[racket] DrRacket-onna-stick for students? (Was: frustrated with error message)

Erwin Hildebrandt wrote at 10/13/2011 09:01 PM:
> we are using dr Scheme v4.2 (I know its an old version but the tech 
> guys at my school take months to test every upgrade that we ask for) 
> and we are running windows 7.

Tangential question: How many instructors have students stuck with old 
versions of Racket because their school computer labs are not able to 
install recent versions often, for whatever reason?  (Erwin, you are not 
alone in this problem.)

I'm wondering, if the students need to use lab computers rather than 
their own computers, whether there's a real need for a bootable version 
of DrRacket on little USB flash drives.  So, if the lab PCs permitted 
USB booting, the students pop in their flash stick, reboot, and they run 
an entire OS and Racket setup, with their assignments data, all stored 
entirely on the flash stick alone (not touching the PC's hard drive).  
When they're done with their lab session, they remove the stick and 
reboot back to the PC's normal configuration.  I have made a more 
complicated version of such a thing before 
("http://www.neilvandyke.org/lildeb/"), and I could probably find time 
to tailor a simpler one for DrRacket, if there is a real need for such a 
thing.  I estimate that the sticks would only need to be about 512MB in 
size.  (The local store was giving away sticks 4 times that size, for 
free, just the other day.)


-- 
http://www.neilvandyke.org/