$$$ for Education software

[nowak@genesis.MCS.COM (Joseph Nowak)]

This letter is a follow-up to my first. I'm trying to get together 
shareware programmers and schools that will pay them.

"The market has stopped expanding, but there's still millions
of Apple IIgs's that need software. GS software that is."

"In education the Apple is usually a IIGS in IIe clothing."

"My GS can display all 7 colors. Oregon Trail anyone?"

"The GS can play sound? Really? Can it play songs too?"



If you program the GS, or can assemble multi-media presentations,
collect GIFs,SNDS or have access to midi equipment please read on:




The following paragraph is a quote from Geoff
in response to my first letter:

""What really needs to be done instead of
appealing to developers to make educational software (which has to be
done anyway), but also have the developers told how to make effective
educational software.  Most developers who make programs for the IIgs
aren't trained to make effective educational software.  And then the
correct question is what makes educational software effective?  Teachers
should get together and say what thay want the computer to do and the
goals of the program should be decided by the teachers.  Maybe I'm
getting further away from the orihinal point (since you mentioned "simple"
programs), but if nobody knows what needs to be made, then nothing will
get made.  This is especially true for the Apple II computer line since
developers won't make programs if they think there is a chance that there
will be no demand for it (as well as lack of distributor support and
other things like that).  The ideal situation is somehow get the ideas
for programs to developers which teachers have said that will work in a
classroom situation and then the developers in return can provide good
programs.  Most of the developers (if not all) may not be interested in
making educational software (that has to be considered too).""


I agree 100%!   What I'm asking is if there are programmers out there that are
interested in making software for the GS and //e?  If so, I'd like
to make an attempt at putting together a newsletter/catalog of programs for 
educators.  Not just programs, but collections too. Collections of MIDI
songs. Collections of Clip art. GIFs. Collections of digitized sounds.

What I'm NOT going to do is take shareware and re-distribute it,
but rather make a selection of software available for purchase, 
at shareware-like prices.  It would be like the shareware mail-order houses,
but I would collect the fee up front (visa/mc) and pay it to the author
 (just like a mail order distributor). HOWEVER, the customer would still
have a 30 day moneyback preview period.  And yes, some will abuse it, but not
as many that abuse shareware.  Most will like the software enough and
not bother with returns.

What I'm basically saying, is that I'd like to make an attempt to facillitate
a small business that hooks up buyers and sellers of programs for the 
apple // in the educational market.   But I Don't want to get more complicated
than the shareware concept.  Forget about non-disclosure agreements,
shrink wraps, printed manuals and tech support.  I'd like to connect the 
simple shareware programmer with the teachers who could really use their
services. However, you keep all copyrights and modifiers
of copyrights (shareware/freeware).

Since this would be on my spare time, I'd like to keep it simple, and
hopefully profitable. Shareware is great, but it doesn't make the rounds
into schools.  With a small mailing, and a huge list of educational
contacts, I think I might be able to make a go at it.   I'll start small.

Programs needed:  anything that a teacher can sit a kid down in front of for
an entire class period.  Can't be complex, and it should be very basic. Think
1st and second grade.  A slideshow progam of animals.  Each screen would
show a picture of the anmial and play a sound.  There would be a text box
with two sentences about the animal on it. This would be like 
simple stack in HyperStudio, but many educators don't have HyperStudio.  If your
catching on here, you'll see that the programming is simple, its the entering
of the pictures and sound that is the real work.  Even that's simple. Make
a slide show of 20 north american birds.  20 pictures, 20 sounds, 40 
sentences. If you fill up a disk, Continue onto another one.  Teachers love
buying 10 disk software programs.  It makes them feel as if they've
got their money's worth.   

Birds, lizards, DINOSAURS, computer terms, ADLIB like stuff, 
funnies (cartoon type stories with a lesson), money counting,
moral themes (hundreds of catholic schools), Spelling. Anything 
using english correctly!


Schoos have:  One 800k, One 140k drive.  1 Meg ram. 
	      Started from Aristotle over Macintosh Fileserver.

Schools don't have:  Accelerators, 1.44 drives, SCSI, 2-4 megs. basically
			any add-on hardware.

Just because they don't have have hard drives doesn't mean they don't
have access to 80 meg volumes!  Most of the GS's are networked
to a central Appleshare Mac server. Your  2 meg (dynamically allocated)
program can be on-line while the user swaps your 5 800k data disk sets that
you update quarterly for a $15 fee.


Things you have to work with:  	4096 colors, 15 channels of sampled stereo,
                               	Mouse. 800k's (at a time). Songs in any of the
				popular formats (midi, synthlab, MCS, 
				Soundsmith etc). Any version of GS/0S
				you can fit on a disk along with your
				program (1 meg ram). Put data on disks 2-5.
				Avail material on the internet, gifs, snds
				programs, utils etc. 

				

Many of these schools are networked.  If you know Appletalk, dig in. there
is little software for the GS that uses appletalk. Again, take into
account that you can have your program reside on the ashare volume. 


I'm NOT talking any gold mine here.  However, there is potential for 
quarterly and yearly updates to your software direct through you (if
you choose). Remember, schools budget their purchases 
by the year. This means they purchase in cycles and at certain times
of the year. No better way get update money than to have a school
budget it in for the next year. These GS's arn't going anywhere. They will
be there next year and the next.

All interested parties, please respond by email. I'll follow through
with business plans and ideas for needed simple software.


More to follow.

Joe

nowak@mcs.com