Mailman 3 May 2011 - 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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re Python's "batteries included" meme
by kirby urner 09 Oct '11

09 Oct '11

As I watch students struggle with the: if __name__ == "__main__": concept (where to put it, what it does), it occurs to me we could be doing more to leverage the already well-worn "batteries included." What's different about Python? The rich libraries it comes with, including a cross-platform GUI IDE. That's one meaning of "batteries included". But in another sense we could speak of the generic module as a "battery" with the "if run top-level" logic having to do with battery *testing*. ==== python module ==== [ BATTERIES ] (functions, classes, global-to-module names...) if __name__ == "__main__": [ BATTERY TESTERS ] ==================== That changes the meaning a little more, to where each Python module is like "a battery pack" with its own set of "testers". One thing we do with battery packs is we "import" (promote) their internals within a top-level namespace that starts off in some other (alien) module. Another thing we do with battery packs is run them top-level namespaces on their own, perhaps depending on imports (outsourced resources). I'm not suggesting harping on this too much, just another slide that goes by, but a fun mnemonic, and reinforcing of an already approved / useful design pattern (see my previous post in this edu-sig archive for an example of this self-testing style, relying on doctest for services). Kirby

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Anyone interested in discussing the turtle module?
by Jeff Elkner 03 Jun '11

03 Jun '11

Hi All, I'm working on an introductory CS book using Python with the turtle module, but I'm finding the inability of turtle.Screen() to take screen size arguments to be a real pain. The screen size appears to depend on the screen size of the host environment, which means standardizing screen shots for the book becomes impossible. Any thoughts on this issue? It would be a huge help in promoting Python's use in education if we could make use of such a potentially fine module as the turtle module, but I'm finding it very difficult to write curriculum materials that use it since students don't have control over the turtle's screen in any easy to use way. Thanks! jeff elkner open book project http://openbookproject.net

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Re: [Edu-sig] Anyone interested in discussing the turtle module?
by Jeff Elkner 31 May '11

31 May '11

I had tried that, but I was concerned that it returned a None, so I thought there was no way to refer to the screen after using it. Trying it again, it seems: import turtle turtle.setup(800, 600) wn = turtle.Screen() alex = turtle.Turtle() alex.forward(200) wn.exitonclick() works just fine. Thanks, Corey! jeff elkner open book project http://openbookproject.net On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 5:05 PM, Corey Richardson <kb1pkl(a)aim.com> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > On 05/31/2011 04:59 PM, Jeff Elkner wrote: >> Hi All, >> >> I'm working on an introductory CS book using Python with the turtle >> module, but I'm finding the inability of turtle.Screen() to take >> screen size arguments to be a real pain. The screen size appears to >> depend on the screen size of the host environment, which means >> standardizing screen shots for the book becomes impossible. >> >> Any thoughts on this issue? It would be a huge help in promoting >> Python's use in education if we could make use of such a potentially >> fine module as the turtle module, but I'm finding it very difficult to >> write curriculum materials that use it since students don't have >> control over the turtle's screen in any easy to use way. >> >> Thanks! >> > > I believe you want turtle.setup, > http://docs.python.org/library/turtle.html#turtle.setup > > - -- > Corey Richardson > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (GNU/Linux) > > iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJN5Vf+AAoJEAFAbo/KNFvp6KwH/1MPtZirFpQuUKJvNFIFl7y1 > /8b6txcu23RnGSdwcOwL/lhsLqgA5moNotPEn67ifYSTXKJuxsLvCqbmpin0q4Yi > ea9Zw3yNwDb5DCm9jofVZHbSE7h/4v2a6aIUzg4RrMzTiie2KmNuoTpKNYYSu+Wo > 2HxXqJQBFV1d8UJE4tTbQ/1jUOjAi3IZgq7F79Z1lyFwuuvD+0pPwInFnn0iZqo4 > Gl68ndOuB96ZnEtgCtaSdbaP3oPXHWHis/JI2AgtULHkni0ZJXId/DCRtX0S+k7z > FyMLw7HTPe1GIxOuOW2/ObWMDP1AvMFzbdIES5SVaeHyBFC3/tg4tGEskoP1Ym4= > =QBCe > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- >

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practice exercises and solutions
by Michelle Lazarow 22 May '11

22 May '11

Hi, Does anyone have python exercises and solutions appropriate for high school students they would be willing to share? Thanks, Michelle

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superformula, generators
by Gregor Lingl 21 May '11

