First came E-Toys an environment built on Squeak , a Smalltalk dialect developed by the original inventor of Smalltalk – Alan Kay. Now, we have Scratch a learning environment that unlike E-Toys targets an older audience, the 10 – 16 crowd. Scratch is being built on Squeak that is clear. Not sure , if it is being built on E-Toys. Nonetheless, this is exciting from a Smalltalk promoter’s perspective since there will now be two learning environments that at least acquaint young humans from kindergarten through high school to Smalltalk.

I recently learned about this since I had invited one of the principals of the E-Toys project to present to us (NYC Smalltalk) in the April/May timeframe. Unfortunately, some last minute schedule conflicts forced us to postpone the meeting. We are still hopeful for sometime in the Fall. This would not have been the first presentation on E-Toys. Last year we had a teacher at a private school here in NYC share with us his work using E-Toys actively in the classroom. I also met a public school teacher doing the same. Columbia Teacher’s College is actively involved with E-Toys and there has been an active pilot if not full-blown program in the California School System.

Hopefully, I’ll manage to convince one of the principal developers for Scratch to present.