Mailman 3 June 2002 - Edu-sig

Who knows? Maybe someone here is interested in this...
by fotisg＠science.uva.nl 03 Aug '02

03 Aug '02

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: presentation of the work of Fotis Georgatos; the AMSTEL institute From: gef(a)ceid.upatras.gr Date: Tue, June 18, 2002 1:23 pm To: ams(a)science.uva.nl Dear colleagues, You are cordially invited to the defence of the Masters thesis entitled: "How applicable is Python as first computer language for teaching programming in a pre-university educational environment, from a teacher's point of view?" Next Tuesday, June 25, from 14.00 till 15.30 Fotis Georgatos will present his work at the Studio Classroom, AMSTEL Institute. Fotis Georgatos is following the International Masters program "Mathematics and Science Education" organized by the AMSTEL Institute. In his case the Masters thesis is aimed at teaching a computer language, in particular Python, and what are the teachers' opinion over that. The presentation includes a discussion on * research subject setting * background work * chosen methodology * results and * conclusions Hopefully the critique over the findings of this research will be followed by a discussion on what the future concerns in teaching programming could be like. Please, do forward this announcement within your departments to possibly interested colleagues that should be aware of it. You may find the Research Report on the project's website: http://amstel.science.uva.nl/~fotisg/python/ Kind regards, Fotis Georgatos Dr. Ton Ellermeijer AMSTEL institute, Faculty of Science Universiteit van Amsterdam Kruislaan 404 NL - 1098 SM Amsterdam The Netherlands tel ++ 31 20 5257963 fax ++ 31 20 5255866

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Glad
by Will Well 25 Jul '02

25 Jul '02

mid-summer på er! Larry -- Get your free email from www.linuxmail.org Powered by Outblaze

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Re: Who knows? Maybe someone here is interested in this... (Guido van Rossum)
by Henry Baumgartl 22 Jun '02

22 Jun '02

If it helps, you could ride with me by car to Charleroi after the presentation in Amsterdam. Regards, Henry Baumgartl > Message: 2 > To: fotisg(a)science.uva.nl > cc: edu-sig(a)python.org > Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] Who knows? Maybe someone here is interested in this... > From: Guido van Rossum <guido(a)python.org> > Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2002 09:05:21 -0400 > > Darn! So close. I will be in the Netherlands that day -- but on my > way to EuroPython, so I still can't make it. :-( > > I'd like to hear the outcome. Will you put any artifacts on the web? > Please point us to them here! > > --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/) > > > > > --__--__-- > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig(a)python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > > > End of Edu-sig Digest

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Karel the Robot Comes to Yorktown...
by Jeffrey Elkner 12 Jun '02

12 Jun '02

Hi All, Every year something terrific comes out of Yorktown High School's participation in the Python Conference. This year was even better than the previous two, since it was near enough to us that thirteen of our students could attend. We learned a lot and met many interesting people, and the students left the conference turned on to programming. The highlight of this year's conference for us has to be Michele Moore's tutorial, "Graphical Interface Programming in Python". Ironically, it wasn't until months after the conference that I realized just how important it was. Ten of my thirteen students took it upon themselves to attend the tutorial, which opened my eyes as to just how much they wanted to learn to do GUI programming (up to that point not a part of the 1st year program). The tutorial was way over their heads, but moved by my students evident interest in the subject I talked to Michele after her presentation and asked her if she would be interested in helping some of my students learn Python GUI programming. And did she ever help! First, she came to one of our Linux Users Group meetings and gave a presentation right at the student's level of understanding. Then she mentored several of our students to the point that they are becoming quite adept. The most telling result of these efforts is the release of a Python implementation of Karel the Robot, with a graphical interface written in wxPython by Yorktown student programmers Donald Oellerich and Wassem Daher. This project would not have been finished on time (and I should add, under budget ;-) if it were not for Michele's generous help. The Project now has a sourceforge site at: http://pykarel.sourceforge.net The Python community continues to amaze me with it's generosity and eagerness to help, and provides a reason every bit as important as the many merits of the language itself for using Python to introduce students to programming. jeff elkner yorktown high school arlington, va

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Re: Edu-sig digest, Vol 1 #526 - 1 msg
by John Miller 11 Jun '02

11 Jun '02

First, let me say that I haven't actually downloaded and tried pyKarel yet, my comment is based strictly on the screenshots at the website. From those screenshots, it appears that users of the system are inputting *Karel* commands to make the robot perform certain activities. However, I would much rather see users inputting *Python* commands to make the robot perform those activities. Karel is designed to introduce programming concepts to beginning users, yet I would much rather those users be learning Python instead of Karel, which would have to be unlearned if and when they got to Python proper. Perhaps pyKarel could be repurposed to 'pyBot' or something similar that taught the same programming concepts using the Python language? Nevertheless, admirable job by the students! John Miller On Tuesday, June 11, 2002, at 12:00 PM, jeff(a)elkner.net wrote: > Hi All, > [snip] > The most telling result of these efforts is the release of a Python > implementation of Karel the Robot, with a graphical interface written in > wxPython by Yorktown student programmers Donald Oellerich and Wassem > Daher. This project would not have been finished on time (and I should > add, under budget ;-) if it were not for Michele's generous help. > > The Project now has a sourceforge site at: > > http://pykarel.sourceforge.net