21 May '11

Hi all, recently I stumbled (once more) over a posting by our friend Daniel Ajoy about the superformula (I think it was in a Logo-Forum): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superformula On the other side Kirby wrote interesting suggestions about using generators. Now, weekend, bad weather, some sparetime, I assembled an implementation of a superformula-viewer using pygame. It runs with Python 2.6 or higher, also 3.x, of course You'll find it here for download: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2016850/superformula.py or appended (which sometimes / for some of you) doesn't work well depending on the browser or whatever. The script uses generators for generating the pointlists of the graph of the superformula and also for generating colors for the segments of the graph-area. Morover I've prepared a q&d slider class, which possibly doesn't use the canonical way of processing events in pygame but works fine for this application. Critical comments and feedback and also questions, of course, are welcome. Perhaps someone is willing to amend the docstrings, which suffer from my clumsy English and could well be more clear. Amendments of the code, espercially ones, which make it more readable and easier to understand, also. Useful for classroom use? Perhaps to difficult? Best regards, Gregor

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pythonic ethnography
by kirby urner 20 May '11

20 May '11

I'm planning another class for Saturday Academy. Last year the theme for the whole convergence (at Reed College) was "a time line", with students bouncing from Egyptian Math to Neolithic Math to my more futuristic (after now) Martian Math (with a science fiction theme). This time there's a "global networking" theme and I'm looking at archeology and ethnography as disciplines that knit people together -- and use math, logic, deductive skills. Ethnography from some Future Time (translated from not-English): Python Nation flourished in the late Plasticene (the age of plastics), contemporary with Monty Python and Peter Sellers. Its language has come down to us largely unchanged. Philosophical debates have swirled in its wake, linking Russell's type-based approach to Logic (cite Ray Monk) with post Vannevar Bush machine-based Logic (the basis of our MEMEX etc). The idea of virtual machines was already well established (cite 'The Rise of Java in Post Anglo America' by Cuervo & Nash, 2033). Python, the language, was built around some primitive types, namely int, str, dict, tuple, list, float, complex and a smattering of others. Natives also had access to set, decimal, and of course the higher level structures we associate with Python's continued use in biomolecular science and genomics (you will encounter the Python lineage outside these disciplines too of course, perhaps as Zython or Py5). In this logical landscape, a dict type could eat other objects, including of other types, through a lexical "mouth" ( ) contrived in ASCII, a descendant of the mathematical notation of Russell. Objects stuffed through a mouth were called "args" relating to the human function of "arguing" that mouths often engage in (also: ethnic pirates were known to say "arrrgh" a lot, in addition to being argumentative). 'args' would be "met at the gate" (between scopes) by params (parameters), in ways generally familiar to computer language humanists, though the specifics were (and are) a subject of some wonder.** Example syntax (pillar str) str.title(arg) str.capitalize(arg) str.endswith(arg, arg) ... Note how these methods attach to one of the Primitive Pillars upholding the ancestral "Superstructure of Objects" (as some have translated the Anglophone literature of the late Plasticene). dict.__setitem__(inst, key, value) was one of the "rib cage" methods (cite Kirbinalia Vol 3) delivering dict type services to the surrounding ecosystem. inst would need to be recognizably of the dict type, in order for __setitem__ to perform its services. Example: class Dict(dict): """ OST skunkworks: didactic dict (Holden, Urner) """ def __init__(self,*args, **kwargs): dict.__init__(self,*args, **kwargs) self.peeks = 0 def __getitem__(self, key): try: self.peeks += 1 # charge 1 peek return dict.__getitem__(self,key) except KeyError: self.peeks = max(self.peeks-1, 0) # refund policy print("No such animal") # warning: loud mouth raise def __repr__(self): self.peeks += 2 # penalty! return "No paparazzi!" # minimal security @property # to observe it is to change it (Heisenberg) def hits(self): "hit counter for dict-like object" self.peeks += 1 return self.peeks >>> thedict = Dict(key='value') >>> thedict.hits 1 >>> thedict['Guido'] = thedict.get('Guido',0)+1 >>> thedict No paparazzi! >>> thedict.hits 4 >>> thedict['Britney'] # contemporary of Guido's No such animal Traceback (most recent call last): File "<pyshell#175>", line 1, in <module> thedict['Britney'] File "<pyshell#169>", line 12, in __getitem__ return dict.__getitem__(self,key) KeyError: 'Britney' >>> thedict.hits 5 >>> str(thedict) 'No paparazzi!' >>> thedict.hits 8 >>> == martian math chronicles === ** "birth" on the other hand, was signified with the vaginal ( ) placed after a Type such as dict( ), though again with possible args, the birth canal's moving line assembly potentially building ("constructing") instance level characteristics such as skin and/or eye color. Birth canal named __init__ in by the Pythonista's Nation's chief language architect, in keeping with the linguistic aesthetics of this early Logic (post MMX, circa John Lennon, for those still confused about the time line).

