Mailman 3 March 2008 - Edu-sig

introduction
by Richard Enbody 20 Mar '08

20 Mar '08

Greetings. I'm a professor in Computer Science and Engineering at Michigan State University, and we started using Python last fall (2007) in our first programming course for majors (CS and CpE), i.e. a 'CS1' course. However, more than half the students are non-majors. The URL is http://www.cse.msu.edu/~cse231 MSU is a large, midwestern US university (40K students). Our CS1 course has two lecture sections of slightly over a hundred students each with a scheduled ('closed') weekly lab. I'm looking forward to interacting with you all (and I'm embarrassed that it took me so long to find this list). Cheers. -rich enbody(a)cse.msu.edu

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PyCon Follow-up
by Jonah Bossewitch 20 Mar '08

20 Mar '08

Hi everyone, First, I want to let you know that I had a great time at our conference this year, despite all the blogo-grumblings to the contrary. Meeting up with many of the educators in the python community is one of the many reasons why. I mostly lurk on this list, but it occurs to me that I should be sharing more of my work here. Here is a model I have been working on for a while that captures some of the conversation I got into with educators this weekend: http://jonahboss.fastmail.fm/wikimania/wikimania_poster.pdf and it's elaborated on here: http://jonahboss.fastmail.fm/wildwildwiki/chap2_wiki_justice_final.doc and will soon be published in the forthcoming U. of Mich anthology on wikis in education: Wiki Writing:Collaborative Learning in the College Classroom I've also been writing alot about the OLPC project: Two academic essays: Plato and the Laptop: Prescribing Educational Technology for Society’s Ills <http://pocketknowledge.tc.columbia.edu/home.php/viewfile/18940> Free Laptops: Creating, Producing and Sharing a Revolution <http://pocketknowledge.tc.columbia.edu/home.php/viewfile/18259> A slideshow presentation: http://jonahboss.fastmail.fm/presentations/teach_think_play2007/html/ttp200… and some (hopefully) positive and constructive posts for OLPCnews: Have Faith in One Laptop Per Child Miracles <http://www.olpcnews.com/implementation/plan/have_faith_in_one_la.html> Portable Culture Machines <http://www.olpcnews.com/content/education/portable_culture_mac.html> OLPC Personalization Stickers <http://www.olpcnews.com/implementation/plan/olpc_personalization_stickers.h…> OLPC Leadership: Musicians or Instrument Makers <http://www.olpcnews.com/content/education/sharing_share_alike_user_content.…> Sharing and Not-Sharing Alike <http://www.olpcnews.com/content/education/sharing_share_alike_user_content.…> Finally, I wanted to add that I will likely be attending the New Media Consortium summer conference in Princeton - http://www.nmc.org/2008-summer-conference. Our group has found that community to be very supportive of the use the purposeful use of tech in ed. We also find their Horizon report helpful too - http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2008-Horizon-Report.pdf warm regards, /Jonah

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More Pycon threads...
by kirby urner 18 Mar '08

18 Mar '08

I've uploaded a few Pycon2008 pix to a public Flickr folder for the curious (of course many others have done the same): http://flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/sets/72157604146122293/ Maybe a little misleading to show that Hyatt, which I took for the gorgeous reflected lighting -- we actually were at the Crowne Plaza nearby. If anyone knows the name of the gentleman on the left in 00057 looking at the XO, I'd be much obliged. He taught at Saturday Academy (where I teach) many years ago, while working at Intel. We had a lot of good conversation but I forgot his name. The man on the right is Patrick O'Brien, whom I suspect most of us would know from PyShell and PyCrust, part of the wxPython package. He's also the architect of Schevo, a cutting edge Object Oriented Database which he uses behind the scenes on the job. Yes, that's whiskey in our cups (Bushmills, provided by yours truly). 00063 deserves an explanation. That's the ceiling of the atrium, the big common area outside the ballrooms and above the small rooms where we had the BOFs. This is a common spaceframe in today's architecture, known as the octet-truss, for which Bucky Fuller gained a patent (long since expired). It links to my talk in the sense that balls piled up in a tetrahedron or half-octahedron make this same pattern (if you interconnect adjacent ball centers with rods). Ball packing, triangular and tetrahedral numbers, are important topics in my classroom.** As for that talk, Ian Benson of sociality.tv is very involved in the workflow by which raw video of speaker talks is transcoded to digital and made available. He chose mine as a way of demoing his trademark post production process and hopes to have something viewable in the not too distant future. I'll post a link when one becomes available. Ian knows a huge amount about the pedagogy of working with young children since Piaget and Papert, the many forks in that road. I'm learning a lot from the guy. He spearheads an algebraFirst initiative, which helps kids develop their intuitions around abstract algebra even before they learn the standard arithmetical algorithms, normally considered a starting place. You'll see a book he was sharing prominently featured in those same Pycon pix (Patrick is holding my copy). 00060 is a picture of Ed Leafe, the man behind Dabo, a Pythonic implementation of an xBase-like database development framework ala FoxPro (another subculture I work in). I also had some quality time talking with Jonah, who has an enviable position within the Columbia University namespace. He claims to lurk on this list. Hi Jonah! Kirby in west Pennsylvania Cc: Ian ** http://www.grunch.net/synergetics/octet.html http://www.4dsolutions.net/presentations/sa_8620.pdf (note: Alexander Graham Bell was deeply into this same truss -- something Bucky Fuller didn't know until later (all important history in my math classroom)).

