Learn Computer Programming with Squeak and Etoys

For the last few weeks I've written about several free software programming / learning environments that are available to teach the basics of computer science to public, private, and home school students. Today I'll close this series with a quick look at the Squeak "dialect" of the Smalltalk programming language and a very nice learning environment called Etoys.

The Squeak language is an adaptation of Smalltalk, which was one of the earliest object oriented programming languages (early 1980s). Although both languages may "sound trivial" I can assure you that they are not and, in fact, these languages have been used to create fully-functioning virtual worlds (such as those built from the Croquet and Open Cobalt Software Development Kits) that can be populated by talking avatars and may contain features such as 3D hyperlinks and virtual offices with work spaces and online conferences (take a few minutes to check out this demo from You Tube)

Etoys is targeted at the middle elementary school age group and is based on the time-tested wisdom behind the observation that children will naturally learn more, and learn faster, when they are having fun. In that respect, I would be hard pressed to find another computer science learning environment that is more fun to play with than Etoys.

Another factor in my enthusiasm for Squeak / Etoys is that it is supported by what is probably the largest collection of freely available online supporting documents, including both teacher and student manuals, numerous online video tutorials and an active developer community as demonstrated by the number of free books available from the Squeakland Books page and the same site's

There are literally dozens of examples of work by students and teachers that use Etoys and the Squeak programming language which can be seen at MrStevesScienceBlog and at the Squeakland Showcase website. For those not having the financial and / or technical resources to have a personal computer in the home or school there is even a "self-contained" implementation of Etoys ("Etoys To Go") that can be installed on a USB / Flash / Thumb drive which will allow the child to save his or her tutorials, lessons, and projects without worrying about losing their work when a host computer is shut down.

As mentioned above, this concludes my short series on tools that can be used to teach computer science in practically in educational milieu. In the next series I'll introduce several other free software packages and programming applications that are, to put it mildly, SERIOUSLY COOL!

See Also:

The Smalltalk and Squeak Programming Languages websites as well as the Squeakland / Etoys site.