Mailman 3 December 2008 - Edu-sig

ACM Urges Obama to Include CS as Core Component of Science, Math Education
by michel paul Jan. 3, 2009

Jan. 3, 2009

http://www.acm.org/press-room/news-releases/obama-education "Computing education benefits all students, not just those interested in pursuing computer science or information technology careers," said Bobby Schnabel, chair of ACM's Education Policy Committee (EPC)<http://www.acm.org/public-policy/education-policy-committee>. Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! - Michel

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Happy New Year!
by kirby urner Dec. 31, 2008

Dec. 31, 2008

Greetings edu-siggers -- I was pleased to get my second XO yesterday, am lugging junior to an annual gathering in Southern Oregon today, to share with future movers and shakers (actually Quakers). My agenda for 2009 is to stick with the pro-SQL campaign, still thinking of the latest OSCON, in which I talked about cube farmer frustrations with no "open source Access" and the panelists suggested SQL was in itself meeting students more than half way, i.e. they just need to go the extra mile and stop using training wheels for SQL, even if you want the razzle dazzle Reports (lots of packages have that -- just go straight to PDF half the time). Serving through a browser, using a simple web framework (might be *very* simple) makes plenty of sense on a local laptop, plus your design now tends to scale (unlike some "fat clients" we know). So, lotsa LAMP in high school, easy to implement, apropos in GIS/GPS class (i.e. geography -- a prerequisite for planning jobs, or like with Google Earth). More about that here, including changing LAMP to ARM or AMP maybe: http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2008/12/loose-ends.html Anyway, SQL ties in with "computer algebra" as a kind of marketing name, in addition to "gnu math" and is not that off target, given the abstract algebra themes we've been seeing, i.e. once your focus becomes "type centric" (even with "duck typing") the next logical question (in biology too) is what inter-operates with what, i.e. what binary ops have defined outcomes / meanings, raising issues of closure, versus exceptions, etc. Makes plenty of sense to use small finite sets, integers modulo, build towards RSA -- all that old hat stuff per my Vegetable Group Soup (Flash animation, many other exhibits, on Cut the Knot or wherever). Of course the real questions are all about implementation: Will NCLB get some funding for a change, such that teachers have plenty of opportunities to pick up on this stuff while still holding down the day job? I think in the affirmative on this one, as in-service training has always been a part of the job description. However, there's no guarantee that (a) math teachers are always first in line or (b) your zip code will have it before someplace in Cambodia or Peru (lots of smart geeks out there, not waiting for a green light from any "NCLB Czar", snicker). Looking forward to 2009! Kirby

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O'Reilly Book on Google App Engine
by csev Dec. 31, 2008

Dec. 31, 2008

Hi all, I am finishing up the first draft on a book on Google's AppEngine and looking for technical reviewers of the book. The book is titled, "Building Cloud Applications with Google AppEngine" and it is aimed at a very basic level of expertise. It is my hope that it could be used as a self-contained first introduction to programming and certainly a first introduction to web programming. It covers basic Python programming in a chapter and covers OO Python at various points in the book. You can take a look at the book materials at: http://www.appenginelearn.com/chapters/toc.htm I look forward to your comments. If you are interested in being a reviewer for the book please send me a note. Charles Severance University of Michigan

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Re: [Edu-sig] ACM Urges Obama to Include CS as Core Component of Science, Math Education
by Daniel Ajoy Dec. 30, 2008

Dec. 30, 2008

On Thu, 25 Dec 2008 06:00:02 -0500, <edu-sig-request(a)python.org> wrote: > From: "Edward Cherlin" > > 2008/12/23 michel paul : >> http://www.acm.org/press-room/news-releases/obama-education >> >> "Computing education benefits all students, not just those interested in >> pursuing computer science or information technology careers," said Bobby >> Schnabel, chair of ACM's Education Policy Committee (EPC). > > Thanks. I'll invite them to join Earth Treasury's digital textbook > project for the OLPC XO + Sugar. We have Smalltalk, Python, and FORTH > standard on the XO, and we can add anything else of interest. Well, > not Ada or C++, but those aren't of interest to third graders. > > http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Creating_textbooks I don't think FORTH comes with the XO by default. I've the Mexico and Uruguay images and I haven't seen it. What's the name of it's executable? Smalltalk only comes if Etoys is installed. What does come is another very nice language, in my opinion. It is * typeless * interpreted * small * manages memory automatically * does conversions between numbers and strings automatically * can connect to the internet * can pipe in and out of commands and files. * it has hashes, and arrays are just hashes of numbers. the language is called awk, and the interpreter gawk now that I think of it, there is another programming language that comes by default: javascript. > APL is > coming. Scheme is pretty easy. What else would you like? UCBLogo is Scheme without parethesis (and with dynamic scope, instead of lexical scope) http://wiki.laptop.org/images/e/e5/Ucblogo-4.xo The problem is that is it not sugarized yet. and the LogoFE library for Logo makes is very much like APL. LogoFE is already in Spanish the language spoken in Uruguay, Colombia and Perú, where the XO has had deployments. Daniel

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More re OLPC
by kirby urner Dec. 29, 2008

Dec. 29, 2008

This just in: http://adage.com/article?article_id=133510 Excerpt: """ Joe Deeley, a comedian on the Geek Comedy Tour, laid out a common opinion, writing in the comments of Laptop Magazine's blog discussion. "John Lennon probably would have endorsed the OLPC. I seriously doubt he would have endorsed manipulating dead celebrities to say things we 'IMAGINE' they might have said. ... Congratulations on a bold new level of newspeak. George Orwell would be proud. What's next? Elvis for peace in Darfur? Why not? I believe he would have supported it. John Wayne would probably have gotten behind AIDS education and prevention measures. ... Where does it end? Why do we need dead people to help us envision a better future? I suppose there's nobody alive that would agree to this? Sad times." """ Plus more OLPC stuff in my blog post today (BizMo Diaries). Kirby

