Principles

• To have a lot of systems -- models -- for the users to experiment with.

• Set the things simple enough so you can iterate often for a small additional cost.

• GUI design principle : Doing (body centered) with Images (visually centered) makes Symbols (symbolically centered).

• Touching is grounding, seeing is recognizing, language is understanding.

• Bent the GUI to the task the user needs to conduct.

• Knowledge Models & Users : parameterized it (model), study it (hello Smalltalk), modify it (hello again Smalltalk), then create new one.

Adele's quotes

Extracted from her presentation at Camp Smalltalk 50th Anniversary.

• The context of a learning environment based on modeling is as much about understanding how an existing model works, as it is constructing a new model. As a consequence, the ability to read an implementation matters -- Hello Smalltalk.

• Smalltalk kit, specific set of interacting objects and the ways in which those objects relate to one another, and how they can be accessed and refined. I also use the term *modeling rather than programming, since, as you now know, creating, sharing, and challenging the veracity of models comprises a particular approach to learning

• So an important quality of this kit is that it is always working, always displaying what the model represents (on Programming by Rehearsal).

• What also makes this kit so interesting is its view that constraints, whether equations to be solved or relations to be maintained, can express partial information, can be combined with other constraints, can be general purpose in the sense of their properties, are declarative, and can be searched and experimented with. So, these represent an important class of base objects we would need in a modeling environment (on ThingLab kit).

• It would be a mistake to assume that there is just one virtual world of simulation as generality often proves to make things harder for beginners (on Alternate Reality kit).

• An important point made by our teaching experience is that, because we expect the learner to extend a model through programming new methods, not just by parameter modification, it is critical that some outcome (error) that the learner mistakenly creates does not get explained (debugger) using vocabulary outside (i.e. system class) of what has been already been introduced (on Simulation kit).