Mailman 3 May 2007 - Edu-sig

Python for Halloween
by kirby urner 20 Oct '07

20 Oct '07

Something about using 'ghost' in place of 'self' in a Shell class (allusion to anime as well). Maybe I did something like this last year (having deja vu again). But I'm realizing edu-sig is no longer a preferred venue for my curriculum writing. I'd rather huddle with MIT, Bruce Sherwood, Alan Kay and play *against* Arthur's team. Arthur, you make too many enemies too quickly and too easily. Even more, I'm into my Portland Knowledge Lab (PKL) business (gotta pay that rent today) and want to make lots of Python and Synergetics teaching cartoons for HDTV (my Saturday Morning meme), with lots of brand name sponsors. But here is not the place to brainstorm in safety. Too many prying eyes and self-appointed kibbitzers. So I'm actually resigning this time. Don't expect me back any time soon. Probably won't be tracking either, at least not with any frequency. For me, it's a tilt towards private lists and closed source development (not exclusively -- I'm still a big supporter of a strong public sector). I'm learning why open source is a bad idea sometimes. I've talked to Stallman about this, though he probably doesn't remember -- I was in his audience in Portland and asked about situations when "they" simply *don't deserve* your best code. But I think more it's a matter of not wanting to show unfinished work (a big no no in Fuller's self discipline, according to 'Critical Path' I think it was). Kirby

2 3

education as Python killer app
by Michael Tobis 29 May '07

29 May '07

Is education Python's killer app? I think it could be. I used the occasion of the Python Papers to motivate my efforts to explain this idea, and you can see what I came up with on pages 8-15. The part that makes me especially queasy is the CP4E section on pages 10-11. I wish I had more to say there. It's fairly clear to those of us who weren't there that there were some problems, but it's not especially clear what they were or what we should learn from them. I'd very much appreciate input from those who were actually there! Anyway http://tinyurl.com/yr62r3 seems to short-circuit some pointless hoop-jumping to get you to the article. If that doesn't work, try going to http://pyjournal.cgpublisher.com/ and looking for the spring 2007 edition. I suggest a concerted effort by the community toward leveraging the OLPC/Sugar momentum to revive the idea of Python as tool for teaching some programming as a useful part of universal education. I have posted this to the advocacy list and c.l.p. I welcome response or critiques. mt

3 7

(no subject)
by naveen bandla 28 May '07

28 May '07

--------------------------------- Did you know? You can CHAT without downloading messenger. Know how!

1 0

Let's work together on this...
by Jeffrey Elkner 27 May '07

27 May '07

Hi Jeff, I really liked your posting from yesterday and think you are right on the mark with the benefit of creating a repository of programs for "new programmers". I'm working with several student interns this summer developing curriculum materials for Arlington Public School's new "Intro to IT" course. I plan to make the OLPC a center piece technology for that course. We are working on a beginners graphics API called gasp: https://launchpad.net/gasp students love the power a library like this gives them to create fun to play games programs even as beginners. Steve Holden was kind enough to stop by my school and give an impromptu demonstration of how to design a network game server for games like checkers and battleship: http://linus.yhspatriot.net/cs/netprog/HomePage I have my students working on versions of these games as end of year projects. By mid July I will have the best results of their efforts polished up a bit, annotated, and put on the Python Bibliotheca: http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/pyBiblio I'll then be sure to edit your new wiki to fill in links to the work we are doing wherever appropriate. What I like most about the wiki is that it will give us ideas for future projects. Thanks for taking the time to set it up! jeff elkner open book project http://ibiblio.org/obp ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Jeff Rush jeff at taupro.com Sat May 26 10:46:25 CEST 2007 wrote: While there are those who enjoy solving abstract problems, programming or otherwise, if seems to me that if we're going to tackle CP4E (computer programming for everyone, for those not aware of the history), we have to make programming not the end-goal but the tool for doing the things in which those people are interested. CP4E will never make the vast majority of people programming geeks. So it seems to me that it would advance the cause, of programming in general and Python specifically, if a repository of resources were assembled. I'm sure some of these exist scattered across the net but some I've never been able to find. And non-programmers can be so impatient in rummaging through sites, understandably wanting to get on with solving their problem. I tossed together a very rough wiki page of some ideas I've been kicking around. These resources attempt to answer a response I get frequently when I push the learning of Python, that of "but what would I -do- with Python once I learned it?". http://wiki.python.org/moin/Advocacy/ProgrammingForNewprogrammers I call that group "new programmers" - somehow calling them normal or average folk seems mildly insulting to someone, and calling them "non-programmers" isn't accurate if our goal is to teach them programming, albeit non-vocational style. "Non-professional programmers"? "Typical" people? "Making People Programming-Literate"? -Jeff

