Mailman 3 July 2003 - Edu-sig

re: book: Head First Java
by ajsiegel＠optonline.net 06 Sep '03

06 Sep '03

Jason writes - >http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/hfjava/chapter/index.html >This might make some of you cringe.. Judging from the online samples it >looks like it might be a good book to hand to kids [us all] who are just >getting into programming. >Would be cool if a Python version were available. >I'd love to hear your reactions. Have not looked much at the samples chapter, but did look at the author interviews at http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2003/06/18/head_first.html I am sympathetic with much of it. Especially that there does seem to be a true effort is defy expectations about how this kind of thing might be done. And in emphasizing: """We've known forever (at least since Socrates anyway) that learning is at its weakest when the learner is a passive receiver of information. The learner has to be engaged and actively flexing some neurons""" I translate this into an objection to doing *too* much for the student. I don't want a GUI doing too much of the "thinking" - for example. It might help a student get to a satisfying end result that can be called a "program", but how much did they actually *learn* in getting there. I won't press this point as to programming, but will limit my point to to the GUI based dynamic geometry applications - where I am more confident about my point. But I admit I suspect the point translates somehow to programming education. On the other hand, I get a little queasy when the author go to: """Perhaps the worst of all assumptions a teacher or an author can make is to assume the learner is intrinsically motivated and intellectually curious about the content.""" I guess I am stubborn on this point, or arrogant, or something. In that I have the luxuxry of having no interest in presenting material to learners who have no intellectual curiosity about the subject matter I am presenting. One nice thing about the development of the Net (and which I associate with Open Source), is that one can contribute by making the exactly opposite assumption. That one's effort will be found by those motivated by a curiosity. And one can assume that curiosity as a starting point. I, at any rate, have learned much from resources that assumed that from the beginning,therefore forgoing the seduction, and getting on with it. "It", being the transfer of knowledge. An act of generosity, really. If one has something to teach, and is willing to teach it - one should hold one's ground, it seems to me. I like to think Socrates might agree. Art

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re: TeachScheme
by Arthur 28 Aug '03

28 Aug '03

http://www.cs.utah.edu/plt/mailarch/plt-scheme-2000/msg00676.html Thought I would do a little google to test my theory about whether the TeachScheme guys feel abused. My intuition gets (another) A+ grade. Anybody can feel abused about anything. The question is to what extent they have a legimate case. You know my feelings. How do we go about being less subject to this kind of criticism, to the extent it is righteous criticism? It really is a question. In that I have no specific answers. """ You might want to compare the Python-in-education movement against the TeachScheme! project. Software vs vaporware; full programming environment vs low-level interaction; detailed curriculum vs ad hoc programming; intellectual depth vs shallow hacking; five years vs nothing but announcements. You can guess which one is which. And consider the harm done when people parrot the hype. """ Shriram Krishnamurthi

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Do you teach GNU?
by Jason Cunliffe 01 Aug '03

01 Aug '03

Hi. I've been following the sordid tale of SCOvs.IBM. I found two excellent sites... GROKLAW, a weblog cover legal matters "Putting some meat on legal news' bones." http://radio.weblogs.com/0120124/ and a superb wiki tracking the SCO scandal http://twiki.iwethey.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/SCOvsIBM I am beginning to think the SCO debacle it will emerge as the best thing which ever happened to OpenSource and GNU, because by the end of the affair SCO will lose infamously. But also because corporate business, mainstream media, and the courts will all finally understand the legal ethical and programming issues. It's a little like how America learns Geography every time it goes to war [ouch did I say that?]. Anyway, I am very curious to learn if those of you teaching/using Python in schools also take time to discuss GNU and related topics with your students? Stories comments reaction most welcome.. >From a cultural perspective GPL may be one of the most important pieces of programming ever done. Certainly it is Stallman's great hack, one for the history and law books. GPL: The GNU General Public License www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#GPL "In the GNU project, our aim is to give all users the freedom to redistribute and change GNU software. If middlemen could strip off the freedom, we might have many users, but those users would not have freedom. So instead of putting GNU software in the public domain, we ``copyleft'' it. Copyleft says that anyone who redistributes the software, with or without changes, must pass along the freedom to further copy and change it. Copyleft guarantees that every user has freedom." GPL is not all, but it is the original mountain from which the other collaborative licenses flow and define themselves. thanks Jason ______________________________________________ Jason Cunliffe [NOMADICS: Director art+design] Tel/fax: +1 718 422-1078 jasonic(a)nomadics.org N 43:00.000' W 074:31.875' ALT:1144 ft 84 Henry Street #3C Brooklyn NY 11201 USA http://tranzilla.net/.v

