[Edu-sig] re-doing GvR in xturtle

[Scott Chapman]

Andre Roberge wrote:
> On 8/11/06, Scott Chapman <scott_list at mischko.com> wrote:
>> I'm beginning work on moving GvR into xturtle.
>>
>> The main reason I'm doing this is that I want to get over the language
>> limitations that GvR currently has.  (No variable assignment, etc.)
> 
> This is, in parts, why I designed RUR-PLE  
> (http://rur-ple.sourceforge.net/).
> RUR-PLE uses Python, instead of a Python-like language like GvR.  It
> also comes with more lessons than GvR does, but could use more.

I've downloaded RUR-PLE and played with it a bit also.  I simply assumed it 
had a limited language also.  Thanks very much for pointing this out!  I'll 
not bother with xturtle.

> I started developping Crunchy for that very purpose: to have a
> web-based version of RUR-PLE.  I still plan to do that, eventually...
> For the foreseeable future, Crunchy will continue to be developped to
> run locally, however with the ability of "fetching" tutorials located
> elsewhere on the web.  The work lately has focused on doing this part
> in a secure way. The next release (soon!) should be secure that way.
> 
> Until there's a way to sandbox Python (i.e. until Brett Cannon
> finishes his Ph.D.), it would probably be pointless to try to have
> Crunchy running somewhere on the web and have user "log" remotely into
> it to run an interactive session.

No doubt.  However I might be willing to deploy it on a student's own box 
(windows or linux) for them to use in the web environment.  Creating 
tutorials/tests in the web environment would be quite easy.  The results of 
tests could be sent to an on-line web server so the students could send me 
test results, questions, etc.  An ajax library implementing parts of this on 
my server might be the very useful.

It would be very cool to put an entire Crunchy Frog environment on a USB thumb 
drive with binaries that would work on Linux or Windows, probably including 
such things as Apache, Python, SQLite, and other useful tools.

If you could put it into a chroot jail, you could gain a modicum of security. 
  I haven't thought through what all would still be in "harms way" in that case.

I wonder if you could make a thumbdrive be a chroot jail? Probably not on 
Windows, but maybe on Linux.

> As far as I know, it has not been done (otherwise I would not be
> working on it the way I am).  If you want to contribute in any way
> (producing teaching materials, helping implementing browser-based
> animations, etc.), feel free to do it!

I'll let you know as I get further into it.  I'm home schooling my 3 children 
and hope to use this as the core of their curriculum.

Scott