The Market? (curry)

[Marty Billingsley]

curry <curry at pair.com> wrote:
>
> John Tenny wrote:
>
> >Who is the market for Rev ( and the needed books)? In early HC days,
> >teachers and kids were big users, with lots of folks starting there and
> >growing. It was an easy way for real novices to discover the joy of
> >controlling the computer and creatively thinking. But Rev is too
> >complex for kids in a classroom (not the individual curious kid, but
> >the group), and the navigation in, over, and around all the features,
> >documentation pockets, etc. is, from a newcomer's view, actually
> >terrible.
>
> I'm glad you got on the subject. I think Rev is the right way to do
> things and would like to see more people use it, but I'm already busy
> just trying to make products myself so haven't spent much time
> thinking about it. I think this is a good area that should be
> considered.
>
> Revolution is powerful enough for professional developers and
> dedicated hobbyists, and the interface and experience is probably
> best suited for them right now. But it's also intuitive enough for
> education and other users, and probably the support or third-party
> support for a smoother and easier interface for them needs to happen.

I agree that RR is intuitive enough for the education market.  John's
contention that RR is too complicated for kids in the classroom will
be tested when I migrate my HyperCard curriculum to RR this fall.
The intended audience is 8th graders.  We spend time using the
environment to explore ideas in programming, not just to create
multimedia presentations (that's what Hyperstudio is mostly used
for around here).  The issue I'm facing is trying to simplify the user
interface as much as possible for the students (i.e., tell them
what to ignore).  Wish I didn't have to do that....

What's missing is a good reference book for the student who is
pushing the envelope.  For HC I hand over Goodman's book and let
the students go nuts.  We need an RR equivalent!

<snip>

> To see what kind of smooth and easy interface they need, I think Rev
> and any third-parties should look at Hyperstudio's interface--it won
> a lot of the educational crowd coming from HC, and a lot of the
> reason was being at the right place at the right time with color and
> cross-platform, and they probably had good marketing, but the
> interface and paint tools, and the way to assign basic actions is
> very smooth and easy to use--a wonderful interface that sold people
> on the skin-deep basic features, and what lay under it--any type of
> advanced feature or custom scripting--wasn't all that intuitive or
> convenient from my point of view, but that didn't keep away any
> customers because that wasn't the point where people were sold.

Hyperstudio offered some wonderful advantages over HC when it
came out -- not the least of which was the chance to work with
color graphics and painting tools! -- but the disadvantages were
huge: the programming language is too difficult and inaccessible.
Plus, from my point of view, too much is automated.  For example,
I want my students to have to program the movement behind an
animation, not have the programming environment do it for them.
(RR isn't perfect in that respect, either.)  So we've stayed with
HC for the programming class, despite some raised eyebrows at using
such an "old-fashioned" program.

I've been hoping for a program that put Hyperstudio's nice
front end onto HyperTalk; RR isn't quite it, but it's a start.

As for my curriculum, from it will come a book of "recipes" for
the beginner, but they'll be pretty simple.  I don't plan to stay
within the limits of the free version of RR, even though the
program is a bit expensive for a school to buy (so is Hyperstudio;
HC had a site license deal that fitted our budget nicely).
The discussion of the book market has been interesting because my
"recipes" will easily translate into the sort of book that teachers
used to use with HC in the classroom.  The question is whether
any teachers will want to use RR in the classroom (and thus use --
and buy -- my book).

Anyone else in a school considering using RR?
  - marty

--
Marty Billingsley                                 "We are our choices...."
The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools                     - Sartre
marty at ucls.uchicago.edu