's current state. Generally you don't want to do this and will have to restore the image file to get things back to normal.
  • Clicking and holding on a button will sometimes result in a different action than just clicking. Control-click will result in a detailed menu, and alt-click is used to get the halo around an object.

Important Resources


ACM K-12 Curriculum Model
MSTE Website
Squeak Website
Homework

Next Week