product environment for educational apps

Hi All,

New to the list. Have several questions that Dan suggested you would have
great insight.

I'm researching better ways to help kids experientially learn (K-8 primarily
but up to college is planned). I have not yet found a platform or system
better than etoys. But, etoys is not quite a production platform. And, I
would like platform/system to be accessible everywhere. I've also
contemplated deploying Django and writing the apps in Python.

My questions: are there better alternatives? Could you offer avenues for
further research into a production system? Would the lively-kernel be a good
alternative? Or will it continue to be a prototyping system? Could I start a
demo on lively-kernel and expect I could port it to a production environment
(that is if lively-kernel or facsimile is planned for production.)

Thanks much!
brad

--
Brad Fuller [hidden email]

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Etoys is in real use in real schools all over the place. I use it as a replacement for HyperCard at times myself. If you can be more specific about what's making you nervous about Etoys, that might help folks steer you in the right direction. If you pull up the preferences browser via the halo on the Etoys desktop, search for etoyfriendly, and disable it, you'll unlock the underlying Smalltalk programming environment (Squeak.) Squeak is *definitely* production (or maybe "product") worthy.

Another system which is a bit easier to learn, but generally less powerful, is Scratch.

Lively Kernel is a research system, so it's less likely to be "product like" than those two if that's what you're looking for.

On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 4:27 PM, Brad Fuller <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi All,

New to the list. Have several questions that Dan suggested you would have great insight.

I'm researching better ways to help kids experientially learn (K-8 primarily but up to college is planned). I have not yet found a platform or system better than etoys. But, etoys is not quite a production platform. And, I would like platform/system to be accessible everywhere. I've also contemplated deploying Django and writing the apps in Python.

My questions: are there better alternatives? Could you offer avenues for further research into a production system? Would the lively-kernel be a good alternative? Or will it continue to be a prototyping system? Could I start a demo on lively-kernel and expect I could port it to a production environment (that is if lively-kernel or facsimile is planned for production.)

Thanks much!
brad

--
Brad Fuller [hidden email]

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Casey Ransberger

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Thanks for the reply, Casey,

The particular issue I have with squeak is it's issue of accessing the Internet securely - school IT departments have an issue - they don't know who/what/ squeak is and going through the red tape is a potential problem.  And the web-browser plugin was always a bit of an issue as well. I don't know if anyone is working on the plugin for web browsers... but I want to deploy for easy inclusion in a browser... or at the very least connect to the net.

Since no one has commented, shall I assume Squeak browser plugin is a no go?

I don't usually cross-post, but I've included this msg on the Squeak-dev ML since you advocate the use of etoys in a production environment (which I admit I haven't actually defined what "production" means)

thanks again,
brad

On 3/21/2013 3:08 AM, Casey Ransberger wrote:

Etoys is in real use in real schools all over the place. I use it as a replacement for HyperCard at times myself. If you can be more specific about what's making you nervous about Etoys, that might help folks steer you in the right direction. If you pull up the preferences browser via the halo on the Etoys desktop, search for etoyfriendly, and disable it, you'll unlock the underlying Smalltalk programming environment (Squeak.) Squeak is *definitely* production (or maybe "product") worthy.

Another system which is a bit easier to learn, but generally less powerful, is Scratch.

Lively Kernel is a research system, so it's less likely to be "product like" than those two if that's what you're looking for.

On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 4:27 PM, Brad Fuller <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi All,

New to the list. Have several questions that Dan suggested you would have great insight.

I'm researching better ways to help kids experientially learn (K-8 primarily but up to college is planned). I have not yet found a platform or system better than etoys. But, etoys is not quite a production platform. And, I would like platform/system to be accessible everywhere. I've also contemplated deploying Django and writing the apps in Python.

My questions: are there better alternatives? Could you offer avenues for further research into a production system? Would the lively-kernel be a good alternative? Or will it continue to be a prototyping system? Could I start a demo on lively-kernel and expect I could port it to a production environment (that is if lively-kernel or facsimile is planned for production.)

Thanks much!
brad

--
Brad Fuller [hidden email]

_______________________________________________
lively-kernel mailing list
[hidden email]
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--
Casey Ransberger

_______________________________________________
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[hidden email]
http://lists.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/listinfo/lively-kernel

-- 
Brad Fuller [hidden email]

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On 2013-03-22, at 01:36, Brad Fuller <[hidden email]> wrote:

> On 3/21/2013 8:31 AM, Brad Fuller wrote:
>> Thanks for the reply, Casey,
>>
>> The particular issue I have with squeak is it's issue of accessing the Internet securely - school IT departments have an issue - they don't know who/what/ squeak is and going through the red tape is a potential problem.  And the web-browser plugin was always a bit of an issue as well. I don't know if anyone is working on the plugin for web browsers... but I want to deploy for easy inclusion in a browser... or at the very least connect to the net.
>
> Since no one has commented, shall I assume Squeak browser plugin is a no go?

The plugin still works, but it has become increasingly harder to maintain as desktop browsers evolve. E.g. on the Mac it works only in Firefox at the moment, because it has not been updated for 64 bit yet.

- Bert -

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