[Etoys] What now ?

[Karl Ramberg]

Hilaire Fernandes wrote:
> 2009/1/10 Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de>:
>   
>> On 10.01.2009, at 14:18, Karl Ramberg wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> Hi,
>>> hearing the news that much of the Sugar dev team is fired I now wonder
>>> if there is any point in working on Sugar integration anymore. I have
>>> started on a JournalMorph where one could obtain pictures and sounds
>>> etc. from the Journal to link in or import into a project, but now I
>>> have slight doubts about if there is any use for such a thing ?
>>> Do you guys have any thoughts on the future ?
>>>       
>> OLPC is *not* abandoning Sugar. On the contrary, Sugar is becoming
>> available not only on the XO but on more Linux distributions, too.
>>     
>
> I don't buy on that think Sugar on Linux.
> Not only to develop educative software for linux you have to be very
> motivated (tiny user base), and I know that for years of personal
> involvement as a developer to promote linux for education, but then
> you will still have to be even more motivited to port to Sugar because
> you will have to adapt your software for an even smaller user base in
> linux, and for benefice not obvious for me, as an educator. From a
> developer point of view it looks to me as fragmentation and not
> exciting at all.
> I prefer the very comforable Smalltalk based world to write
> application I know can communicate easily with each other.
> Don´t forget that if you want developer to buy and invest on it, they
> need something back in return. Developers do not grow like mushroom. A
> few years ago, I personally invest resources on Smalltalk because I
> saw great possibilities of innovation, this is what I got back in
> return.
>
> May be Etoys was not capable to sell itself as this underneath thing
> to develop on top of it educative activities. See for example how
> ungood is the DrGeo shipment for XO, an interactive artifact
> developped on Smalltalk.
>
> Karl, I think your contribution for kids around the world could be
> very valuable if you could develop interactive artifacts as the ones I
> mentioned earlier
>  http://blog.ofset.org/hilaire/index.php?post/2008/05/01/Operational-thinking
>
> Whatever the host, whatever the UI, they can use it, and it is what
> matter first.
One of my main issues with Logo was that the artifacts created could not 
be used further on, they where drawings, not objects.
I would like to design a cool spaceship in Logo and then use that in a 
space game, so that the Logo drawing would be a beginning of a bigger 
project, not the end of one. Squeak can do this. This is what make it 
exiting for me. Squeak have quite a few rough edges but most of them are 
approachable and solvable.

As for learning environments I started out on C64 computers and found 
them totally captivating and spent countless hours on them. But I 
realize I'm not a average student and a C64 would be a brick for most 
people. They where quite perfect for me and the possibilities seemed 
countless and when people got all exited over IBM pc's I could not 
understand them, PC seemed dull and unimaginative.

Karl







Karl

I watched a