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Re: Pygame anyone?
by Lee Harr 31 Jul '03

31 Jul '03

Hi; I have been working quite a lot lately on the pygsear framework which builds on python and pygame. One of my students was having a tough time getting the turtle graphics program to work with windows xp, so what I ended up doing is embedding a python interpreter inside of pygame. Basically another one of those "python moments" when I just say... wow. It's really pretty neat. I started using epydoc too, so the documentation is getting much better. Take a look and let me know what you think: pygsear is a programming framework using Python and Pygame. pygsear has classes for sprites, paths, widgets, events, sounds, networking (using Twisted) and more, and it comes with many of examples. More information is available here: http://www.nongnu.org/pygsear/ Download the latest version here: http://savannah.nongnu.org/files/?group=pygsear CHANGES: version 0.47.1 - test.py shoud be more easily runnable without installing - Allow load and save of penguin graphics sessions - Bump up some of the default font sizes - Removed inadvertent mixer.init() at start of lunar.py - Use event.wait() in modal Console widget - Arrow keys now work in TextInput widget - Changed Turtle.setColor and nudge_color slightly version 0.47 - Added Widget.Console for embedded python interactive interpreter - used in examples/interact.py for working with penguin graphics - Major changes to pygsear/Event.py - Event is now a subclass of pygame.sprite.Sprite - added a new EventGroup which subclasses sprite.Group - this allows Events to be grouped like Sprites. - added new examples/events.py to test Event changes. - Major cleanup to Util.load_* functions. - get_dirs() now tells where to look for files to load - All demos updated and are now working - Drawable.Image can now take a Surface for the image - Fixed bug in Drawable.String - can now take an empty string - Initial work at using sound - use Util.load_sound to find and load .wav files - load_sound will return DummySound objects if sound is broken - examples/lunar.py is the first to get sounds - Added line wrapped text code from Pygame PCR - used in Widget.Dialog_OK and Widget.Console - added trim parameter. Trims surface to just hold the text. _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus

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re: Pygame anyone?
by Arthur 31 Jul '03

31 Jul '03

Dethe writes - >I hope someday VPython actually runs on OS X (right now they've >ported enough that it runs under X on OS X which isn't the same thing at >all. Looking at the wgl.cpp (for Windows) and xgl.cpp(for gtkglarea), it looks pretty straight forward. Get a OpenGL context and some default mouse beahavior. And I don't see why anything else substantial in the VPython code would be platform specific. Looking at the current source, there is a module called "aglcx.cpp", which seems to be Mac specifc OpenGL context code analogous to the wgl and xgl code. Am I wrong in my assumption that this is OS X native? Perhaps I am right, but it isn't rolled out yet. Or is it pre-OS X Mac code. I am a little lost, in the Mac world. Lost-er than usual, that is. But a native OS X context does not sound like a particularly big thing. Not that I could pull it off. What is the IDLE native OS X status? Are these issues in any way related? If someone here can't clarify, I'll try to get an understanding by inquiring on the VPython list. Oh yeah - pygame. What I am picking up is that it is pretty weighty. I see it as part of projects that don't have anything to do directly with gaming. Can't think of specifcs right now. But it seems to provide an infrastructure for crossplatform GUI and graphical work (assumedly through the auspices of SDL) that has very broad utility. Definitely on my todo list. Starting by getting a handle on pygear, as a matter of fact. Art

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re: A "Python in Education" track at PyCon 2004?
by Arthur 25 Jul '03

25 Jul '03

Jeff writes: >I've been talking to Steve Holden about my interest in organizing a >"Python in Education" track at next years PyCon. The message below just >appeared on the pycon-organizers list, so I thought I would pass it >along here and ask you all if you are thinking about attending PyCon >next year and if you would be interested in a Python in Education track. I would hope to be there and - inspired by Kirby's talk - hope to submit a proposal for a PyGeo presentation. It would be nice to have a Python in Education track, if enough interest can be generated. To do so, it would be important, IMO, to make sure the community sees the track defined as broadly as possible. Any levelof education. Any degree of esoterica. As intimidating as the possiblity of having to follow a PyGeo presentation miught be ;) - I would guess there would be a good number of proposals for presentations. Can it go forward tentatively - final determination made after assessing whether the proposal submissions justify a separate track? Art

