Mailman 3 July 2008 - Edu-sig

Fwd: [crunchy-discuss] Croquant: a set of MoinMoin plugins for an integration with Crunchy
by Andre Roberge 14 Aug '08

14 Aug '08

Hi everyone, Florian Birée (see below) has completed parts of his Google Summer of Code project. If you are interested in having a wiki to store python snippets (they could be doctest-based problems) as learning tools and have students use Crunchy to run and modify the code snippets, this is the tool for you. Cheers, André P.S. Croquant is French for Crunchy. :-) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Florian Birée <florian.biree(a)gmail.com> Date: Tue, Jul 8, 2008 at 7:33 PM Subject: [crunchy-discuss] Croquant: a set of MoinMoin plugins for an integration with Crunchy To: moin-user(a)lists.sourceforge.net Cc: crunchy-discuss(a)googlegroups.com Hello, I proud to announce the 1.0 release of Croquant <http://code.google.com/p/croquant/>. Croquant is a set of MoinMoin plugins (currently one parser, three macros and one theme) to allow to use a MoinMoin wiki to write tutorials for Crunchy (<http://code.google.com/p/crunchy/>). Crunchy is a software which transform a static html tutorial to learn the python language into a dynamic tutorial with the python interpreter embedded inside. With MoinMoin and Croquant, a tutorial can be written in an easy and collaborative way. This is a part of my Google Summer of Code 2008 for Crunchy. All feedback is welcome! Cheers, -- Thesa ~ Florian Birée e-mail : florian(a)biree.name Messagerie Instantanée Jabber/XMPP/Google Talk : florian.biree(a)jabber.fr Site web : http://florian.biree.name/ Carnet web : http://filyb.info/

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web2py 1.38
by Massimo Di Pierro 04 Aug '08

04 Aug '08

Hello everybody, I posted web2py version 1.38 (www.web2py.com). It is a web framework originally developed at DePaul University as a teaching tool. If you are familiar with Django or Rails than you know what this is about. web2py is very easy to use because you unzip it, click it, and it starts web server, database, and you do everything through the web interface. Python is in the package and has no dependencies. The original idea behind web2py was not that of teaching how to use a web framework but to make the role of the framework so easy and transparent that it can be used as a tool for teaching intro to python programming. Even students without programming experience understand the concept of URL, Input/Output, storage. In web2py a function is called when you visit a url. The output is the resulting web page. They edit the code as they edit a wiki page. Instead of building sample loops over prime numbers, you can as easily loop and build an RSS feed, etc. If you want to use it let me know and I will send you a draft version of the book. Massimo

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Re: [Edu-sig] Nat's report from NZ (OSCON follow-up)
by kirby urner 28 Jul '08

28 Jul '08

So per this post to Math Forum I'm taking pretty seriously this feedback from New Zealand, Nat Torkington reporting (during a keynote), regarding what works and what doesn't in CP4E and/or P4E pedagogy. http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=6312197&tstart=0 Discoveries: robots are lame, Logo blows, scratch.mit.edu followed by process.org makes a good pipeline. Of course some kids love robots, likewise turtles, so none of this makes sense without a goal up front, which in Nat's case was "training future hackers". Why I take Nat this seriously is it's hard to imagine a more personable geek with better people skills, what it takes to be an O'Reilly conference chair I'd imagine. So I can factor out a lot of the ego I'd expect from more biased and/or blinded individual. In the end, I sensed a willingness to make peace with robotics, provided the stuff works better, isn't crap. His argument was they'll pour on the hours, delaying gratification in ways only kids can, only to have the assembly not work as advertised, through for no apparent fault in construction i.e. they did all the steps, and still a no go. Too complicated, gets ugly. Per my Chicago talk (showmedo etc.), I'm not working with the same demographic in terms of age (could be New Zelanders -- as when working with Bernie **), am more focused on an older set, with stronger math skills thanks to earlier teachers. Why he didn't like Logo is it demands too much "degree-angle" thinking, all those 30-60-90 conventions, which eight year olds maybe don't have, thanks to withholding such material until much later (when learning to read a clock is when it should start, in conjunction with discussions about the Earth's spinning, i.e. 1st & 2nd grades, 24 hour dial clocks good to have handy). By the time students get to Python, I think we can assume "clock arithmetic" (another name for modulo arithmetic) and at least an inkling of what's in the math module, if not cmath (come later, as we navigate through NQRC). My only competition, at this level, are calculators on the low end, Mathematica / MathCad on the high end (Matlab isn't competition, given how Python and Matlab inter-operate already). sociality.tv might be going with ML (?), plus Ruby is strong with some of my Saturday Academy geeks, but I'm not too worried about the fate of our snake, even though Nat poked fun at its cryptic error messages (again, Guido never claimed 8 year olds were his target audience when inventing this creature). Per a conversation with Steve Holden, I go "everything is a snake in Python" in my intro, because I use "snake" to mean "generic object" -- because of all the __ribs__ (special names). Per rms, hackers like these kinds of jokes, even if they're not recursive in nature (not saying this one isn't -- kinda like the joke in 'Cars' (everything is a car in 'Cars', even the bugs)). Kirby ** Bernie Gunn, geochemist par excelance: http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2004/12/view-from-middle-earth.html

