A trial course of programming with Squeak

Abstract

The purpose of programming education is not only to memorize the knowledge of programming language but also to let the learners acquire useful concepts for realizing one's idea in the form of a program. It requires such activities as logical thinking, problem solving, modeling and abstraction. However, most of beginners are bothered to memorize a lot of knowledge of the programming language and to eliminate compile errors. It prevents learners from concentrating on their concept acquisition. We think that Squeak proposed by Alan Kay has potential to solve this problem. However, if a teacher teaches only the knowledge of Squeak and its environment, the problem is not resolved. In this report, we propose a Squeak based curriculum and its concept for education of programming.