Mailman 3 June 2008 - Edu-sig

Pygame etc.
by kirby urner 28 Jun '08

28 Jun '08

> Schoolchildren in the One Laptop Per Child program are writing > graphical games in PyGame. > > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pygame > http://www.olpcnews.com/content/games/laptop_game_jam.html > Of course there's a lot of mythology about what schoolchildren are and aren't doing out there in the misty mountains of Peru or whatever, maybe getting Pippy booted up, reading about Fibonacci numbers, Pascal's triangle, turning to generator-based versions. Actually, learning about the stomach was a first exercise, once the dish was working, our chief of security Krstić (erstwhile) nearly breaking his neck during the install process (certainly risking it). http://radian.org/notebook/first-deployment In actual fact, Pygame is a rather low level API. A lot of what happens with Python is veteran C coders with SDL kudos or whatever, find to their relief a relatively painless way to turn fast code into an importable module within a "slow" interpreted RAD language. But so much game action isn't about "superhuman speed" -- just plod along with your human user, 99% wait cycles, and you'll be fine. So it turns out to *not* be so oxymoronic, to have game bindings for a relatively slow but intelligent snake, other scripting languages also. (IronScheme?). Here's a good example of when it makes sense to form a hybrid, in this case machine-facing system language with coder-facing agile (doesn't get all coders off the hook from learning low level languages -- just some of 'em). Guido, recall, was in a busy environment full of technophiles, familiar with ABC, when he went off to write Python on a Lisa. His "end users" weren't children, but experienced computerists, maybe with foci in sciences, mathematics... die-hard nerds already, geeks, not newbies. This is what Arthur (previously on edu-sig, lots in the archive) really *liked* about Python, and he let us know he'd fight any effort to dumb it down, make it "kid friendly" in a condescending way (like Alice in his view -- which I defended, because I'm a cartoon nut, love the idea of PySpongeBob). Better to have kids come to love adult tools of the trade was his attitude -- even wait until they're adults if that's what it takes.** But of course no one wants to wait that long. The dream has always been: more computing power to those who want it, no matter how young. We'll get XOs in utero (with mom's permission) if that's the genetic predisposition of the fetus (i/o hooks to umbilical cord?) -- a twisted geek fantasy I realize, OK to LOL. More seriously, Sugar itself is a lot like a Pygame creation, a 2D iPod-like interface with apps running as pie wedges, helping with the metaphor of finite memory (in a ring), but sure why not run several. This isn't a "toy" interface -- extremely futuristic in a direction I think we *are* set to go, Sugar a brilliant first draft of itself (with many forks and rebrandings as we go forward). Python is very lucky to be getting such a workout, in the hands of so many masters of their craft. http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2008/04/more-on-interface-design.html Back to Python books, I think the web edition format is best during the transition, as all those print statements are about to switch over to functional format as in "print( jabber jabber)" -- intead of "print jabber jabber". Why waste a lot of paper teaching newbies 2.x? Of course they'll need to learn retro dialects once making the commitment to Python more professionally (a huge "if" in many cases -- as it should be), but there's no reason not to go with "state of the art" on intro. That's a privilege of being a newbie: no ties to the past, no obligations, free to cut to the head of the line in some ways (in terms of using the most up to date code). Actually, now is a good time for CS departments to watch something special, as having a live, happy language also be such a moving target (a morpher, a transformer), in terms of jumping a chasm, from ASCII to Unicode, dropping cruft, sleeking out... that doesn't happen every day. Most languages of Python's maturity are considered "quasi-frozen" by the time they get to this point. "Shedding skin" wasn't an option, but Guido had this pre-announced break point (good model, now that we see the pay off). So those teaching "anthropology of computer language cultures" or whatever UC-type stuff, might use this as an opportunity, lots of interesting zine articles (adapted for-credit papers) just begging to be written (and published even!). Kirby PS: the Europython list is making me homesick for Vilnius, I should sign off rather than read about taxi cabs from the airport, but actually no, I'd rather stay tuned, plan to visit her again someday. ** Arthur was a financial sector guy near what used to be called the Pan Am building when we first met, had some beers. Much later we met up with Lansky and his boys, different part of Manhatten, had great free ranging talk on the meaning of liberal arts, C.P. Snow's chasm etc. Arthur was a strong player, miss him on edu-sig (sudden heart attack, like Russert). >>> The book, in HTML and PDF format, and all the games are located here: >>> http://pythonbook.coffeeghost.net >>> >>> I'm planning on doing more books at some point in the future after getting >>> feedback. >>> >> First of all, thank you for your work and making this available. >> >> I first saw a link to your book on del.icio.us and read *quickly* >> through a few sections of a few chapters. My first reaction was "hmm, >> no graphics ... I wonder how that would interest kids nowadays...". >> However, after looking at the beginning of the last two chapters, I >> thought that this approach could very well work. >> >> Overall, it looked like a good progression of topics and something >> very much worthwhile. Still, I think that it might be useful to >> include at least one graphics based game. I would suggest to >> implement the Othello program using pyglet (www.pyglet.org), >> introducing it at the very end. Actually, I would have the kids >> download the finished Othello project and pyglet at the beginning, >> just to try it out, and point out that this is the game that they >> would be writing on their own at the end. >> >> Just a thought... I should read it more closely to give you some >> more detailed feedback. >> >> Cheers, >> >> André >> >> >>> Thank you! >>> Al Sweigart >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Edu-sig mailing list >>> Edu-sig(a)python.org >>> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > > -- > Edward Cherlin > End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business > http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ > "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig(a)python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig >

