13 Oct 2003 11:36
Squeak in Japan
-- Dear friends and colleagues, Greetings from me, at 2:00 AM PST, having just returned yesterday from a 10 day trip to Japan. Alan, Yoshiki, Roxanne Maloney and I just completed a very successful 10 day trip to Tokyo and Kyoto. I believe most of you know that last year, the Kyoto city schools started a three year pilot to use Squeak in several schools. They are starting with 2 elementary schools, 2 middle schools and 2 high schools. Currently, the strongest participants are one elementary school and one high school. We met Thoru Yamamoto, the author/illustrator of "Play with Squeak" (see this page and scroll http://www.squeakland.org/sqmedia/books/squeakerbooks.html) I've attached a picture of him here. His book has already sold over 6,000 copies in Japan! We are planning on translating his book into English. We also have made arrangements for "Powerful ideas in the Classroom" to be translated into Japanese so that it may be used as part of the schools program there. We visited Horikawa High School where students presented their curriculum (in a Squeak-based presentation) and a few Etoys they had created. I've attached 2 more pictures showing student sharing here. The Etoy in the picture was created by a young lady to help people learn about how Japanese live and their culture. Her butterfly is animated and controlled with a joystick. As the butterfly is flown around the house, messages are revealed to describe parts of the(Continue reading)
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