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The role of programming (30 min lecture)
by Daniel Ajoy 19 May '11

19 May '11

The role of programming http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2726904509434151616# tl;dr: because math notation is impressionistic, not precise. Also, has to reference to Mindstorms at the end. Daniel

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lychrel numbers
by michel paul 18 May '11

18 May '11

I just discovered lychrel numbers<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lychrel_number>. See http://www.p196.org/ Interesting. No one knows if they exist. There are candidates that have not produced palindromes despite massive computational investigation, but so far no proofs one way or the other. This is a great class activity, similar to exploring the 6174<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6174_%28number%29>pattern that Kirby mentioned a few years ago. How would we go about finding such things? What tools do we need? Well, let's see - we need to be able to reverse the digits of a number, we need to be able to test a number to see if it's a palindrome, we need a way to count the number of iterations required to produce a palindrome, etc. I brought this up in my computational classes yesterday, and I was pleased to see what some of the kids started to do. A couple of them started looking for patterns between the lychrel candidates, noting their distances from each other and noting that if n is a candidate then obviously reverse(n) is as well. And one kid pointed out that this is not a property of the numbers themselves but of the base 10 representations of the numbers as lists of digits. So in binary, we'd get a different set of lychrel candidates. - Michel -- ================================== "What I cannot create, I do not understand." - Richard Feynman ================================== "Computer science is the new mathematics." - Dr. Christos Papadimitriou ==================================

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School of Webcraft (Mozilla and P2PU) - Invitation to advise on our Python Badge criteria
by Pippa Buchanan 18 May '11

18 May '11

Dear members of the Python Edu SIG, School of Webcraft <http://new.p2pu.org/en-US/schools/school-of-webcraft/>is a community offering and developing a set of peer-driven courses on open web development freely available via Peer 2 Peer University<http://new.p2pu.org>(P2PU) in partnership with Mozilla <http://mozill.org>. We've had a number of Python courses and study groups set up within School of Webcraft. We'd like to invite the Python Edu SIG to help improve these popular offerings and in particular to help us develop the criteria for peer-assesment on Python competencies. Together with the Open Badges <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges> project we're developing an assessment and badge pilot <http://badges.p2pu.org/>with the goalof providing alternative pathways to certification and credentialing<https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges>. Learners can take a series of peer-reviewed assessments to demonstrate their skills, completing assessment successfully earns them badges they can share with stakeholders such as potential employers. Currently the badge pilot is available to School of Webcraft participants. We feel these efforts will not only further the impact of informal and peer learning channels, but also give us the opportunity to be further innovate with assessments. We are working hard to create assessments that are authentic and relevant to web developers, to capitalize on their existing portfolio where possible and to inspire continued learning and growth during the assessment process. Assessments we have piloted so far have avoided standard multiple choice, but instead are based around challenges or exercises and narratives, with an aligned rubric to assess against. Here are two examples of two different levels of assessments we are currently running: - Javascript basic: http://badges.p2pu.org/questions/1/javascript-basic-badge-challenge - Javascript expert: http://badges.p2pu.org/questions/2/javascript-expert-badge-challenge We are writing you to enlist your help in creating/identifying additional assessments for both Beginners and Advanced Python badges for the second phase of the badge pilot. By helping us out on this pilot you'll be developing tangible and meaningful ways for employers and Python developers to measure and identify their skills beyond the vague "rockstar" status. In recognition of involvement in the pilot the Python Edu SIG will be listed and linked as advisors for the relevant badges. We would benefit greatly from your insight into what the key elements of a rubric should be, as well as ideas around potential challenges or exercises. The model we have been using is: - Assessment challenge/instructions - Rubric to assess against (aka, "A Python Expert is someone who...." Again, please see the links above as examples of the model we have been currently using. We are not adverse to other ideas or models, but we do want to continue to strive for authentic and highly relevant assessments wherever possible. We are moving very quickly with this so please let us know if you have some ideas you can pass along. Thanks in advance for your help with this important effort. Erin Knight <http://twitter.com/#%21/eknight>, Badge and Assessment Lead, Mozilla and P2PU and Pippa Buchanan <http://twitter.com/#%21/pipstar>, School of Webcraft Community Lead, Mozilla and P2PU To become further involved with the School of Webcraft please join our discussion list <http://lists.p2pu.org/mailman/listinfo/p2pu-webcraft> or create or participate in study groups or courses. <http://new.p2pu.org/en-US/schools/school-of-webcraft/>

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