Mailman 3 March 2009 - Edu-sig

xturtle online via processing.js !?
by Jurgis Pralgauskis 27 Sep '12

27 Sep '12

Hi, I am struggling around with interactive online py tutorials with https://launchpad.net/projects/intro-to-code (ith might become securely sandboxed soon, as pypy made it possible http://blog.sandbox.lt/en/WSGI%20and%20PyPy%20sandbox :) but one more thing is I'd like to let access xturtle functionality online - one possible way could be triggering tkinter to save its canvas to ps, and then convert them with imagemagic and show via web (animated gif or static) - but if pyjamas can render GUI for js (http://www.google.lt/search?&q=pyjamas+python ), mayby there is a way to **translate turtle commands to processing.js analogues** http://ejohn.org/blog/processingjs/ would it be difficult -- how do you think? -- Jurgis Pralgauskis tel: 8-616 77613; jabber: jurgis(a)akl.lt; skype: dz0rdzas; Don't worry, be happy and make things better ;) http://sagemath.visiems.lt

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New Beginning Python book for children
by Steven Hong 31 Mar '09

31 Mar '09

Hi all, I'm emailing to make you all aware of a fun new beginning programming book called Hello World! Computer Programming for Kids and Other Beginners. Written by Warren Sande and his son, Carter, the book is a true introductory book for programming in Python. If your kid can use email and surf the web, then they could learn to program their own game using this book. Light on technical jargon and heavy on pictures, cartoons and fun examples, it's the perfect gift for a child, text for a classroom computer lab or even introductory text for adult beginners. If you want to get your child programming in no time, why not start with this easy book? For the month of April, Manning Publications will offer edu-sig members a 35% discount on the book when using the code edusig upon checkout at www.manning.com. Steven Hong Marketing Coordinator Manning Publications www.manning.com =================== Skype: stevenhong02 Twitter: ManningBooks

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more economics of Python...
by kirby urner 31 Mar '09

31 Mar '09

Two things I got feedback on, actually three: (0) linking increasing FOSS mastery in schools to more merit pay, with already-employed teachers getting time to learn on the job (called "inservice") is a likely model, charters an easier place to start where inertia runs high (1) having bevy of numerate FOSS-trained faculty run more of an inhouse stack, with students apprenticing, leaving records (school lore), is a side-benefit of getting these new competencies, shows teachers applying their skills daily (good role modeling, more than just making Moodles) (2) Pycon is committed to a private sector business track but could spin off a more academic incarnation. Jeff Rush and I were yakking about marketing something like: T-Shirt: class Edu(Pycon): where = "in Portland, 2010" def __init__(self, me): self.me = me >>> lucky_me = Edu("registered!") >>> lucky_me.where 'in Portland, 2011' i.e. we could do an EduPycon at a college campus someplace (instead of a hotel). Pacific University? No need to wait for Portland (a FOSS capital). Gregor, sorry to miss your talk on the turtle module. Ian Benson, Steve Holden and I managed to take in the Bucky Fuller exhibit on Sunday, though we went through pretty quickly, given Ian and I both had planes to catch. I bought a museum membership, maybe will make it again before it closes in June? http://coffeeshopsnet.blogspot.com/2009/03/greetings-from-chicago.html Thinking more about (0), there's this tendency to want to escape high school teaching if the skills get that good i.e. when I was doing grad school courses towards becoming a high school math teacher (which happened later that year), a lot of the students at St. Peter's College were going the other direction i.e. increasing technology skills to move on from teaching (too much burnout, not enough academic freedom, too low status). New charter designs could fix a lot of these problems e.g. LEP High blends in an entrepreneurship model wherein seniors start apprenticing and/or running their own prototype businesses. This keeps the teachers actively engaged in a more private sector mindset, means bridging Pycon and EduPycon shouldn't be that hard. Small wrinkle is the state teachers' union (or some minority within it) hates LEP High because it makes everyone else look bad, in terms of its using Edubuntu, teaching more relevant tracks, emphasis on early college enrollment etc. (not unlike Matsu District AK in that regard). Moves by the board to close it down are only serving to draw attention to the contrast, i.e. has the potential to backfire big time. The Obama Administration is already on record in support of charter-driven reforms so this is not some traditional "labor democrat versus aristocracy" puzzle (LEP High mostly serves underprivileged, is a bona fide public school when it some to philosophy, recruitment, emphasis on citizenship (in the sense of developing skills for participation in democracy)). Anyway, not wanting to bore ya'll with a lot of local politics, just thinking out loud about the "FOSS API" in our school systems i.e. where is the interface and how is it shaped? I expect we'll explore this at OS Bridge in June, among other venues. Maybe think about coming? Portland is a great town and we have a 400 room hotel we'd like to put you in. :) Last day for early bird registration and/or talk submission is today though. Kirby

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more economics of Python...
by kirby urner 31 Mar '09

