[NTLK] Sunburst Software

[Pawel Piotrowski]

Hi Doug,

I’m more than happy to take/buy this software from you. I could contact with Sunburst and ask them for permission to make backup copy for existing Newton users.

Cheers,
Pawel

> On 17 Nov 2020, at 17:06, Doug Denby <ddenby at rogers.com> wrote:
> 
> Perhaps I did not make myself clear on my earlier post about Sunburst’s Newton software. Let me clear it up, if I can.
> 
> The Student Profile package came in two segments: one for the Newton and one for the Macintosh.
> 
> The version I commented on was for the later Newton 2.0 version.
> 
> My first encounter with this software was on my Sharp ExpertPad, a clone of the original Newton MessagePad. I preferred the ExpertPad format and used Sunburst’s Student Profile on that unit for a couple of years. Walking around the classroom observing students and checking off their progress on my ExpertPad was a lot of fun.
> 
> Later as the Newton family increased in size, the shirt pocket became impractical and I switched to a holster that slung under my left arm and linked to my belt loops. Under a jacket, the students thought it looked like a pistol holster and began to kid that I was.a Narc. They all knew better, but it was great fun at the time.
> 
> Sunburst Communications still exists. They started as an educational software publisher for the Apple ][ and Pet computers. I did some software writing for them back in those days. This was, of course, in the days of MECC's (Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium) domination of the market. I visited MECC’s facilities in the 1980’s when most of their software was being written by and for elementary school teachers.
> 
> These were heady days with the question of how computers could and would be applied to education was not yet answered, and often not even expressed. Many programs were written to teach students all sorts of things, mainly mathematics. Some simulation programs were developed and we all know how far that trend has gone. Some thought that students should be teaching computers how to do things and thus BASIC became a standard course in many schools. During that time, I wrote a little Turtle Graphics program for the kids to use to draw things on the screen. That trend resulted in the Robot Wars so popular even today, although now it is in real time rather than pre-plotted.
> 
> Computers had been used since early days for record keeping of course.
> 
> My point here is that since Sunburst Communications still exists, they own the copyright and I am unwilling to copy their work. I am willing to give what I have to someone else, and what they do with it is within their conscience and moral limits.
> 
> ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
> ¨¨¨¨¨¨¨
> Doug Denby
> 
> 
>> On Nov 16, 2020, at 3:29 PM, Grant Hutchinson <newtontalkmessages at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> On Nov 16, 2020, at 11:23 AM, Doug Denby <ddenby at rogers.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Am I the only one on this list who has used these?
>> 
>> Used? This is the first time I’ve even heard of this software.
>> 
>> It might be a good idea to create a set of disk images of those floppies and upload them to UNNA and the Internet Archive for safe keeping.
>> 
>> Thanks for sharing, Doug.
>> 
>> g.
>> 
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>> 
>> Grant Hutchinson
>> NewtonTalk List Dad & Interweb Custodian
>> 
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