Mailman 3 December 2003 - Edu-sig

re: NLII 2004 Annual Meeting
by Arthur Dec. 21, 2003

Dec. 21, 2003

Jason points to: http://www.educause.edu/nlii/ In a minute's perusal, I know I am in an enemy camp. And every additional minute confirms my first impression. Everything is boosterism. Nothing, a critical analysis. As a for example, link form the home page: Key Documents>> NLII May Focus Session Meeting Notes """ The NLII held a focus session in Vancouver on May 31, 2002, co-sponsored by WebCT, Industry Canada, and University of British Columbia. """ http://www.webct.com/ """ WebCT is the world's leading provider of integrated e-learning systems for higher education. """ I am guessing that the focus session was enthusiastic about integrated e-learning systems for higher education. I'm a seer. And: http://www.educause.edu/nlii/keythemes/partnering.asp "Partnering In The Learning Marketspace" """ Partnering in the learning marketspace was a key NLII theme for 2000-2002 and continues to be an NLII focus because it provides new opportunities to reconfigure the way that instruction is funded, developed, marketed, delivered, and supported. We continue to examine alternatives and issues involved for inter-institutional partnering and for partnering with commercial service providers to develop and implement highly leveraged strategies for e-learning-the use of Internet technologies in teaching and learning in higher education. """ It is predictable then that NLII's head is a former University administrator, not an instructor or technologist. Not too different than talking about the economics of Big Ten football. There is lots of feeding at the trough going on. And as long as result is *economically* mutually beneficial to the University and the "service provider", the issue, for all intensive purposes, is at rest. So it is not at all surprising we get to: http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0340.pdf Next Generation Educational Technology versus the Lecture """ The idea briefly stated is that large lecture courses may someday be replaced by the kind of immersive digital environments that have been popularized by the videogame industry. """ Indeed they might. This is no more or less, to me, than the internet bubble mentality alive in academia. My counter-organization would be the Center for Appropriate Use of Technology in Education. CAUTE. If you catch my drift. Art

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The Center For Distance Learning Research
by Jason Cunliffe Dec. 21, 2003

Dec. 21, 2003

http://www.cdlr.tamu.edu/education/grants.asp

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NLII 2004 Annual Meeting
by Jason Cunliffe Dec. 21, 2003

Dec. 21, 2003

http://www.educause.edu/nlii/meetings/nlii041/

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MERLOT
by Jason Cunliffe Dec. 21, 2003

Dec. 21, 2003

http://www.merlot.org/artifact/BrowseArtifacts.po?catcode=124&browsecat=124…

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Re: Edu-sig Digest, Vol 5, Issue 21
by arkamir＠softhome.net Dec. 20, 2003

Dec. 20, 2003

What is CS1???

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open net sci gov mil biz edu art
by Jason Cunliffe Dec. 20, 2003

Dec. 20, 2003

Following the recent VB thread a little more.. It would seem that in science and Internet applications especially, open source is the dominant model. >From web servers to distributed biotech Genome libraries, open source and Linux are becoming the natural best choice. In showbiz, Linux is also hard at work, witness big budget special effects rendering farms etc. [LOTR et alia]. Similar in many ways to Gnome collaborative data mining and visualization. Both of these domains marry needs of rapid interoperability with often proprietary cutting edge software development. FX houses may be using open toolkits, but they guard their competitive edge and secrets closely. As do the Biotech programmers. There is hot symbiosis where openSource academia distances itself from often closed business. An article in latest Biotech World magazine is an interview with Zachary Zimmerman a geneticist at Princeton: http://www.bioitworld.com/ http://www.bio-itworld.com/archive/121503/horizons_language.html -Learning the Language of Systems Biology- "...We have always been writing our own software. The vendors have always been lagging behind what we see as state of the art. Where we do use commercial software, we have already worked out the algorithms and have something that works, then for various reasons some vendor is motivated to run faster, run on more platforms, etc. The axon scanner is good example: GenePix is much improved and better engineered version of something that Mike Eisen wrote in our lab. So the vendors make their money not from us but the pharmas [pharmaceutical companies]. To a large extent, their systems are weakened by being closed, not open-source, and unnecessarily restrictive in access and by being expensive. As a result, if you have the kind of tools for writing your own software, [that is] the disincentive to pay a lot of money so one of your guys can work on one terminal, on the kind of computer your don't really like to support. So if you have bright students, who in a few days can work up something pretty robust is C or Java, why would you use those (expensive commercial) things? So we don't. Most state-of-the-art places don't use the commercial stuff. It's also the same reason we made our own microarrays -- because we do better for less, and the really good stuff we just couldn't afford"... It seems in the US, regular business, Government and K-12 education are still the weighty slow holdouts for MSwindows and often legacy VB use. Science, Art, Internet and higher ed have all moved to open platforms and [python friendly] programming. I wonder what the tools/platform US military mainly uses now, and what their information architecture plans are? [oops! Alt+Ctrl+Del the invasion] Since Governments in Asia are now leading the Linux shift, higher and lower ed will presumably soon be in sync, and many business will soon be well motivated to follow. Good days ahead for Python programmers [and similar] globally in schools at all ages, and the general workplace. - Jason