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Europython story...
by kirby urner Dec. 27, 2008

Dec. 27, 2008

So here's a sort of funny story, true, from Vilnius that time. I'm in the ConocoPhillips demo of how a big oil company uses Pythonic tools as a part of a video pipeline (sort of a pun) connecting Ecofisk to shore managers, big screening room, lots of eye candy, you've probably seen places like it. So like if a ship is pulling up, that'll be there on screen, to scale, looking very ship like, and even bobbing up and down in the waves, rather dramatically in a storm (in which case, maybe try docking later?). At this point, this professor to my left, from Italy, semi-explodes saying there's no way to solve all those partial differential equations about fluid dynamics in real time (he's right) and sort of foaming at the mouth thinking what a breakthrough this must be, like playing Doom for the first time, you could just see the Exxon / NUMB3RS crypto bonanza, like Springer-Verlag on steroids, spilling out of his thought balloon. Meanwhile we non-mathematicians were muttering stupid stuff, like we'd just come from Pixar like "it's just a fucking cartoon" but we held our tongues, not wanting to be impolite (especially me, in a stupid suit like I thought would help me "blend in" in Lithuania, like what the hell did I know: I poke vicious fun at myself in the caption to this picture (following URL)). http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/1022917395/in/set-721576012488826… Kirby

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Re: [Edu-sig] interactive python tutorial online (as tryruby)
by kirby urner Dec. 26, 2008

Dec. 26, 2008

try ruby! is pretty enticing, I agree, great use of AJAX to refresh the cue cards at bottom. Might be a fun Django project (I assume this is Rails?). I rarely have the challenge to initiate an interest in Python, as by the time students have entered my class, studies the class description, they've made up their minds. Some of them have already checked it out or used it in other classes. Here's my current course description for Spring (written by Gail, other staff): ==== Computer Animation Programming Supercharge your programming skills as you learn the software Star Wars animators, Google engineers, and game designers use to make their projects a success! You will develop your Python skills using simple vector-based geometry in an object-oriented approach. You'll get hands-on experience with POV-Ray, a full-featured ray tracer that can create stunning photo-realistic computer-generated images and animations and experiment in VPython, a real-time game-like environment. Other topics include data structures, classes and objects, control statements, and reading and writing files. ==== I also don't work with children under 15 for the most part, and these days am lucky to see anyone under 25 (I'm not a full time classroom teacher, just venture there from my private sector perch in the private sector). I should remember my limited experience, as a former high school math teacher in Jersey City, as an application developer. I am not a preschool specialist or administrator, although I did at one time evaluate products aimed at this market for McGraw-Hill (a long time ago). Kirby Urner @ Fine Grind (CFN) Portland, Oregon On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 12:21 AM, Jurgis Pralgauskis <jurgis.pralgauskis(a)gmail.com> wrote: > also would be a good to have interactive tutorial, which would > comunicate with user/learner in similar manner as tryruby... or maybe > more advanced chatbot.. > > import intro > or learn, teachmeintro > > maybe smb knows of similar initiatives ? > and which text tutorial would you propose? > I'd like it to be short kind of python in 5/10 minutes: > http://www.poromenos.org/tutorials/python > http://jamwt.com/misc/pyten.txt

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Python and Linguistics
by Steven Bird Dec. 21, 2008

Dec. 21, 2008

The Natural Language Toolkit is a Python library supporting the linguistic analysis of text. It comes with an online book that teaches Python, Linguistics and Natural Language Processing. It includes material that is suitable for secondary, undergraduate, and graduate levels. Version 0.9.7 has just been released, and is available at http://www.nltk.org/ -Steven Bird http://www.csse.unimelb.edu.au/~sb/

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Relevance of education
by Warren Sande Dec. 19, 2008

Dec. 19, 2008

One of my favourite web comics, XKCD, has a great one today: http://www.xkcd.com/519/ (You could, of course, substitute Python for Perl...) The previous one on flowcharts was a gem, too. Warren Sande

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What is the Best Way to use Python in the Windows Command Line
by csev Dec. 19, 2008

Dec. 19, 2008

I teach a number of classes at the University of Michigan that are about Python and that use Python. We have gone from no Python classes last year to five classes and four teachers that teach Python at UM. We share intro documentation on how to install and set up the environment. One thing that really bugs me is that the WIndows Python installer does not add itself to the Path automatically. Since I insist that students can be allowed to use Mac's or PCs - I try to create a similar environment for both and the command line is the lowest common denominator. I end up publishing detailed documents and screen casts to get python into your Windows path. It works but it is not where I want students energy focused in the first week of class. I am wondering if there is another way. I generally do not like IDLE - it uses a socket which can get messed up, bugs in the student's code seem to mess up the IDE, when a program needs to open a data file - it is hard to force IDLE into a known directory. Is there a way to use an icon and then start the icon an have the current working directory (i.e. to open data files) be the same directory as the Python file? And then is there a way to get the output to stop at the end and not disappear when the program finishes? I do not like solutions which include adding code to the student programs to do things like pause before terminating or setting the current working directory. The students have enough trouble figuring out the 20 lines of code that matter let alone 5-6 lines of obtuse code to set up the environment. I can continue to teach them how to set the PATH variable in Windows - if anyone on this list has a suggestion - I would much appreciate it. Thanks. Charles Severance University of Michigan

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