Re: Squeak as HyperCard

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

> Although I don't think explicitly mentioned, I've always figured that
> seul-edu was directed at education from birth until entry to college. 
> We are concentrating on scholastic education at the moment, but I don't
> consider that our only area of exploration.  College and university
> education is such that many if not most of the available end-user Linux
> applications would be educationally applicable.  It's at levels below
> that that specific administrative and pedagogical software are needed.

That's what I figured.  But it might make sense to make that 
explicit... is there a seul-edu manifesto or anything?

> > Basic should definately be included on the list.  Though no one
> > may actually want to stand behind it as a language, it does have a
> > history in education and there are several implementations for
> > Linux.
> > 
> Much as we would prefer it to be otherwise, you're right.  Any thoughts
> on which Basics are most useful in an educational setting?

I've only played with Basic on Linux because a couple 
implementations are included with Debian, and it's so darn easy to 
install them that I could hardly resist.  There's a lot of applications 
installed on my machine that I've never used...

I could look them over, assuming no one else has strong opinions 
or experience with Basic on Linux.  I'd be surprised if anyone did...

There'd be a couple questions: compatibility with other Basic 
implementations (GW-Basic/BasicA, QuickBasic, PowerBasic...) 
so people could port old programs they might have made; language 
features along the lines of graphics and other interfaces; and the 
theoretical niceness of the language, which Basic has always been 
poor at, but in which there is a lot of variation (for instance, line 
numbers).

> > Then there's potential directions in languages, like Boxer and
> > ToonTalk, which deserve pointers from seul-edu even if they can't
> > be run on Linux.
> > 
> We'll have to think carefully about how to point to things that can't be
> run on Linux.  We don't want to create confusion by including such on a
> page of Linux educational programming languages without some obvious and
> unambiguous indication that these are meant as examples of possible
> directions for Linux to go rather than languages useable on Linux.

I think it would be good to have two sets of information on 
languages -- one directed towards teachers, another directed 
towards (potential) developers.  The one towards teachers would be 
more like a survey of current programs available, while towards 
developers you'd want to talk about potential directions and 
designs.

Probably mirrored in the difference between current 
projects/programs and prospective projects.



--
Ian Bicking <bickiia@earlham.edu>