Teaching programming and authoring tools

[Doug Loss <dloss@csrlink.net>]

As you can see, I'm back from vacation and I've read through the mailing list 
messages from the past two plus weeks.

I'm very glad to see two things.  First, the evident interest in developing a 
version of Logo to teach programming in lower grades.  From the discussion I 
think you folks are well on the way to getting something started.  Let's not 
let it drop now!

Second, Scott Raney's (and MetaCard's) interest in encouraging the use of 
MetaCard in developing a HyperStudio cognate for Linux.  Scott, you sound very 
willing to support someone in working on this and possibly in figuring out some 
flexible (or at least not onerous) licensing system for educational use.  Ian, 
you seem interested in MetaCard, and you probably have more of a feel for 
HyperStudio than the rest of us.  What do you think, and how do you think 
seul-edu and MetaCard might be able to work together on this?

While most of us on this list are advocates for open source software wherever
possible, I think we'd welcome commercial products that "play nicely" in the 
Linux world.  That's not to say that we wouldn't also welcome OSS products that
compete in the same niches, but that we recognize that there's nothing 
inherently wrong with commercial software so long as it doesn't attempt to 
cripple public standards.

Toward the same end of developing authoring tools for Linux, it looks as though 
we may have a face-to-face meeting with the Squeak development team sometime 
toward the end of November, at which time we can see how seul-edu can work 
with them on their stated goal of making Squeak useable and useful for 
everyone from first-graders to experienced programmers.

Well' I'll stop rambling now and get back to being jet-lagged.  Keep up the 
good work.

Doug Loss            Always acknowledge a fault.  This will throw
dloss@csrlink.net    those in authority off their guard and give
(570) 326-3987       you the opportunity to commit more.
                        Mark Twain