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Re: [Edu-sig] looking for references
by Laura Creighton 27 Jul '08

27 Jul '08

In a message of Sat, 26 Jul 2008 10:11:39 CDT, "Daniel Ajoy" writes: >> I am looking for a study I used to know which demonstrated that >> the introduction of a grading scheme had a damaging effect on the >> ability of educators to actually teach students. Anybody got >> some references lying around? >> >> Laura > > >Punished by rewards > > >Daniel Thank you! Laura

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Re: [Edu-sig] looking for references
by Daniel Ajoy 26 Jul '08

26 Jul '08

> I am looking for a study I used to know which demonstrated that > the introduction of a grading scheme had a damaging effect on the > ability of educators to actually teach students. Anybody got > some references lying around? > > Laura Punished by rewards Daniel

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posting from OSCON 2008
by kirby urner 25 Jul '08

25 Jul '08

Assembled geeks are settling in for morning keynotes, but rather than repeat whats in the blogs, including mine, I'll use this space to register some satisfaction with the social networking side. I've been comparing notes with Duncan McGreggor of divmod for example, a Twisted guy (Electric Duncan blog), discovered some pleasing overlap when it comes to native cultures (Lakota in his case, showed him the medicine wheel in my Chicago talk video feed, like at showmedo). Steve Holden kindly joined me at the Linus Pauling House (LP = x2 Nobel winner, chemistry & peace, a no nukes guy, vitamin C nut) where I gave a lightning talk, after a brief tour, and before beers.** I flipped through the same butcher papers I'd used at my last conference at Oregon State, mentions the P4E and HP4E projects (where I tend to go with Python, tons on file already (open source flight plan)). As I was mentioning to Anna of Alaska recently (TECC file), we're moving towards autonomy in casinos network circles, in terms of having local talent write some new games (still lots of import / export, self-sufficiency doesn't mean isolation, means changing comparative advantage equations, as economists put it). Or, to make a long story short, a Pygame slot machine, studied in math class, might go a long way towards achieving these goals (more in my controlroom yesterday). http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2008/07/python-project.html Fun story: when I got home after the keynotes last night (Holden, Shuttleworth, R0ml, Conway -- Holden did State of the Snake in a superfast manner, way cool), my mom, 78, said she hoped Drupal got mentioned, because as a web wrangler with wilpf.org, she really appreciates Drupal. Well, just so happens one of the coveted Google O'Reilly awards went to a Drupal MVP, Angela Byron. Kirby ** LPH is where this group called Wanderers converges, lots of 'em geeks, such as that Keith Lofstrom character, also around here somewhere.

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looking for references
by Laura Creighton 25 Jul '08

25 Jul '08

I am looking for a study I used to know which demonstrated that the introduction of a grading scheme had a damaging effect on the ability of educators to actually teach students. Anybody got some references lying around? Laura

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Re: [Edu-sig] Edu-sig Digest, Vol 60, Issue 13
by Anna Roys 23 Jul '08

23 Jul '08

Thank you Kirby and Edward. As an education reform visionary, I am very inspired by what I read today on this list. As my time allows, I will play an energetic role in promoting open source learning in K-12 environments, not only in the schools where I teach, but in other welcoming environments. Anna

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Free Software in Africa
by kirby urner 23 Jul '08