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Cardinality vs. Ordinality (teaching with Python)
by kirby urner 23 Jun '08

23 Jun '08

Per my blog post of earlier today, I'm continuing to seek hooks in CS that'll help with a more MBA type curriculum, per recent sponsorships, and one of those hooks is "sorting", a paradigm activity in CS that typifies why we pay for computer services i.e. fast sorting capabilities are in some sense the sine qua non of computing. The whole idea of "keeping tabs" (Hollerith machine) relates to retrieving just the right punch cards based on whether a certain hole (or holes) obtain. http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2008/06/energy-economics.html Per an elementary mathematics curriculum, cardinality is about distinguishing objects (in memory, in inventory) without attempting a ranking, i.e. we might tell objects apart (Python's "is") without requiring sortability, whereas ordinality is all about ranking or arranging along an axis (a spectrum) from most to least (or the reverse) in some dimension (i.e. according to some measure). Cardinality: identifiers, location, uniqueness, same/different (==, is) Ordinality: ranking, comparison, more/less ( >, <) Cardinality is sufficient to sustain "matching" i.e. find the one needle in this haystack, the one book in this library, that matches whatever criteria. SQL is in principle able to pull a result set minus any primary key or global sort order, based simply on boolean filtering. The idea of "a sort" is it helps with matching in some cases i.e. speeds retrieval; instead of looking at each book title, you go right to it based on some addressing scheme (an alphabetical sort is a paradigm example).** Apropos of this, we don't define complex numbers according to rank, meaning we don't allow <, > (but do allow ==). >>> 1j > 2j Traceback (most recent call last): File "<pyshell#48>", line 1, in <module> 1j > 2j TypeError: no ordering relation is defined for complex numbers >>> 1j + 1j == 2J True Ordinality implies the possibility of multiple axes, which Python helps describe by giving us the "key" parameter when sorting. But before we get to multiple keys, we'll probably want to demonstrate operator overloading with respect to >, < and == with basic Items i.e. some minimal class of object. Note that Python 3000 no longer includes __cmp__ so you need to do something more like: >>> class Item: def __gt__(self,other): return self.rank > other.rank def __lt__(self,other): return self.rank < other.rank def __eq__(self,other): return self.rank==other.rank >>> a,b,c,d = Item(), Item(), Item(), Item() >>> a.rank = 5 >>> b.rank = 4 >>> c.rank = 1 >>> d.rank = 2 >>> theitems = [a,b,c,d] >>> theitems [<__main__.Item object at 0x83cc30c>, <__main__.Item object at 0x83cc24c>, <__main__.Item object at 0x83cc26c>, <__main__.Item object at 0x83cc4ac>] >>> sorted(theitems) [<__main__.Item object at 0x83cc26c>, <__main__.Item object at 0x83cc4ac>, <__main__.Item object at 0x83cc24c>, <__main__.Item object at 0x83cc30c>] Key: >>> a <__main__.Item object at 0x83cc30c> >>> b <__main__.Item object at 0x83cc24c> >>> c <__main__.Item object at 0x83cc26c> >>> d <__main__.Item object at 0x83cc4ac> Kirby ** just because there's an addressing scheme e.g. organization, even a global one, doesn't mean there's a ranking in the sense of greater and less than. This gets us into deeper mathematical concepts e.g. of "a metric" wherein it's easy to talk about relative proximity, what's touching vs. not touching, without suggesting a global ranking. In CS, networks and trees (as a subclass of network) suggest retrieval strategies i.e. you can get around on New York subways, using a subway map, but there's no need to define > or < except maybe in terms of distance and/or time and/or number of stops between any two stations. The idea of "pure cardinality" might be "named stars" with constellations (networks) introducing early retreivability i.e. two navigators talk about the same star by saying "the bear's nose" or whatever. Web pages and search algorithms give another take on cardinality vs. ordinality.

