References ⁄ Squeak Community
Squeak Community
Impara is a member of
Squeak e.V. Deutschland 
.
Squeak is a multi media authoring tool which is OpenSource and freely downloadable. The Squeak inventors, a group of
researchers and developers centred around Alan Kay, had the vision of an environment that helps kids of all ages to be
creative with the computer. Naturally the different user groups, kids, newbies as well as experienced programmers need their environments offering
support according to the user’s abilities.
Squeak etoys especially aims at children, but is also suitable for creative (adult) non-programmers. Objects created by
the painting tool, but also every other part of the system come to life using the visual etoys tile scripting. It
already has been very successfully used in schools all over the world. After a short introduction children are capable
of achieving simple things in Squeak. They can draw objects, create animation, and add sound effects. They are
playfully exploring new ideas.
One example for using Squeak etoys as part of a lesson is the simulation of a lunar lander. At first it seems to be
just a simple video game, but its creation requires a lot of physical background knowledge: speed, acceleration, and
gravity need to be considered and applied.
But Squeak also is a powerful and rich system for the adult expert user and programmer. Squeak is basically a
Smalltalk dialect and includes development tools like compiler, debugger, browser and more. Squeak is highly portable
and runs bit-identical on wide range of OS’s and hardware platforms: desktops, servers, PDAs as well as specialized
hardware.
As a part of the Squeak OpenSource community Impara actively supports the development and distribution of Squeak and
Squeak etoys. Amongst others we co-produced a 15 language subtitled version of the "Squeakers" documentation and
initiated the translation of etoys books.
