Welcome, and let's start planning!

[WendyPetti@xxxx]

Hello, everyone! 

(I am delighted to say that I am writing to at least 12 people besides 
myself, which delights me, considering that this group was established 
approximately 12 hours ago. I'm expecting more members shortly, since most 
of the original people who expressed an interest in a cybercourse have not 
yet signed on.)

I think everyone should feel free just to plunge in and say what they can 
offer... and if you already have articles or newsletters which you have 
written for the benefit of your students' parents, for instance, and you 
think they might contain helpful ideas, please send them our way!

Jeff, you have already made an incredibly useful contribution in your 
information about question and answer. I consider myself a "near-expert" in 
MicroWorlds, and yet the example you gave is one which had me entirely 
stumped. Even if we do nothing else in the cybercourse but offer our own 
specific troubleshooting tips such as this one, it would be a valuable 
resource.

I don't think we necessarily have to wait until we've assembled an entire 
course, from beginner to expert level, before we start posting our helpful 
information. Maybe we can just start posting what we've got, and continue to 
fill in the gaps and refine it as we go. We don't need to announce it to the 
world at large until we think we've got something fairly coherent, but we 
could at least be helping a select group of MicroWorlds users (i.e., 
ourselves), as we go along.

That raises the question of hosting logistics. I am open to any and all 
ideas, and here is one from me which I will readily abandon if someone has a 
better idea:

I have my web hosting at a site which gives me up to 8 gigs of file transfer 
per month without incurring extra charges. I am using 2 - 3 gigs per month 
for my Math Cats site, so I have 5+ gigs "to spare," at least for now. I 
could set up a separate area for this cybercourse. I would not establish a 
link from Math Cats to this area; we'd just use it to build the course. When 
it is finished, either we could move the whole course to a site of its own 
(and we could agree to share the web-hosting and domain name registration 
costs), or we could leave it where it is developed, or we could move it to 
another Logo-related site. For instance, I don't know if the Logo Foundation 
would be interested in hosting it, but that might lend it some "legitimacy" 
and universality... sort of like neutral Logo turf. Or perhaps the LCSI 
folks, the developers of MicroWorlds, would be happy to host it. We would 
want to clearly credit each contributor for each portion of the course. We 
do have to be aware that if we want to continue to update the course after 
(hypothetically) moving it, this would be more difficult logistically if we 
moved it somewhere (such as the Logo Foundation or www.microworlds.com) where 
none of us have any special access privileges for changing file content. 

We would also want to clarify who would own the copyright to the material. I 
am assuming that we would each like to feel that we own the copyright for the 
portions we each contribute. Would this mean that we could also each post 
our own portions on our own websites, whether or not these portions were also 
included in the cybercourse in another location? If we ever turned this 
course into a published book and sold it, would we share the royalties in 
proportion to our contributions? (Or should we not even think about things 
like that at this point? I ask only because I think a printed book on 
MicroWorlds is sorely needed; I have been unimpressed with the few offerings 
available so far.)

Another logistical question is: which version of MicroWorlds are we going to 
use in screenshots? There are certainly substantial differences between MW 
2.03 and MW Pro in terms of layout and operation. There are visual and 
slight functional differences between the PC and Mac versions. Or should we 
provide links on the table of contents page so that the user can choose the 
preferred version and platform, and then provide different versions of the 
course for each of these choices?

I'm sure that is more than enough questions for the moment! I hope you weigh 
in with your opinions.

And by the way, I've written to Dale separately about possible 
project-loading difficulties at Math Cats, but I would appreciate it if you 
would let me know privately-- not on this forum, where it is really 
off-topic, but by e-mailimg me at

wendypetti@xxxx 

--if you have experienced any difficulties loading the projects he mentioned 
or any others. (Of course you would need the MicroWorlds plug-in installed 
first.) Those specific URLs are:

http://www.mathcats.com/microworlds/polygonmaker.html
http://www.mathcats.com/microworlds/symmetry.html

Thanks for joining us, and I look forward to your contributions!

Wendy Petti
wendypetti@xxxx