Re: Micah's menu program

[EAMorical@aol.com]

Micah responds:
Doug writes: 
>> As many of you know, Micah Yoder wrote a menuing program designed to host
>> educational programs (Micah, correct me where I get this wrong).  It was to
>> keep track of the student's progress in the various programs listed, and to
>> use that information to lock out or enable options on the system.  For
>> example, access to a reward game program might not be available till a
>> certain level of proficiency was displayed in some educational program.
 
>Yes, that's correct.

It looks like it could be used to select the correct level of learning for
each individual kid. Too hard and it makes it easier, too easy and it makes it
harder. Also it could provide a consistant user interface across programs.
Thought, what about Unicode support. There are non-English speaking kids here
with over a hundred different native languages. I'm going to have to ask the
teacher how they deal with that.
 
>> As I recall, Micah had the program to a point where it needed just a bit
more
>>  work to be useable.  Micah, can you let us know what remains to be done to
>> your program? I'm sure I speak for more than just myself when I say if we
can
 
>OK, the menu needs to be prettied up.  Basically all I've done is write
>a Perl/Tk shell that lets you select an option.  My interface specified
>an icon and a description for each program - the menu currently doesn't
>display either.
 
>And the thing about rewarding users after they've reached a goal still
>needs to be written.
 
>And we need to figure out a whole bunch of permissions issues.  I
>intended to have an "education administrator", which would own the
>education launchpad and probably all the software under it.  It would
>probably run setuid so that the student couldn't mess with his own
>records.
 
>>  help we'll be happy to.  Also, what is the interface between the menuing
>> program and the hosted programs?  Maybe we can convince some other people
>>to
 
>There's a README file that specifies the interface.  For those who don't
>have the tarball, I just put it in my directory on cran. 
>~yoderm/edulp.tar  Grab it if you want!
 
>> start writing code to work with your menu.  I've been thinking about a
drill
>> and practice program for spelling, arithmetic, things like that.  It'd be
>> nice to get it to work with your menu.  A note for anyone else interested
in
 
>Yes, that's exactly the kind of thing I had in mind.

Bob