Mailman 3 December 2014 - Edu-sig

Re: [Edu-sig] Recommendation for editor+console or IDE for teaching beginners
by Laura Creighton Dec. 10, 2014

Dec. 10, 2014

Will you be doing this in English, French, or both? However, make sure that what you use has adequate online documentation in both English and French (and ideally many more) so that people who mostly cannot learn from lectures, but badly need _something to read while they are working things out_ can find all the stuff they require. Ahead of time it is hard to know how the numbers break down but if you expect to get a large number of self-motivated 12 and 14 year olds, then you are also expecting to get a large number of people who pick things up by reading the book and for whom lectures are either a) painful or b) a pleasant way to socialise with others who are trying to learn the same things. It is more or less impossible to teach many of these people by making lectures and having them listen to them because they have almost no experience of learning by being talked to. Their entire educational experience is one where they read the textbook, first, and thus come to class more or less already knowing what the teacher is going to teach and looking to the teacher for some clarification on corner cases, and the like. The smarter they are, the less they need to be taught, having already taught themselves ... Thus they have almost no experience in learning by being talked to, even by the teachers who are the very best at lecturing. Higher education can be excruciatingly hard for these students if the teacher hasn't made his own textbook yet, and expects the students to learn from the lectures. It doesn't help matters that such teachers are notoriously bad lecturers. Naturally, the teachers expect the students to be already well trained in learning by 'being talked to' -- their expectation is that this is how the students have been learning their whole lives. And the students, generally don't understand what the problem is. They know they are smart, and they know that they are floundering in class, but they don't know that their problem is that they aren't very good at learning from lectures, and badly need some texts to read if they are ever to make sense of things ... If you can get these people to recognise themselves then, no matter how they end up doing in this particular course, you will do them a priceless service. The problem gets exponentially worse if the language the teacher is talking in isn't your preferred language for learning in. It's late here. I will write more later. Good luck. Laura ps would go with IDLE myself. Now that tkinter is shipped with modern Mac distros, there hasn't been much of a problem any more here. But make sure that absolutely everybody knows what a PYTHONPATH is, can find their own, and can check that their PYTHONPATH is what it should be.

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Re: [Edu-sig] Recommendation for editor+console or IDE for teaching beginners
by calcpage Dec. 10, 2014

Dec. 10, 2014

I like the command line and a text editor myself. Just set the file properties to executable and add the #!/usr/bin/python path to the top of each executable. Idle and VIdle are very usable too. Of course, I'm using Linux. HTH, A. Jorge Garcia http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone -------- Original message -------- From: roberto <roberto03(a)gmail.com> Date: 12/10/2014 1:14 PM (GMT-05:00) To: "edu-sig(a)python.org" <Edu-sig(a)python.org> Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] Recommendation for editor+console or IDE for teaching beginners Why don't you try cloud.sagemath.com? or https://trinket.io/ They both let your students work at a distance and collaborate with you. Hope this helps. On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 4:47 PM, Christian Mascher <christian.mascher(a)gmx.de> wrote: Hi Andre, I would really like some advice based on practical experience teaching beginners. I personally would stick with Idle. There was a time, when it was problematic under MacOS because tkinter was missing there - but those days are over. As an all-platform, _already (battery-) included_ editor, Idle is simple but pretty good. There is not much you have to explain which concerns the ide. Most of the problems of beginners in Idle (and I always use idle in class, apart from reeborg) are not very idle-specific (indentation, copy and paste in console-mode, miximg tabs and spaces, saving, importing). You will have to explain the difference between programming at the prompt or in a file, but you would have to explain similar things in other ide's as well. If you want to keep it safe and simple, write programs with Idle only in files (File->New File, and run them with F5). Most technical problems arise when using the live-prompt (session-saving is useless). Some students used idle and pygame together some years ago with no problems. 1. Use IDLE. Free, part of the standard distribution. I never used it very much myself and I keep reading about how tricky it can be to set up properly for beginners - mostly, I gathered, due to path problems on Windows. There is a proposal to make it better ( https://github.com/asweigart/idle-reimagined/wiki) but it is doubtful it will be realized soon enough (or at all) to make it worthwhile waiting for it. I haven't encountered path problems with idle recently (about since the introduction of Windows XP and python msi-installers ...) When Pygame is installed Python has got to find it, but that shouldn't be a concern of Idle. Having to install only two things (check for the python dependency of the pygame-version first!) would be my choice. Cheers, Christian _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig(a)python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig -- Roberto

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RSA in Brief
by kirby urner Dec. 5, 2014

Dec. 5, 2014

""" RSA in brief (in Python 3) See: http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/crypto3.html http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=2663184 http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?forumID=206&threadID=2653047 (c) MIT License, 4D Solutions """ import random # download a chunk of numbers from: https://primes.utm.edu/lists/small/millions/ cut_and_paste = """ \ 961807463 961807471 961807499 961807501 961807529 961807549 961807573 961807597 961807621 961807661 961807663 961807669 961807673 961807733 961807739 961807747 961807753 961807757 961807783 961807843 961807871 961807909 961807921 961807937 961807967 961807993 961807999 961808009 961808017 961808033 961808039 961808041 961808051 961808083 961808087 961808093 961808123 961808161 961808179 961808189 961808231 961808293 961808297 961808311 961808339 961808347 961808357 961808401 961808413 961808429 961808431 961808459 961808513 961808521 961808567 961808597 961808629 961808689 961808699 961808713 961808723 961808773 961808807 961808831 """.split() some_primes = [int(x) for x in cut_and_paste] # turn strings to ints # pick any two primes p = random.choice(some_primes) q = random.choice(some_primes) def bingcd(a,b): """Extended version of Euclid's Algorithm (binary GCD) Returns (m,n,gcd) such that m*a + n*b = gcd(a,b)""" g,u,v = [b,a], [1,0], [0,1] while g[1] != 0: y = g[0] // g[1] g[0], g[1] = g[1], g[0] % g[1] u[0], u[1] = u[1], u[0] - y*u[1] v[0], v[1] = v[1], v[0] - y*v[1] m = v[0] % b gcd = (m * a) % b n = (gcd - m * a) // b return (m, n, gcd) def inverse(a,b): """If gcd(a,b)=1, then inverse(a,b)*a mod b = 1, otherwise, if gcd(a,b)!=1, return 0 Useful in RSA encryption, for finding d such that e*d mod totient(n) = 1""" inva, n, gcd = bingcd(a,b) return (gcd==1) * inva # Alice N = p * q e = 13 phi_N = (p-1)*(q-1) # totient of N d = inverse(e, phi_N) # Euler's Extended GCD # if d == 0 then degenerate case of e dividing phi_N print("Public N =", N) print("Secret d =", d) print("Check: (e*d) % phi_N =", e*d % phi_N) # should be 1 # Bob plaintext = 555777888 print("plaintext =", plaintext) cyphertext = pow(plaintext, e, N) # power e mod N print("cyphertext = ", cyphertext) # Alice decoded = pow(cyphertext, d, N) print("decoded =", decoded)

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Re: [Edu-sig] Edu-sig Digest, Vol 137, Issue 1
by Chalmer Lowe Dec. 1, 2014

Dec. 1, 2014

The Python Education Summit is kicking into gear. The Call for Papers is out. I will be setting up the registration site soon. If you teach/educate AND/OR you Python, this is the place for you. https://us.pycon.org/2015/events/edusummit/ If you are interested in helping, planning, etc, etc, please don't be shy ... Jessica and I can use all the help we can get. chalmer

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