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Re: [Edu-sig] Edu-sig Digest, Vol 59, Issue 6
by Albert Sweigart 18 Jun '08

18 Jun '08

Hello all, I've spent my spare time over the last few months writing a book aimed at teaching Python to kids through game programming. It is freely available under a Creative Commons license at http://pythonbook.coffeeghost.net I'd like any feedback, especially since the approach I take is different to a lot of the tutorials I see on the web aimed at teaching programming to kids. I noticed that there was a large gap in this area, one that used to be filled by BASIC books (the old BASIC games books like the ones at atariarchives.org especially). It seems that many kids today learn programming on their TI graphing calculators or learn HTML/Javascript, or get one of the many game creation kits out there. While many of these kits have nice drag-and-drop interfaces to tie together multimedia elements, they are limited to a specific genre of games and the graphics hide a lot of what line-by-line programming can teach. Other books explain programming principles and concepts, but leave out complete examples of programs that the student can follow along. They read like a school textbook. My book (Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python) focuses on complete examples of games, and explain programming principles from them. The games are simple (text-based ASCII art graphics, no GUIs or images) and complete (the longest is about 400 lines, including whitespace). The book is designed to be easy enough for 9 to 12 year olds to understand. The book, in HTML and PDF format, and all the games are located here: http://pythonbook.coffeeghost.net I'm planning on doing more books at some point in the future after getting feedback. Thank you! Al Sweigart

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Python and Robots
by Jan Ulrich Hasecke 14 Jun '08

14 Jun '08

Hi, I found pyro and want to know if there is any active development for pyro. The developer list stops on May 2007. Is there anybody using pyro with real robots? Are there any other projects around to play with robots and python? juh -- Business: http://hasecke.com --- Private: http://hasecke.eu --- Blog: http://www.sudelbuch.de --- History: www.generationenprojekt.de --- Europe: www.wikitution.org

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Re: [Edu-sig] Python and Robots
by Laura Creighton 14 Jun '08

14 Jun '08

And http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/rc/9df0/ was a hit at last year's Europython. Laura

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Re: [Edu-sig] Python and Robots
by Laura Creighton 14 Jun '08

14 Jun '08

In a message of Sat, 14 Jun 2008 13:34:17 +0200, Jan Ulrich Hasecke writes: >This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 2440 and 3156) >--===============0071348944== >Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >Content-Type: multipart/signed; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; > micalg=pgp-sha1; boundary="Apple-Mail-2-1060340619" > >This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 2440 and 3156) >--Apple-Mail-2-1060340619 >Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed > >Hi, > >I found pyro and want to know if there is any active development for >pyro. The developer list stops on May 2007. > >Is there anybody using pyro with real robots? > >Are there any other projects around to play with robots and python? > >juh I know people who are using this: http://packages.ubuntu.com/sv/hardy/python-playerc Laura

