Kansas is built out of the Self language, so the world can be reprogrammed as it is running. Everything in Self is an object, from the manipulable entities on the screen to integers. This has proven useful: a simulation can be modified or extended in one part of Kansas while users continue to work elsewhere.
Kansas is being used to test two pedagogical paradigms. In one paradigm, called DTVI (for Distributed Tutored Video Instruction), a small team of students study a videotape of a conventional lecture. I will report on a DTVI study underway at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. A second paradigm holds that interactive simulations can facilitating transfer of understanding between experiential and symbolic domains in physics education. In this paradigm, elements of physics labs and elements from word problems are combined in mutli-user, interactive simulations. A small pilot was conducted with high school physics students in East San Jose and myself in Mountain View. This pilot also served to test the internet's ability to support remote realtime collaboration between industrial and public school sites.