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Python, Povray anhd the Universe
by Arthur Dec. 20, 2003

Dec. 20, 2003

Got to love Mark Shuttleworth: The South African entrepreneur and space explorer: """ He was a member of the crew of Soyuz TM-34, launched from Baikonur in Kazakhstan and docked with the International Space Station two days later. """ His foundation helps finance Python education related projects: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/bounty.html All well-known, I think, within the Python community at this point. But... Every few months I check into www.povray.org for a look see as to what is happening in the Povray world. On a whim, did so this morning, Might have otherwise passed over this, had I not began to understand who Shuttleworth is. See: "POV-Ray at the International Space Station" http://www.povray.org/news/index.php#79 This "Reach for the Stars" rendering: http://www.povray.org/posters/ was not designed by Shuttleworth, but was rendered by him while in orbit. Those of us who are fans of Python and povray and opensource technology and education and the intersection of all these things have to be intrigued by this guys focus. Art

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re: Python Programming: An Introduction to ComputerScience
by Lee Harr Dec. 20, 2003

Dec. 20, 2003

>I still think it'd be better to do some simple cgi programming with Python, >against some database. Basically, I'm thinking LAMP deserves more airplay. >But WAMP is another option (Windows, Apache, MySQL, Python/Perl/PHP). > I think Zope is a good way to go. Written (mostly) in python. Scriptable in python either right from the web interface, or on the filesystem. Very powerful. Zope also has great support for relational databases, and the added bonus of being built on top of an object database. _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

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RE: [Edu-sig] re: Python Programming: An Introduction toComputerScience
by Nicholas Wheeler Dec. 19, 2003

Dec. 19, 2003

As a student who has gone through VB first (freshmen year), and then CS1&2 with Jeff Elkner, I can reassure you that the way the children are learning VB is completely useless, and none of it will stay with them. Furthermore, it doesn't get them interested in programming at all, and the children don't walk out of the class with -any- knowledge. In example, during CS1 I hadn't the faintest clue as to what a function was, and why they were used, and I was one of the "best" in the VB class. Even though in VB, we used function, the concepts just weren't taught. So basically the Business area is a failure in my eyes, and doesn't really cover programming. Unfortuantly I just don't see python covering the VB niche, because of it's non-visual nature, and I can't really see a good argument for it being in the Business curriculum. Nicholas Wheeler Yorktown Highschool [Insert intersting stuff here] > > And VB sucks. > > > > Art > >This part I agree with, and any outrage attaches to this, more than to any >presumption regarding the impropriety of proprietary programming languages. > >Kirby > > > >_______________________________________________ >Edu-sig mailing list >Edu-sig(a)python.org >http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig _________________________________________________________________ Get dial-up Internet access now with our best offer: 6 months @$9.95/month! http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialup

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re: Python Programming: An Introduction to ComputerScience
by Arthur Dec. 19, 2003

Dec. 19, 2003

Kirby writes - >>VB sucks. >This part I agree with, and any outrage attaches to this, more than to any >presumption regarding the impropriety of proprietary programming languages. For education related purposes - I argue these issues are one and the same, or certainly correlated. I would not make the same argument for business purposes. VB is useful in business. So are lots of other inanities. I happen to consider myself a businessman. So I say this without rancor. Art

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