31 Mar '09

Two things I got feedback on, actually three: (0) linking increasing FOSS mastery in schools to more merit pay, with already-employed teachers getting time to learn on the job (called "inservice") is a likely model, charters an easier place to start where inertia runs high (1) having bevy of numerate FOSS-trained faculty run more of an inhouse stack, with students apprenticing, leaving records (school lore), is a side-benefit of getting these new competencies, shows teachers applying their skills daily (good role modeling, more than just making Moodles) (2) Pycon is committed to a private sector business track but could spin off a more academic incarnation. Jeff Rush and I were yakking about marketing something like: T-Shirt: class Edu(Pycon): where = "in Portland, 2010" def __init__(self, me): self.me = me >>> lucky_me = Edu("registered!") >>> lucky_me.where 'in Portland, 2011' i.e. we could do an EduPycon at a college campus someplace (instead of a hotel). Pacific University? No need to wait for Portland (a FOSS capital). Gregor, sorry to miss your talk on the turtle module. Ian Benson, Steve Holden and I managed to take in the Bucky Fuller exhibit on Sunday, though we went through pretty quickly, given Ian and I both had planes to catch. I bought a museum membership, maybe will make it again before it closes in June? http://coffeeshopsnet.blogspot.com/2009/03/greetings-from-chicago.html Thinking more about (0), there's this tendency to want to escape high school teaching if the skills get that good i.e. when I was doing grad school courses towards becoming a high school math teacher (which happened later that year), a lot of the students at St. Peter's College were going the other direction i.e. increasing technology skills to move on from teaching (too much burnout, not enough academic freedom, too low status). New charter designs could fix a lot of these problems e.g. LEP High blends in an entrepreneurship model wherein seniors start apprenticing and/or running their own prototype businesses. This keeps the teachers actively engaged in a more private sector mindset, means bridging Pycon and EduPycon shouldn't be that hard. Small wrinkle is the state teachers' union (or some minority within it) hates LEP High because it makes everyone else look bad, in terms of its using Edubuntu, teaching more relevant tracks, emphasis on early college enrollment etc. (not unlike Matsu District AK in that regard). Moves by the board to close it down are only serving to draw attention to the contrast, i.e. has the potential to backfire big time. The Obama Administration is already on record in support of charter-driven reforms so this is not some traditional "labor democrat versus aristocracy" puzzle (LEP High mostly serves underprivileged, is a bona fide public school when it some to philosophy, recruitment, emphasis on citizenship (in the sense of developing skills for participation in democracy)). Anyway, not wanting to bore ya'll with a lot of local politics, just thinking out loud about the "FOSS API" in our school systems i.e. where is the interface and how is it shaped? I expect we'll explore this at OS Bridge in June, among other venues. Maybe think about coming? Portland is a great town and we have a 400 room hotel we'd like to put you in. :) Last day for early bird registration and/or talk submission is today though. Kirby

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Re: [Edu-sig] thoughts on HTML page
by punch＠msu.edu 31 Mar '09

31 Mar '09

Thank you to Michael for catching my (perhaps hopeful) miscue. Yes, I did indeed mean to list places where python is being taught. Andre opined that perhaps the list might be too short, making it look like Python is behind. There is a link in the Python wiki http://wiki.python.org/moin/SchoolsUsingPython which lists a number of schools, though it is very out of date and lacks many links. It seems to indicate there are enough places to have a substantial list. However, how to get a good list and maintain it? Perhaps Laura's idea of a wiki where individuals can stand up for their course and other institutions they know about. That would keep the work load down. We could extract what we need from that occasionally for a nice presentation. Ditto for papers/slides and ed resources. We might also try to recruit people from institutions to be part of the group and maintain their local information. Question remains, how to organize so the load isn't all on Andre. >>>bill<<<

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more about Pycon
by kirby urner 31 Mar '09

31 Mar '09

Here's a major theme of Pycon for me, something I learned: ACID-compliant SQL is a wonderful tool and many Python APIs backend into those to great positive benefit. However, with cloud and network programming, there's inherent asynchrony and sometimes "eventual consistency" is all you need, i.e. that "right now and always" flavor of ACID is something you're willing to trade away (called "dropping ACID") in exchange for other benefits. So the age of network programming with widely distributed server architectures is taking us into a post-SQL world, not in the sense that SQL is going away, but in the sense that it's definitely not the best answer to every prayer. Deciding which non-SQL tools you might need and which Python APIs go with it is as much a twisting tree as the SQL world's is. I think this is a good focus for user groups, as been of ours in Portland (not just in Python circles, but like in Admirers of JavaScript, another group meeting at CubeSpace I've joined). Here's one of my blog write-ups: http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2009/03/patterns-in-python.html I also wanted to again express my appreciation for Jeff Rush's talk, which I'm going to study a lot more. Steve Holden's segment on the difference between iterators and iterables and how to turn the latter into the former was also a paradigm of clear teaching (that guy is a master). My blog post around Jeff's talk is sort of "student notes" in style, gives the idea but the slides are what you really want to check out (adding link): http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2009/03/about-python-namespaces.html Speaking of Wikis, I'd love to see one of those VLAM enabled ones linked from edu-sig and have our edu-sig community submit to it as a sandbox or playground (in addition to supporting PyWHIP etc.). Kirby