23 Jul '08

Here's another "as it happens" for the archive, taking in a talk on Creating and Supporting Free Software in Africa by Prof Derek Keats, University of the Western Cape (UWC), South Africa -- in some ways a continuation of the previous edu-sig session. About 20 of us in the audience. He's a "CIO" and initiated African Virtual Open Initiatives and Resources (AVOIR). He'll probably podcast the audio, as he's recording to his iPod. Most of the world is not like Stanford. Let's start with "alarming perspectives". Making areal displays with numbers, e.g. numbers per capita with tertiary education, results in many distorted maps (worldmapper.org). Shanty towns around Cape Town is more his school's focus. There's a lack of critical mass in many areas, such as computer science. How to solve? Through collaboration (the only way). Building new universities and staffing them can't happen quickly enough. Free and open source software, applying lessons learned to building community, infrastructure, is the vision of AVOIR (pan-African FOSS). AVOIR is "established as a network for capacity building in FOSS engineering". Key links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chisimba http://avoir.uwc.ac.za/ http://ics.uwc.ac.za Twitter: dkeats Facebook: Derek Keats email: dkeats(a)uwc.ac.za Phase 1 (2005-2008) has involved networking universities around Chisimba, a Web 2.0 AJAX application with attendant software (13 nodes so far). Kabul Polytechnic is part of the alliance (eQuality Alliance). Picture of training workshop in Kabul, re the portal, eLearning. Georgia Tech another partner... KEWL training in the Philippines. We haven't seen the interface yet (we're getting to it), am trying to visualize what Chisimba looks like (booth 818 here at OSCON). Word for "framework" in Malawi. Chisimba is highly modular, per Debian community (ala Synaptic), includes a package management system. Implements MVC. Yes, there's Python involved, hooked to gstreamer. Also: CURL, FFmpeg, Java... lots of toyz, went by pretty fast. Now Keats is demoing the remote package management component. You can start a new eLearning environment in just minutes, given enough bandwidth. Everything else is component based, e.g. adding a blog or some other resource is a matter of mouse clicks. Some components allow real time audio, shared white board annotation, filtering. With cut and paste, you can embed the live component in a blog, in a moodle or whatever. www.dkeats.com for more examples. USAID, Sun Microsystems, Geek Corps are part of the alliance somehow (USAID focused on animal health). University of Nairobi, NOLNET in Namibia are working on implementing AVOIR, as is National University of Rwanda. Electronic Thesis and Dissertation system is another of the components. Sun is providing hardware in six of the thirteen partner institutions so far. Social Content and Networking for Schools connects like 50 schools in poor areas to create an intranet (not connected to Internet) with social networking and eLearning. Social tools help curriculum content to grow. Chisimba reminds me of Plone, sort of, but it's built very specifically for customized eLearning environments. Sometimes Chisimba users become potential interns, helping with Chisimba's development. Those who've become interns have contributed usable code without exception. Realtime podcasting application is a 3-click process. Start, Stop, Publish. Bandwidth is the biggest challenge. Some institutions don't realize the value of networks. Culturally, there's often a tendency to keeping quiet, to be deferential, whereas on the Internet you're encouraged to be more egalitarian (out of necessity in a lot of ways). Salary structures and high turnover are other problems. People move on before they have time to become Chisimba developers. Questions: what about OLPC (one laptop per child). Getting computing resources to students is a good thing, not limited to the XO initiative. Providing labs on a massive scale is the only way to provide a lot of access in many cases, as the students have no access to laptops. This is where Sun comes in, in some cases. Government funding has been problematic in that the South African department with jurisdiction has had some turnover, some friends have left. Why start a new framework? In part to encourage local participation, hard to break in to ongoing open source projects in some cases. A goal here was to be self-managing, running all aspects, including the version control, servers. Sometimes it's just easier to start from scratch. AVOIR is about developing competence and confidence among young African software developers. It's an exercise in community building, as well as a project aimed at producing quality software (they go together). I asked about fonts, internationalization. A lot of the languages just use Latin-1 characters, but in Afghanistan they're working on the Farsi translation (of Chisimba). The Chisimba package itself is sophisticated about language issues, uses UTF-8. The animal health project has a mobile devices API although Dr. Keats isn't sure how far they've come along with that. Kirby

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Changing Education (OSCON panel)
by kirby urner 23 Jul '08

