From: Shashank Date <sdate@...>
Date: 2004-05-23T22:38:43+09:00
Subject: Re: [Q] Ruby for educational purposes and localization

Hi Laurent,

"Laurent Julliard" <laurent__no__@__spam__moldus.org> wrote in message
> I have been thinking for some time now about the right way to teach
> the basic of computer languages and programming to young children that
> are roughly 11/12 years old.
>
> In my first experiments I found them extremelly good at picking the
> basic ideas of object oriented programming. Creating objects which
> answers messages is something they understand almost instantly.
>
> After telling them about the first basic OOP conmcepts came the
> question of what environment to use to let them implement their first
> program. After some trial and errors sessions it looks like Ruby is
> easy enough to understand for them and they were able to implement a
> few things very quickly.
>
> The problem is that for non english speaking children, all programming
> languages add the burden of learning the reserved keywords of the
> language (Class, method, for, each, while,etc...) which are all in
> English and not in their mother tongue.
>
> So I started to think about a way by which one could define "synonyms"
> for all Ruby reserved keywords in another language (e.g in French
> "while" would be "tantque", "do" becomes "faire", etc...). All this
> should be done while preserving the ability to require any existing
> Ruby module written in plain english.
>
> I would be happy to start a discussion on that topic and welcome any
> input on what the alternatives would be to do this?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Laurent
>
> PS: I am now convinced that Ruby is ideal for teaching computer
> programming to children, the next step is to have something similar to
> the Squeak Environment (http://www.squeak.org).

This has been my interest for the past year or so and my 12 yr old son
and I have been working on it for a while. In fact, if selected, we will be
presenting our work at RubyConf 2004. I will definitely like to collaborate
on writing an environment that is similar to the Etoys component of Squeak.
One of the ways to do this, I think, is to build a bridge between Squeak
and Ruby. There are quite a few experts who are well versed in both these
langs and I am sure they can help us through it. I think Ruby fits well
into the "Constructivist" model of learning and I will be dedicating my
efforts
to support this claim. I have some other projects which are on my plate
right now, so I will be able to contribute only after July.

Let me know what you think.
-- shanko