World: r4wp

The approach needs to provide tools so easy you can layout an app 
as easily as making a powerpoint presentation, but with the power 
underneath to do absolutely anything.

I'd be willing to bet I could net $100000 next year teaching REBOL, 
no matter what happens with the language and tools.  Just using them 
as they stand.

I already know I can sell the benefits.

In a classroom, imagine if the "powerpoint" allowed students to connect 
their smart phones to the presentation and control aspects of a weather 
simulation, or control a point on a Cartesian coordinate plane.  
The trick is to make this so easy to do that teachers can do it like 
they make power points.

Some teachers will want to do more and they will begin to learn how 
to write scripts.

Styles like a Cartesian plane could be added as someone makes them. 
 This is how hypercard became so popular.  People used hypercard 
who never made a card of thier own.

That's analagous to using a dialect.

With smartboards in most classrooms, the possibilities are really 
astounding.

Yes it is.  Now we're getting a bit technical in a learning sciences 
sense.  One of the things that makes a classroom such a rich learning 
environment is the presence of resources that mediate learning. They 
provide a medium through which learning activities can take place.

I think a little funding would go a long, long way towards bringing 
REBOL back up to speed, and back into a relevant and competitive 
position.

Chalkboards, textbooks, paper and pencil, etc. are all technologies 
that can mediate learning.

Spreadsheets, calculators, and lab equipment have been used effectively.

Powerpoint is one of those things that really doesn't do much mediating 
because it lacks interaction.  All it needs is a REBOL back end to 
connect the students and make it interactive, especially if it can 
also be used in small groups.

Yet everybody uses it.

More of this sort of discussion needs to take place in this community. 
 So much of the past few years here has been dominated by quibling 
about language details, instead of business potential.

The key to all successful mediation seems to be interactivity, the 
ability to "relate" through the medium.

REBOL provides a NATURAL LANGUAGE medium. We just need some tools 
to leverage it.  Microsoft has Office.  Maybe REBOL needs Classroom.

Yes, and a REBOL back end would make the next "tougher" layer easier 
to dig into.

REBOL can be as high level as needed - more so than *any other language.

There would be room for an "Algebra dialect"

The livecode guys are working towards understanding the "natural 
language" idea, but they're a long way from achieving what Carl already 
accomplished with REBOL.

Like Hypercard, the App becomes a "window" into the language.  AltME 
has this potential, Presenter.r had this potential, Layout.r has 
this potential.

VID and other similar dialects had the greatest potential.

The kicker would be quality formative assessment tools that would 
give teachers and students feedback on how they are doing.

But the Apps the make the language accessible were never made.  I 
have had long discussions about this before at RT.

Scot and Nick, Rebol has been my secret weapon. Despite trying to 
get others to look at it.

I think that could be the case for many more people.

And I with you Scot on wanting an IOS version for precisely for the 
ed market.

I don't think much has to change.  REBOL just needs to be updated, 
the look modernized, and ALL the modern platforms supported.

It's original purpose and benefits are still totally values.

values -> valid

I had funding for an ISP business model for RT, not a direction they 
wanted to go.  I also successfuly pitched the Internet Operating 
System Idea to a major ISP, again RT wanted to go in a different 
direction.  I have discussed the Classroom idea before but never 
been able to pitch it.

Man, I envy the education market. I wish I could work in it :-/

BrianH, you would and should be a god there!

RT made terrible marketing and business decisions.  There is absolutely 
no reason why REBOL shouldn't be a big success.  RT just didn't make 
it happen.

I could be in a position quite soon to revive discussions about Classroom. 
 Local WiFi distributed network.

Now that it's open source, anyone can pick it up.  Personally, I 
think Doc has all the right ideas with Red.

They're only terrible in retrospect. Nobody knew back then that its 
entire business model would die. We know now, but thet didn't know 
back then.

I knew.

And vocalized them clearly.

RT Partly didn't, but also partly couldn't.  There were customers 
to support making it hard to take on big players, even if with a 
possibily high ROI.

I hope Doc has the technical chops to pull it off, because his head 
is in the right place, and the right perspective about the market.

Well, that's where Rebol was getting all their money so I suppose 
it seemed like a great idea at the time.

I won't say more about the opportunites that were there because it 
isn't my story to tell.

The people chosen at the critical stage to run the company were not 
a good fit, unfortunately.

A lot of people said a lot of stuff on both sides. And I meant die 
on a societal level, not just for RT. And I meant back before 2000. 
A lot of people thought they knew stuff back then, but most of that 
knowledge was really belief. For one thing, back then people in the 
free software camp thought free software would succeed because of 
principles - very few knew that those principles would be irrelevant 
and that practical considerations would make it succeed for other 
reasons.

Happens all the time. We are very fortunate that Carl continued the 
work as long as he did.

Yup

That's true Scot :)

Agreed.  So I still have quite a few ideas, though my funding sources 
have long since disappeared.