[Edu-sig] On the front page

[Arthur Siegel]

>To be fair, Alice is a 3D world-building tool specifically designed to be
>usable with as little training as possible by non-engineers and
>non-mathematicians. The research that I've seen around the use of Alice by
>students relates primarily to interface and virtual reality.

I have one more thing to add on the subject, I'm afraid.

To make sure I wasn't nuts, I went into the childrens section of a mall
software
store and found at least 3 products designed to do very much what Alice
does.
3D world-building tools - animation and sound - for children.  One was
Disney's.
I didn't buy any, but I will assume that they are surviving in the
market-place
and kid's actually use them. Which is great.

So it is not good enoguh, in my mind, to justify Alice's significance that
it does
3D world-building simple enough for children. There's alot out there that
does that.

Alice does take it a step further by employing Python scripting, true.  But
if someone
else has a design whereby they have a macro capability attached to a
joystick, let's say,
and avoids scripting - isn't that an 'improvement' in design, depending on
your goals.

If you see my point.

ART