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Kirby from Pycon
by kirby urner 18 Mar '08

18 Mar '08

Greetings from Pycon. I've mentioned this list to numerous people at this conference. As I said over dinner (hotel buffet), I think we have enough talent around this table to bring off the revolution (OK, a little short on details -- probably why we all seemed to agree). As we disperse, I encourage those of us already here (at the conference and on this list) to keep reaching out to the contacts we've made. Lots of cool cosmic fish will slip through our nets if we don't (as some will even if we do -- such is life). My two Pycon blog posts (so far): http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2008/03/pycon-2008.html http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2008/03/more-from-pycon.html More later, Kirby

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Foothill College Spring Courses
by Elaine 18 Mar '08

18 Mar '08

Spring quarter classes start Monday, 7 April, at Foothill College. These two may be of interest to you: 1) Introduction to Python Programming - 5 units Prerequisite: Any programming language experience CIS 68K - Monday evenings at Middlefield campus in Palo Alto 2) Application Software Development with Ajax - 5 units Prerequisite: Knowledge of HTML and JavaScript COIN 71 - Tuesday evenings at Middlefield campus in Palo Alto If you are interested in taking a class, please register as soon as possible by going to: http://www.foothill.fhda.edu/reg/index.php If not enough students sign up, a class may be cancelled. If you have any questions, please contact the instructor, Elaine Haight, at haightElaine(a)foothill.edu ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping

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EuroPython 2008 - Any interest in tutorials?
by David Boddie 18 Mar '08

18 Mar '08

[I hope this isn't regarded as off-topic for this list - please consider it a sincere attempt to gather input rather than a shameless attempt at marketing. ;-)] As many of you may be aware, preparations for EuroPython 2008 - the European Python community conference - are under way. For the second year running, the event will be held in Vilnius, Lithuania, with the main programme taking place on Monday 7th, Tuesday 8th and Wednesday 9th July. Those of us involved with the conference are looking for ways in which we can make the event more interesting for beginners and experts alike. One way in which we could do this, particularly for people who are learning Python, is to allocate time for tutorials. This approach appears to be popular at conferences like PyCon and PyCon UK, but isn't something we normally do at EuroPython, though there are often talks are aimed at beginners in the schedule. What we'd like to know is: * Is this something that you would like to see? * Would you be interested in giving a tutorial? * Which subject would you be interested in hearing/talking about? If you answered "yes" to either of the first two questions, please feel free to add suggestions for tutorials, either as a participant or as a speaker, to this page on the EuroPython Wiki: http://www.europython.org/community/Talk_Suggestions If you're interested in participating in EuroPython this year in any way, please come and join us on the europython mailing list http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/europython or visit this page on the EuroPython Web site: http://www.europython.org/community/Participants Hope to see some of you there! David Boddie - EuroPython 2008 participant :-)

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Re: [Edu-sig] Kirby from Pycon
by Gregor Lingl 18 Mar '08

18 Mar '08

Richard Guenther schrieb: > Hi Gregor (and Kirby), > > I've been silent for a while on this list, as I've been in the process > of changing email accounts, installing various Linux distros, and my > full-time job.... > > I teach high school students in Colorado, US. I have downloaded > Xturtle and some of my students and I have played with each example. > I will show it to my programming club this week. > > I like what I see so far. I do use the regular turtle module, but > most of my students want to leave it behind and switch to pygame after > a little while. Xturtle has some advantages. > > The xturtleDemo.py file runs quite well on Ubuntu Linux, except for > the moorhuhn game, which uses the winsound module. I have not tested > any of this on Windows, but will do so soon. Thanks for the feedback, Richard. Perhaps you could create a Linux version of moorhuhn game with some (to winsound equivalent module? If necessary, from pygame? Do you know the original moorhuhn game? If so, you certainly can tell me the original English name of the game. (I know, that the English word for Moorhuhn is grouse - but is this the name of the game?) All the best Gregor P.S.: Another interesting question is, if Guenther is an English name. In fact in German it's frequently used as a first name (as well as Richard). > Thanks, > > Richard Guenther >

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Re: [Edu-sig] Kirby from Pycon
by Laura Creighton 16 Mar '08