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Python @ Education: What are your problems?
by Ingo Linkweiler 07 Jun '02

07 Jun '02

Hello, are you using python for teaching programing? I am just writing a diploma paper about python and want to know your experiences with python. What do you like when teaching python? For example: - Easy readable syntax - High Level language - Lists, Tupels, Dictionaries included - interpreter: Everything can be tested - Many tools available ..... AND MORE IMPORTANT: What are your problems with python? Are pupils/students having any problems or often asked questions? What do you dislike at python? For example: - When teaching C or Pascal, newbies do not know, where to set a ";" and where not. Any similar problems with Python? - Why must I set a ":" after "if" or "for" ? " if x == y : " ..... I hope you have many suggestions. regards, Ingo

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online Python course for Bioinformatics
by Katja Schuerer 06 Jun '02

06 Jun '02

Hi, We have just finished to taught a Python course for Bioinformatics and we have thought that the online support (<URL:http://www.pasteur.fr/recherche/unites/sis/formation/python/>) could be useful to others. This course is designed for Biologists who already have some programming knowledge, in other languages such as perl or C. For this reason, while presenting a substantial introduction to the Python language, it does not constitute an introduction to programming itself. What distinguishes this course from general Python introductory courses, is however the important focus on biological examples that are used throughout the course, as well as the suggested exercises drawn from the field of Biology. The second half of the course describes the Biopython (http://www.biopython.org/) set of modules. This course can be considered a complement to the Biopython tutorial, and what's more often refers to it, by bringing practical exercises using these components. -- Katja Schuerer <schuerer(a)pasteur.fr> Catherine Letondal <letondal(a)pasteur.fr>

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Oxford Physics Python course
by Michael Williams 03 Jun '02

03 Jun '02

As promised I have edited the Oxford course into a state such that it is semi-comprehensible and, hopefully, useful to people on this list. It's available in HTML format (as generated by Fred Drake's scripts) at <http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sann1276/handbook/> and in PS at <http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sann1276/handbook.ps>. Perhaps I'm being harsh but I don't really think it's ready for use as a general purpose tutorial (quite apart from all the site-specific information). The course is designed to teach widely applicable programming skills (not Python) that students of physical sciences use every day (hence the lack of GUIs, OOP, etc.). It is used by first year Physics undergrads so we are able to assume considerable mathematical literacy, but no computing skills. This course (or something at this level) will almost certainly replace the current Pascal course next October, so it will be undergoing significant chages before then; in particular, all the exercises are taken directly from the old Pascal handbook and are perhaps not applicable to Python. One of the theses of this project (which I am conduncting for roughly one-third of my Masters dissertation) is that Python is easier to learn so we hope to introduce some more challenging exercises. Over the next few weeks (England's progress in the World Cup allowing!) I will be preparing the first draft of the dissertation discussing the successes and failures of the trial we have been running (we have used a group of 2nd year students as guinea pigs) and the relative merits of Python as a teaching language. I'd love to hear any comments on the style or content of the course. -- Michael

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Re: Emulating Pascal input
by Christopher Smith 01 Jun '02

01 Jun '02

><cut> >Having read through the many threads on this topic on comp.lang.python I >realise and understand that modern programs' input generally requires >thought and customization from the program author. However, we strongly >feel there should be an equivalent to Pascal's readln (which is >basically C's scanf but without the formatting strings) for simple, >generally numerical, whitespace-separated input. ><cut> I know the course is ended now, but did you come up with a satisfactory solution? Here is an alternative which focuses on the numbers rather than the separators: you split out the numbers and then evaluate them as floats or ints. A "~" preceeds each of the physical lines in the script below so if the file gets mangled you can reconstruct it by removing spurious newlines until each line once again starts with a "~". #### ~ def ninput(n = None, fin = None, prompt = ''): ~ "Return n (or all) numbers from a line read from the keyboard (or file object)." ~ ~ import re ~ #iflo matches exponentials, floats, integers (in that order) ~ iflo=re.compile(r'([0-9]*\.?[0-9]+[eE][-+]?[0-9]+|[0-9]+\.?[0-9]*[eE][-+]?[0-9]+|[0-9]*\.[0-9]+|[0-9]+\.[0-9]*|[1-9][0-9]*)') ~ ~ if fin == None: # get the string ~ s = raw_input(prompt) ~ else: ~ s = fin.readline() ~ s=re.split(iflo,s) #split it apart, retaining the matched numbers ~ s=filter(lambda x:iflo.match(x),s) #keep only the numbers ~ for i in range(len(s)): #convert them to numerics ~ try: ~ s[i]=int(s[i]) ~ except: ~ s[i]=float(s[i]) ~ if n==None: ~ return s #send them all back as a list ~ else: ~ return s[:n]+[None]*(n-len(s)) #send back the number requested; send None for missing values #### Here are some examples from the interpreter: >>> ninput() # it doesn't matter what is on the line--the numbers are split out. This is the 1st number and here are 2 more: 3.4, 5.6 [1, 2, 3.3999999999999999, 5.5999999999999996] >>> ninput(2) 1,6.02e23 [1, 6.02e+23] >>> ninput(3) #if there aren't enough, None's are returned 1 [1, None, None] >>> x,y,z = ninput(3) (1,2) and (3,4) were the coordinates >>> print x,y,z 1 2 3 >>> /c

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