1 0

Re: [Edu-sig] [python-advocacy] education as Python killer app
by Laura Creighton 27 May '07

27 May '07

In a message of Sat, 26 May 2007 03:46:25 CDT, Jeff Rush writes: > http://wiki.python.org/moin/Advocacy/ProgrammingForNewprogrammers > >I call that group "new programmers" - somehow calling them normal or average >folk seems mildly insulting to someone, and calling them "non-programmers" >isn't accurate if our goal is to teach them programming, albeit non-vocational >style. "Non-professional programmers"? "Typical" people? "Making People >Programming-Literate"? > >-Jeff Dorai Thodla suggests 'beginners'. And perhaps that would work. But my initial reaction was negative. It may simply be that I find the labelling of people that distasteful. In my world, labelling is well-associated with building rigid and discriminatory class structures,though 'beginner' seems relatively free of this particular poison. But that may be its own rub. 'Beginner' is a stage which one goes through on the way to something else, while I think that Jeff is looking for something that could well be permanent -- what Anna Martelli Ravenscroft called (calls?) 'for the rest of us'. She too was stuck on the 'but what would I do with it' question. The thing is that this sort of thing seems to be orthagonal to becoming a professional programmer. I know some professional programmers who don't think that programming is fun. They only do it for work, when they are paid for it. (Admittedly, they don't use python). So they don't have a box of helpful programs they have written over time to automate some tedium out of their lives, even though they are well equipped with the skills to do so. But most of us have these quick hacks lying all around. And they are the sort of thing that could appeal to professional programmers and non-programmers alike, because they solve the sort of probelms that everybody has, not the sort that only professional software developers call 'work'. Laura

2 2

Re: [Edu-sig] [python-advocacy] education as Python killer app
by Laura Creighton 26 May '07

26 May '07

In a message of Sat, 26 May 2007 03:46:25 CDT, Jeff Rush writes: <snip> >I call that group "new programmers" - somehow calling them normal or average >folk seems mildly insulting to someone, and calling them "non-programmers" >isn't accurate if our goal is to teach them programming, albeit non-vocational >style. "Non-professional programmers"? "Typical" people? "Making People" >Programming-Literate"? > >-Jeff I think the word you are looking for is "amateur". Unfortunately it has bad connotations for some people. So I think rather than focusing on the _people_ and labelling _them_ we should focus on the code and label _that_. Amateur programs? Do-It-Yourself programs? Home automation? Practical Programming? Laura

1 0

OLPC on 60 Minutes
by kirby urner 26 May '07

26 May '07

So I just viewed this segment, mostly an interview of Negroponte with Leslie Stahl: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1998/07/09/60minutes/main13546.shtml , but with lots of footage from Cambodia, plus significant footage of (a) Negroponte telling lecture hall that Intel was bad (b) Intel defending itself in the person of its CEO. For an intro to a big topic, I thought this was good overview, and 60 Minutes always needs a twisted plot i.e. a bad guy, so I don't begrudge dwelling on the private industry threat. My Project Renaissance model builds in the idea of test pilot nonprofit idealists like Negroponte paving the way for commercial imitators -- surely this pattern is repeated over and over (used to be the military was the biggest guinea pig, for health care innovations especially). Negroponte himself comes across as a class act, handsome, well spoken, an idealist we can love. So the XO uses AMD chips, so what? I'm glad the idea of massive computer power spreading to the world's underprivileged is being presented as pretty much a fait accompli. Even if Intel is getting in the way, it's doing so by embracing the vision. I hope the XO really flies big time though. Wouldn't bother me to see it fattening a bottom line or two -- the investors could be XO-using entrepreneurs in the developing world, doing the hard work of keeping the pipeline moving. Kirby