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Announcing the Project IT Girl Games!
by Clare Richardson 12 Jun '08

12 Jun '08

Announcing the Project IT Girl Games written in Python and Pygame! http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Project_IT_Girl Project IT Girl is a Girlstart after-school program in Austin, Texas, funded by the National Science Foundation. The program consists of 44 high school girls (16 - 17 years old) who are learning how to use technology to make a difference in the world over a three-year period. During the 2007 - 2008 school year, students piloted Girlstart's "Python with a Purpose" curriculum. The IT Girls were given a real-world project: develop an educational game using Python and Pygame that can be distributed to children around the world via the One Laptop per Child program. Each girl picked a learning objective for her game that most interested her, from "practice fractions" to "spread awareness of AIDS testing." To *download the games* and to learn more about Project IT Girl, see our page on the OLPC wiki: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Project_IT_Girl NOTE: These games have not been heavily tested. There are many known issues in the games, including high CPU usage. If you are interested in testing and debugging the games, please email Zakiyyah Kareem at zakiyyah(a)girlstart.org. Clare Richardson Technology and Program Coordinator Girlstart www.girlstart.org 512.916.4775 512.916.4776 fax Scrub in, Broadcast news, Unmask mysteries! Don't miss Summer Camp 2008!

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Re: [Edu-sig] Test Driven Learning: combining MoinMoin and Crunchy
by Laura Creighton 09 Jun '08

09 Jun '08

In a message of Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:18:45 -0300, "Andre Roberge" writes: >>>I think both topic and length/level of difficulty would be useful. >>>But I think the first thing will be to set up such a wiki. >>> >>>Does anyone has any suggestions as to where we could do this? >>> >>>André >> >> Why not use wiki.python.org? >> > >This would seem to be the sensible choice. However, we'd have to have >the administrators of that site agree to "upgrade" the wiki MoinMoin >server by adding the Crunchy parser (when it is completed). > > >André I am pretty sure that will not be a problem. We stuffed some changes into wiki.python.org to accomodate Europython, so I cannot see any reason why you shouldn't get what you want, as well. Post to the PSF mailing list to make sure? Laura

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Re: [Edu-sig] Test Driven Learning: combining MoinMoin and Crunchy
by Laura Creighton 09 Jun '08

09 Jun '08

In a message of Mon, 09 Jun 2008 07:26:55 -0300, "Andre Roberge" writes: >2008/6/7 Andrew Harrington <aharrin(a)luc.edu>: >> The archive sounds good Andre! >> >> I would like to suggest that the home page of such a wiki ask submitter >s to >> put examples under folders for particular categories, either adding to >> existing ones or creating new ones where needed. Also wikis search for >> pages based on categories. We might agree on some basic terms to use i >n >> categories. One group might be based on level of difficulty or length > .... >> > >I think both topic and length/level of difficulty would be useful. >But I think the first thing will be to set up such a wiki. > >Does anyone has any suggestions as to where we could do this? > >André Why not use wiki.python.org? Laura

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Test Driven Learning: combining MoinMoin and Crunchy
by Andre Roberge 09 Jun '08

09 Jun '08

Hi everyone, A new Crunchy screencast is available at http://showmedo.com/videos/video?name=1430030&fromSeriesID=143 In this video, I demonstrate how a customized version of MoinMoin can be used to easily create interactive tutorials for Crunchy. Using this customized version of MoinMoin, it would be easy to set up a central repository where teachers could create a collection of online lessons with exercises to learn Python. Students could retrieve these lessons using Crunchy and get immediate feedback through the use of doctest-based exercises. Note that what is being shown is just an early prototype of a Crunchy parser for MoinMoin. More is expected to come over the course of the summer. <dreaming> Apparently, there are 496 subscribers to edu-sig. Imagine the following scenario: 1. a central repository is created (perhaps on the Python wiki site) 2. each of us contribute 5 doctest-based exercises, covering all aspect of Python, in the next year. Only 5 exercises written in one year. The result would be 2500 exercises that students could use to learn from. Something like this, I believe, would be an invaluable resource for teachers - and certainly contribute to Python's popularity </dreaming> Cheers, André

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