[Edu-sig] Excited about Crunchy Frog

[Andre Roberge]

On 8/1/06, kirby urner <kirby.urner at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm excited about Crunchy Frog (or whatever Andre chooses to call it),
> because it signals a growing trend to switch away from dead tree text
> books, and move to dynamic content, i.e. the web.

I'm excited too. ;-)

> Kay's big objection, that children have unequal rights as publishers,
> is still a concern.
>

I'm not familiar with this objection from Kay, but, interpreting these
words on my own, outside of the original context...,  I think this
concern might be very soon a thing of the past.

>From what I've read, it's a distinct possibility that Python may
"soon" run in gecko based browser (e.g. Firefox).  It might then
become possible (easy?) to write a Firefox extension that would embed
"The Application Formerly Known as Crunchy Frog" within it.

I've heard of many fairly young children having learned some basic
html.  Imagine them sending an email to their friends/relatives with
something like:

Hey, have a look at what I did:

<pre title="editor">
Some python code here
</pre>

[The knowledgeable reader will recognize that the following will embed
the Python code within a "crunchyfied" html page, ready to be
executed, simply by pressing a button.]

I bet it wouldn't be long that kids would come up with Really Neat
Things (tm) that would amaze their friends & relatives.  Really Neat
Things would spread like chain-letters do nowadays. The average adult
would feel left out.

Publishing, in the electronic age, can take various forms...

André