3 5

Latest gnu math paper
by kirby urner 25 May '07

25 May '07

Although sort of in the underground comix tradition, this overview/storyboard isn't guaranteed to make a whole lot of sense to people not already well versed in my particular school of thought (remote, obscure, far from the mainstream -- still fun though): http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/py4www.html Feel free to ask any questions and I will try to supply context. Kirby

1 0

Some thoughts on the word "Laptop"
by Atul Varma 24 May '07

24 May '07

Hello, A few days ago, Michael Tobis brought up the New York Times article "Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops" [1] on the OLPC Chicago mailing list. Scott Van Den Plas then responded to it with the question, "How can OLPC focus on educational reform and avoid comparison to simply placing laptops into a traditional setting?" [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/04/education/04laptop.html I responded to his question on the OLPC mailing list and Michael thought it might be useful for me to post it here. On 5/8/07, Scott Van Den Plas <scottv(a)gmail.com> wrote: > How can OLPC focus on educational reform and avoid comparison to simply placing > laptops into a traditional setting? Well, I imagine it's too late to change the name of the program, but to be honest the very name "one laptop per child" made me laugh out loud the first time I heard it. I think it's because of the connotations that the word "laptop" brings: it's something that, 10 years ago, was a yuppie status symbol, and I think that's significant. Imagine how ridiculous a program like "one cell phone per child" sounds--even if you try to emphasize that a cell phone can actually be incredibly useful for communication, especially for societies that don't even have land-line telephones, the fact is that the first thing that pops into people's heads (well, my head at least) when they hear the word "cell phone" is a Samsung advertisement about some new feature-loaded monstrosity that comes with downloadable ringtones. The word "laptop" comes with almost as much negative cultural baggage as "cell phone". When most people see the word "laptop", I'm guessing they usually think of Norton AntiVirus, Ad-Aware, Microsoft Office, porn, and Google. Only one or two of those is generally regarded as a really useful thing. And when the word "laptop" and "child" are put in the same sentence, all I can think of is MySpace and Alge-Blaster, which are things no nation should spend millions of dollars on. On the other hand, I *love* the term "Children's Machine", which is what the OLPC laptop was originally called. A "machine" is what I had when I grew up: it didn't help me with school in any direct way, it didn't serve as a replacement for a good textbook or a great teacher, but it served an entirely different purpose: it was my personal little lab where I could create things and tinker with the things others had created. Social scientists call it "Bricolage" or "Constructivism", and whatever it is, it's something that I wish every child in the world had some opportunity to experience. So the word "Children's Machine" brings back memories of what I had when I was growing up: it wasn't portable like a laptop, but it served many of the same goals, I think, that OLPC is aiming for. So I guess my two cents to OLPC are: drop the word "laptop". And especially don't call it "One Laptop Per Child", because that phrase alone is going to throw dozens of assumptions into people's heads and they're just going to laugh at you, like I once did. - Atul

3 4

Fwd: PyStart - Python Programming teaching/testing program
by Nicolas Pettiaux 19 May '07

19 May '07

I relay this answer from Jason Brower that I thank. Nicolas ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jason Brower <encompass(a)gmail.com> Date: 19 mai 2007 10:27 Subject: Re: PyStart - Python Programming teaching/testing program To: nicolas.pettiaux(a)ael.be I have the launchpad ready for blueprints here.. Have fun everyone! https://launchpad.net/pystart On Sat, 2007-05-19 at 00:34 +0200, Nicolas Pettiaux wrote: > This Google summer of code 2007 project has not yet, as far as I have > noticed, been mentioned here, and many of you could be interested and > also willing to share ideas and maybe coding. > > Title PyStart - Python Programming teaching/testing program > > Student Jason Lee Roy Brower > Mentor Pete Savage > > Abstract > PyStart will give teachers a way to work with programming students. > And best of all, the students programs can be graded almost > automatically will very little review from the teacher. PyStart will > review code for the proper entries in the code and for the proper > output. It will be created for beginners of programming. The goal of > PyStart is to teach the basics of all programming skills. For example, > loops and variable types. > > http://code.google.com/soc/ubuntu/appinfo.html?csaid=F43382157E7D628C > > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GoogleSoC2007/python-trainer > -- Nicolas Pettiaux - email: nicolas.pettiaux(a)ael.be Utiliser des formats ouverts et des logiciels libres - http://passeralinux.org

3 2