Greetings,
My name is Ben Chess. I'm a student at the University of Michigan,
working for the University as part of an organization called HICE,
Highly Interactive Computing in Education. Our overall goal is to
research, develop, and deploy methods for technology to be used in the
k-12 classroom. We consist of computer engineers, information
specialists, curriculum writers, etc.
My particular team has been focusing on handheld computers, mostly
Palms. We have several projects, a suite of programs. The suite is
nicknamed "the Cool Dozen", 12 of the most useful applicable Palm
programs for classrooms. One of these 12 programs is called "FlingIt."
Currently at 1.0, it is also a offline web reader. It has a high focus
on simplicity. We install a menu in the menubar of Netscape and
Internet Explorer so that kids can download the page they're currently
viewing to the Palm instantaneously, without having to do a HotSync.
While it may seem like a long run for a short slide, the time and
complexity spared is what really makes a difference to teachers with 25+
kids in the classroom all using the same program. AvantGo, for example,
is totally impossible.
The 1.0 version of FlingIt only supports text viewing. We'd like to
have the ability to view images and fill out forms. Another project
we're working on, called HandySheets, lets teachers design worksheets as
web pages that will transfer to the Palm to be filled out and back
again, ala AvantGo.
We've decided to help develop Plucker to be our next FlingIt. Plucker
is exactly what we've been looking for, and with a few additional
features we believe it would be a valuable tool in a classroom setting.
I am one of two programmers for this project. My focus is on the Mac
platform, while one other individual focuses on Windows. There are
three main things that we would like to add to Plucker: MacOS 8/9
compatibility, form support, and additional simplicity. We want Plucker
to be as simple as selecting a menu item from the browser menu bar,
turning on your palm and inserting it into the cradle. We want kids to
be able to fill out forms on the Palm then have them uploaded to a
server on the next computer/palm exchange.
Admittedly, this is my first open source project. I understand the
terms of the GPL and I've made sure that the rest of HICE does as well.
They've given me the go-ahead, so here I am. Thanks, it's great to be
here. :)
Given the opportunity, I'd love to have the code I write a part of the
real Plucker source code. Here's a small sticky part: in the classroom
we'll be titling it FlingIt. All due credit will be given, of course,
but the name FlingIt has already developed a significant amount of
recognition for teachers across the country and so we've made the
decision to stick with the name. I do not want to fork the code
whatsoever; it will be a last-minute cosmetic change.
Anyways, I thought I should let you know that we're here. If you're
curious about HICE, we're at www.hice.org.
Thank you,
Ben Chess