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looking for help with Jython...
by luby liao 24 Jul '03

24 Jul '03

Jeffrey, try this: 1. change first line to public class Vehicle { 2. shell> javac Vehicle.java 3. shell> jython [liao@zen tmp]$ jython Jython 2.1 on java1.3.1 (JIT: null) Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import Vehicle >>> v = Vehicle(3,5,6) >>> v Vehicle@3f1179 >>> cheers, Luby > I'm in the middle of learning some Java to get ready for next year's AP > CSC course. I would like to make good use of the Python my students > already know, and I was thinking that Jython might offer some > interesting educational opportunities. > > What I would most like to be able to do is to import Java classes into > Python in order to be able to "play around" with them in the > interpreter. So far, I have not been able to make this work. I'm > starting with a simple example from our book: > > > class Vehicle { > public int passengers; > public int fuelcap; > public int mpg; > > public Vehicle(int p, int f, int m) { > passengers = p; > fuelcap = f; > mpg = m; > } > > public int range() { > return mpg * fuelcap; > } > > public double fuelneeded(int miles) { > return (double) miles / mpg; > } > } > > (Actually, I added all the "public"s because otherwise Jython couldn't > see them when I did: > > import Vehicle > > How can I create a Vehicle object inside of Jython? > > Thanks! >

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Educational Foundry at Sourceforge
by Doug Holton 24 Jul '03

24 Jul '03

Hi, I submitted a feature request at SourceForge to create an Educational Foundry: <http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=776830&group_id=1&…> Here are examples of other foundries at Sourceforge and a FAQ: http://foundries.sourceforge.net/ FAQ: http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=889&group_id=1 I think an educational foundry would help highlight some of the educational development efforts like those listed at the python edu-sig page. I'm using python myself to develop a couple of educational apps. Feel free to add any comments to the above feature request, or add your own feature request. I'm not looking necessarily to be one of the Foundry Guides myself, although I will if need be. If you are interested in being a guide please add a comment. Thanks, -Doug

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re: TeachScheme
by Arthur 22 Jul '03

22 Jul '03

Tim writes - >The only effect of this resurrection I've seen is that Kirby removed the link to TeachScheme from the Edu-SIG page. >If that prevents someone from stumbling into TeachScheme who otherwise would have, I'd judge it a net loss. Not to stand still in the face of a potential net loss: My recommendation is to include the recently released DrPython editor in the Shells and Editors section of the page. I make that recommend based on the fact that I have tried DrPython, and find it -as advertised - a clean and simple environment for teaching. We might then link to the stated inspiration of of DrPython, DrScheme of the TeachScheme project. The intent of DrPython clearly being imitation as a form of flattery/respect - as per Kirby's earlier point made. Net gain. Art

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Fw: [Ofset-freeduc] News about Freeduc
by Arthur 22 Jul '03

22 Jul '03

----- Original Message ----- From: "Hilaire Fernandes" <hilaire(a)ext.cri74.org> To: "Freeduc" <ofset-freeduc(a)lists.sourceforge.net> Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2003 12:00 PM Subject: [Ofset-freeduc] News about Freeduc > Hello all, > > A couple of news about Freeduc: > > * We plane for a new version in october/november > > * This version will be supported by UNESCO (yes, UNESCO !), therefore > this dedicated version will come with a booklet in at least 3 languages > (English, French and Spanish). The booklet is mosty ready, therefore we > need help to translate it in English and Spanish. If there is volunteer > just let me know privately so I can contact you when the document will > be ready for translation. > > * We have set up a community portal, > http://freeduc.linuxtag.uni-kl.de:9673/cps/; kindly hosted by Klaus > Knopper. I suggest you register in the portal then let me know so I can > add you to the appropriate groups. > > * In the portal, under the Freeduc/Documentation section I have already > added a small note concerning how is organized the documentation. Read > it if you want to give a hand. > > > Hilaire Fernandes > > Free the school with Gnu/Linux > http://www.ofset.org/projects/edusoft.html > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.net email is sponsored by: VM Ware > With VMware you can run multiple operating systems on a single machine. > WITHOUT REBOOTING! Mix Linux / Windows / Novell virtual machines at the > same time. Free trial click here: http://www.vmware.com/wl/offer/345/0 > _______________________________________________ > Ofset-freeduc mailing list > Ofset-freeduc(a)lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ofset-freeduc

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