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Re: [Edu-sig] thoughts on edu-sig HTML page
by Laura Creighton 31 Mar '09

31 Mar '09

Maybe what we need, more, is a list of who is on the list who is teaching courses in python. If we did this in a wiki, and asked people to put a date by their names we could mitigate the problem of wikis going stale a bit. (They's still go stale, but at least you would get some sort of warning when you looked something up.) Combining this with 'what they have to share' and 'what they are looking for' and 'what their specialties are' might make this a useful list. just an idea, Laura

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thoughts on edu-sig HTML page
by kirby urner 31 Mar '09

31 Mar '09

Here's some of my thinking re the edu-sig page, which I managed up to the time python.org converted from cvs to svn. For those not at Pycon, a core theme was a plan to shift the tectonic plate (platform) yet again, to either bzr or hg. Perhaps the decision has been made by now, as Guido was encouraging. I favor hg but for reasons unrelated to software so probably not relevant. Regarding the page itself: I hope it will continue serving as a recruiting tool for bringing "fresh blood" to edu-sig this discussion group. Drawing more people into the conversation, the threads, is a worthy end in itself. I hope Andre will *not* feel he's been tasked with managing some infernal list of "all schools using Python" because: (a) that quickly becomes one of those thankless "list management jobs" and (b) it actually backfires if you're trying to spread Python, because a static list implies we know everything that's going on, whereas a truly dynamic spread pattern will leave us clueless and in the dust a lot of the time (how many schools in China, clued about FOSS...).** Also... (c) many of these schooling functions are internal to a company in some private sector context i.e. edu-sig should stay friendly to engineer trainers tasked with andragogy within a more corporate setting, so are we going to track those schools as well? (O'Reilly School of Technology comes to mind, a hybrid in offering academic certification -- let's call it the University of Phoenix demographic for shorthand perhaps?). I'm wondering if (c) is the more controversial point in that it's (i) adult-centric (there's maybe a bias on edu-sig to think we're bound by a shared interest in "computer programming for children" as if adults aren't our business) and (ii) not exclusively academic (there's maybe a bias on edu-sig that academia has some automatic edge when it comes to teaching (whereas the circus has always competed with skool)). But fortunately, (a) and (b) build my case irrespective of (c), so we can shelve those points for backstage discussion. I just don't want Andre to get stuck with some onerous janitorial duty that's unnecessary to our growth and ongoing prosperity as a community. Finally, I think it's really cool that a whole PhD thesis was done on this very mail list, and I hope we keep a link to it (back to the opening "recuiting for edu-sig" meme). In terms of where to find on-line resources that will help you learn Python really effectively and quickly, I'd say lets point to trade book sites, text book sites, and some places like ShowMeDo e.g. I've got my six 'Python for Math Teachers' etc., Kirby ** Given how students come up to me because I'm wearing some Python decal and say they've been exposed through there school, respect the language, I'd say realistically speaking there's too much going on to pretend to track. edu-sig is not air traffic control.

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Suggestions for edu web site
by punch＠msu.edu 30 Mar '09

30 Mar '09

Hi, I have to admit I am mostly a lurker on this page and don't post, but after my wonderful experience at Pycon 09 I was emboldened to be more active. Great experience! I should think that the three primary points to make on the web page are: 1) Where is python not being used in education. I think redirecting people to other universities who are using python would be most helpful. 2) Any evidence that can be presented that Python is helpful in education. I can point to the paper that Enbody and I presented at Pycon and SIGCSE but there must be others like that. This can be used by others to try and get Python into their curriculum 3) Index to resources (books, slides, problem sets, tutorials) that education folks would find helpful. The IDE's, shells, libraries should be referenced but not maintained here since we will not keep up with it as well. My (first) two cents worth. Nice to meet folks at Pycon and I hope to be more active in this group as a result of that nice experience. >>>bill<<<

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Some URLs that I talked about Last Night at the BOF
by csev 30 Mar '09

30 Mar '09

Here is the URL for the AppEngine book: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596800697/ Here is the URL for my teaching site for the Google Book including some early drafts of the chapters: www.appenginelearn.com Here is the URL for my "Students Instructions for getting Python up and running" that we use across multiple courses at the University of Michigan. www.pythonlearn.com Here is the URL for my nascent Open Source Learning Management System written in Python/AppEngine www.cloudcollab.com Here is the URL for the "inverted learning management system" which uses JavaScript to inject the LMS into any web page that I showed to a few of you toward the end: www.cloudsocial.com Comments welcome. Each of these is in various stages of maturity - mostly these are part time things that play with along with my students. /Chuck Severance www.dr-chuck.com

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