16 Mar '08

In a message of Sun, 16 Mar 2008 22:41:36 +0100, Gregor Lingl writes: >kirby urner schrieb: >> Greetings from Pycon. >> >> I've mentioned this list to numerous people at this >> conference. As I said over dinner (hotel buffet), >> I think we have enough talent around this table >> to bring off the revolution (OK, a little short on >> details -- probably why we all seemed to agree). >> >> As we disperse, I encourage those of us already >> here (at the conference and on this list) to keep >> reaching out to the contacts we've made. Lots >> of cool cosmic fish will slip through our nets if we >> don't (as some will even if we do -- such is life). >> >> >Hi Kirby, > >what do you think about xturtle? Is it cool? Cosmic? A fish ;-) >Will it slip through our nets? > >I read your blog entries and regret not to have been there. It was >impossible for me this year, but I consider to manage to attend >PyCon 2009, (if some financial support would be possible from >somewhere ;) ) Let's see. > >Looking forward to more from you, later > >Gregor The PSF provided financial aid to attend pycon this year and intends to keep on doing this. Laura

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xturtle - new version
by Gregor Lingl 15 Mar '08

15 Mar '08

Hi everyone ... I've been off line for a while, due to a lot of work ... ... but since approx. two weeks I've found time to continue my work on xturtle.py and to implement a few hopfully useful features as well as some example scripts demonstrating them. Only one of them I'd like to mention here, because it proved really very useful for interactive work with turtle graphics: an undo() method/function, which serves to correct painlessly the consequences of wrong ideas ;-) Notes on the new features are in a text file in the xturtle package as well as here: http://www.rg16.at/~python/xturtle/whatsnew.txt You can download the zipped package with xturtle.py, a demoviewer and the sample scripts from the (still not substantially refreshed) website: http://www.rg16.at/~python/xturtle/download.html Quite a few users asked and/or encouraged me during the last months to anew propose xturtle.py as a replacement or a supplement for xturtle.py either for Python 2.6 and especially for Python 3000. (A port of xturtle.py to Python3000 is under way and nearly ready!) Morover there is the following point in PEP-0361, the Python 2.6 and 3.0 release schedule: - turtle.py replacement or enhancements I'll propose my workto the developer community within a short time. The code of the current version works well, albeit it certainly still has some bugs. (I hope to get bug reports form users ....) I plan to polish the code during the next weeks. For now I think, that the current version can serve well as a basis for a discussion about the following topics: 1) about the API - i. e. about the naming of the classes and methods as well as about the question if there are some which could be eliminated or other new features which should be added. (Imho I've reached a point where it seems not to be reasonable to add substantially more features) 2) about the question if xturtle should be compatible to turtle.py as far as possible, in the sense that turtle-programs should run with xturtle in the same way. (I think this is to a far extent the case now - but it complicates and extends the code of xturtle considerably.) Of course many users as well as nonusers of turtle graphics have a lot of different opinions about it's advantages and disadvantages.I'd just like to mention once more, the for me it is a very valuable instrument to visualize computer science concepts easily and consequently to teach programming. To see better what I mean with this, please have a look at the code of the minimal_hanoi.py sample script, which implements a graphical animation of the tower of hanoi game using a lot of advanced concepts of Python but nearly without any overhead for graphics operations. That's just my approach to using turtle graphics. So I'd like to modestly ask you to have a look at the xturtle package, think about it's usefulness for educational purposes and give some feedback or contribute otherwise to the discussion. With kind regards, Gregor

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Re: [Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students
by David MacQuigg 14 Mar '08

14 Mar '08

At 03:12 PM 3/11/2008 -0700, Rob Malouf wrote: >On Mar 11, 2008, at 2:57 PM, David MacQuigg wrote: >> I guess what I should conclude is that when performance is >>important, don't bother trying to optimize Python. Go straight to >>C, and get 10 or 100X improvement. > >That hasn't always been my experience. I found that using psyco and >numpy (along with careful profiling and optimization), I can often get >essentially the same performance from pure Python that I can get from >mixed Python/C solutions, and with much less trouble. I agree that the Python/C interface is more trouble than it should be, especially for freshman engineering students and technical professionals who don't have time for messy programming details. What I would like to see is something like a simple "directive" I could put in my Python code to say "The following function is in C", and have Python set up the linkage for me. It would make a nice improvement in this Mandelbrot demo if you could show me a way to significantly improve the speed of the Python I already have, perhaps avoiding the need for C. I've posted the complete Python module at http://ece.arizona.edu/~edatools/ece175/projects/mandelbrots/mandel.py Just run the command $ python mandel.py and you should see the output from two examples in the doctests: 1a) Python speed = 787 points/sec 1b) C speed = 125500 points/sec 2a) Python speed = 823 points/sec 2b) C speed = 134300 points/sec The C source, mandelbrotC.c, is also in that same directory. The tests above were done on an old Windows machine running Cygwin. -- Dave

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