World: r3wp

Maybe you can use Rebol and  try to implement a curriculum similar 
to HtDP.  

The Structure and Interpretation of the Computer Science Curriculum 
http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/fffk-htdp-vs-sicp-journal/

My preconception is that adding the graphical layer complicates things 
too much 

 -- A valid concern in many environments, but VID is great, and simple, 
 for simple things.


view layout [button "Show help" [alert "Sorry, I can't help you"]]


No need to manage the event loop, no redraw handlers (until you need 
to get into them of course), just put an action block after a face 
style and it binds to it automatically.

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.

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Did that "online school" that was talked about ever get tested? How 
did it work out?

I never heard anymore about it.

Could not find a free tool that allowed al the features we wanted.

The best we found was TeamSpeak for Voice.

It needs Chat (writte), Talk (Spoken), Video, and several Whiteboards, 
and a way to view somoeone's computer screen.

We use TeamSpeak all the time.

Tell me what is out there, and I will get this started.

Google Desktop has a plugin that makes GTalk able to make a chatroom, 
and another that allows you to share part of your screen with someone 
on your buddy list.  I don't know how well they work, thouhg

though*, as I never found anyone else to test it with*

Reichart, can you list the ones that you tried, but failed your criteria?

Can you tell me specifically what I have to learn (master) in Rebol 
(mainly instructions) to code these projects:

Project 1: Read a web page given a URL, find some data in the page, 
append it to a file on disk. Read the given disk file et show the 
data on screen.

Project 1;  Check http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/documentation.r?script=weblinks.r

Project 2: Establish a two way connection using tcp/ip and save the 
history on disk.

Project 2; check
http://rebol.net/cookbook/recipes/0028.html

btiffin, for project 1: very interesting. tks

For project 2, it seems to use View... any suggestion without View?

Also (in general) check
http://rebol.com/docs/core23/rebolcore.html
in particular load and save  and  read  and write commands
http://rebol.com/docs/core23/rebolcore-12.html#section-4

I'm looking for a LEARNING MAP that could be used as a fast track 
to learning to build interesting little applications.

There are so many options (modifiers) to Rebol instructions that 
it isn't immediatly clear what core essentials should be learned 
first, or what general structure of Rebol syntax should be learned 
to become effective rapidly.

Yeah, that is kinda in the progess of being built.  There are some 
awesome resources
but they need to be tracked down sometimes....

The cookbook  http://rebol.net/cookbookbeing one starting point.

rebol.org  has a lot of scripts, but it requires reading code a lot 
of the time....
The REBOL Viewtop  (desktop command at console)
    REBOL Folder ->Tools->Word Browser is not bad for options

I'm sure, as the pros keep saying, that once you have learned Rebol, 
it is very fast to code applications. The problem is that it might 
be that to get to that point takes quite a while

I can read the code. The thing is I have yet to get to a point where 
I can sit down and start thinking code to do things.

REBOL/Core and /View has builtin  help  as well...but it can be terse

I'm looking for a set of basic essentials, of sort, that can be taught 
to a beginner so that he/she can start coding useful stuff in, say, 
3 to 5 hours.

rebol.com has some tutorials...
http://www.rebol.com/docs/quick-start.html

My skills now are: reading/understanding the code; tweaking code 
to suit my purposes. That's about it.

Read those a couple of times. I teach C++. Know a dozen more languages, 
including Prolog.

If you don't mind reading code...exploring rebol.org is good, but 
can be time consuming.

Follow the links off rebol.org Articles page
to Brett Handley's site...
http://www.codeconscious.com/rebol/

To come to the point of teaching Rebol, I will have to find some 
structure in the language that permits me to extract the "basic essentials" 
in view to start students to code in a relatively short time.

ok. I will. Tks.

Enjoy...REBOL, being light, is pretty deep wide and somewhat 'hidden' 
 :)

yes, that is a problem as far as learning goes.

Like a Zen koan ;-)

Yep, very much.  But efforts are afoot to alleviate this.  If you 
know french, those books
get good reviews.

The truth is there, in some senseless sentence, but you have to self-destruct 
to get to it.

Yes, I know French. Some day soon I'll dish out the money.

Not sure they offer some "fast track" though

I've never read them...only the reviews.  :)

:-)

Here's a nice tutorial.. http://musiclessonz.com/rebol.html

I second Brock's suggestion  :)

I hadn't seen this one. Based on View? I was assuming it to be simpler 
to stick with Rebol/core. Maybe not.  This one seems real good at 
a glance. Tks Brock. And tks btiffin for all the pointers.

view is core for all except gui. + some commands ending with -thru, 
'read-thru and such. they are the same as the short form, but use 
a cache.