Linux and its HyperStudiolessness

["Ian Bicking" <bickiia@earlham.edu>]

I'm part of a group that's trying to make Linux more suitable for 
education <http://www.seul.org/edu>.  It's a matter of pulling it up 
by its bootstraps in a way, because companies won't write or port 
much educational software without many schools using Linux, but 
Linux won't be used in many schools without some software.  If 
you've tried it, you'll know that pulling yourself up by your 
bootstraps is quite hard, impossible really, which is why it's such 
an inappropriate metaphor when used optimistically.  But we hope 
to do better than the metaphor implies.

Of course, one of the big applications in schools is HyperStudio.  
Getting a port could prove difficult, all the more so now that 
Knowledge Adventure owns it, so short of having HyperStudio we'd 
like to have something that provides the same benefits.

What we'd like to know is what are the most important and loved 
aspects of HyperStudio.  Do you like that there's only the three 
types of objects, and the simplicity that implies?  Do you like that 
there's lots of teachers that use HyperStudio that you can trade 
ideas with?  (hmm... that would be hard to copy)  What are the 
best parts?


Right now we're looking at Squeak <http://www.squeak.org> with 
quite a bit of interest -- it's a multiplatform programming 
environment which is moving towards making itself simpler and 
more accessible.  We'd like to help them towards this goal, and 
your input could help us figure out how to do that.

Thanks for you time.

--
Ian Bicking
bickiia@earlham.edu -- http://www.cs.earlham.edu/~bickiia