Alan Kay is best known for his early
pioneering work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical
user interface design. The OLPC computers (little green XO1 laptops you have perhaps seen Bill Kerr, Tony Forster or myself lugging around) includes Alan Kay's Smalltalk / Squeak / eToys environment, built around Python. You can tinker with this using Sugar on a Stick.<br>
<br>From my observations of his contributions to the OLPC
project, Alan is always emphasizing that computing not as an end in
itself, but
as a vehicle for learning
how to learn. The computer revolution is yet to really start happening.<br><br>From the IAEP mailing list I have read that supplies of the first printing of the book "Points of View -- a tribute to Alan Kay" were depleted less than six hours after the announcement. A second book printing is available in return for a small and worthy charity donation. A copy of the entire book in PDF is available for download, for free,
from the same page. For details just visit:
<a href="http://vpri.org/pov" target="_blank">http://vpri.org/pov</a><br><div style="" class="gmail_quote">
<br>
<blockquote style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote"><i><b>Points of View</b></i> is a collection of
previously-unpublished essays written to
celebrate Alan Kay's 70th birthday. Twenty-nine luminaries from
diverse disciplines
contributed original material for this book.
<br></blockquote><br>Important stuff for ICT educators, check out the book. :-)<br><br>-- <br></div>Roland Gesthuizen - ICT Coordinator - Westall Secondary College<br><a href="http://www.westallsc.vic.edu.au">http://www.westallsc.vic.edu.au</a><br>
<br>"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has." --Margaret Mead<br>