23 Jul '08

I'm going to publish my notes for Changing Education... Open Content, Open Hardware, Open Source curricula, from Portland Ballroom 252. Schmidt, Cooper, Shuttleworth, Keats, Kurshan, Wiley and Behlendorf are our panelists (not saying we know them all... yet). Each speaker is introducing themselves with three tag words, like licensing, poverty, literacy, freedom, collaboration, Africa. OSC means Open Source Curriculum. "Community before code" was a fun slogan. Foo Conference just ended, some of this discussion is a continuation of those threads, but less North America focused, is our moderator's hope. The question on history (when did this "movement" get started) -- I'd have to echo R0ml and point to liberal academic cultures in general, where Stallman had his roots, UC Berkeley a big influence (one of the panelists). People build for each other, appreciate the role synergy plays, and so off course we should be open, not in lock down mode. Backsteps in 70s, 80s, 90s. How extensive is the use of open source anyway, in education? Compared to the US? Mark Shuttleworth is saying one of the most extraordinary tools is Moodle (award for that guy last night). One of Mark's key words is certification, similar to accreditation, in the sense of curriculum content having imprimaturs from various sources (governments?). Push versus pull is something we hear about. E-Textbooks are a buzzword, but who's building these in practice? Are we talking about mashups? Is a web site an e-text? Why or why not? Curriki is growing: http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome Indonesia etc. Education institutions are monolithic island structures (silos), with technology's decentralizing effects starting to erode them the way they've eroded many corporate institutions. Scarcity drives aggregation, hoarding of resources, the genesis of the professoriate. This is starting to break down -- semi-permeable and permeable membrane metaphors. Not just teaching, but accrediting the people who learn from them, is incipient. All this hearkens back to the discussions I've been having with Steve Holden around Python certification. It's not about developing a monolithic Microsoft University of University of Phoenix. Schools develop a rep by "minting students" meaning you find out over time what a certification really means. Schools don't have to ask permission of other schools before putting their stamp on a transcript or c.v., e.g. Saturday Academy hands out certificates with "currency value" when it comes to applying for college (proves you've not been wasting your time -- at least constitutes evidence). Teachers really want a bigger role in content development, whereas publishers are hungry for content, so there's an obvious synergy here, with teachers playing the role of open source developers, hired guns in the sense that publishers have some say about what gets their imprimatur (many schools are also publishers, as are many private companies, not that schools aren't themselves companies in many cases). Teachers identifying as curriculum writers (as I do) will be banding and branding, doing OSCs. What about "suspect curricula"? How do we develop "trust". Mark is tackling that one, thinking opening up is a great strategy for improving content. Teachers often will not touch material that hasn't been certified. They only teach approved materials. Can we identify things which will be "contentious" like Intelligent Design? Mark sees contention more as the exception, Wikipedia more the model. Ideology is a problem in "corner cases" only -- might be a blind spot on Mark's spot, given "certification" is in itself a tool of control, keeps controversies suppressed. One of our panelists is espousing the goal of having 100% open source materials in its curriculum. Any remaining gaps to be plugged, 9th grade kicking off in 2009. Curriki is likewise K-12 focussed, historically. What we're seeing is a generation of open source developers old enough to be bending their model towards teaching, i.e. using our new muscle and savvy around keeping software free and open is feeding into the education world, setting new standards wherein "open source" is in itself a point in its favor. Using a free market approach, where the community has feedback as to whether a curriculum is any good. Many governments are nervous about letting teachers just go for it, as the potential for inciting tensions between ethnic groups is quite high. Strong bias and opinion colors courseware, inevitably, and governments often want a top-down way of controlling quality. The idea of a "global curriculum" is inappropriate and dumb, but the practice of openness and adaptability means each community has the ability to import and export. Expanding the Internet is a great way to build teacher quality. Realistically, OLPC notwithstanding, it's the teacher community that is gaining access first. Many countries are experiencing an acute teacher shortage -- the certifications coming over the Internet might be just the ticket in many cases, in terms of giving them career boosts. Mark: it's increasing difficult to censor TV, audit radio. The moderator is talking about Unschool, an organization that allows students to start customizing their own curricula even without parental knowledge. Different cultures are in different places in terms how willing they are to motivate change. On the other hand, there's that quote from this morning (Tim had it) about history moving faster than the people living it (future shock in other words -- we don't always get asked, before we have to adapt). This web page is being displayed, Mark encouraging us to take a look: http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/ I think a strong teacher in a school with good access is in a position to offer dynamite open and closed curricula. Not every school will put all its best stuff on line, like that Pueblo Museum in New Mexico, warns tourists up front that not everything is explained in the museum (not the appropriate context for explaining everything). Open Content License -- big in Africa. How can we contribute? LiteracyBridge.org -- has some cute little hardware that still needs software. Mark: both philosophy and practice, with the latter including workflows for aggregating and certifying. Content management frameworks in education, still a hotbed for innovation in need of new code. OpenHighSchool.org Vendors have a role (like 4dsolutions.net -- plug), usually tied to sales of some product. New brands of vendor will recognize that this isn't just about selling new "stuff" to teachers. So what *is* the business model then? How do content providers get rewarded or compensated, or do they? Scholarships to teachers, who vote with their feet, meaning kudos back to the vendors of highest repute? In spending tuition money upstream, teachers net access and goodies downstream (get value in exchange). Is that the model? I need to move my car, risking a parking ticket. Kirby

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