Mailman 3 January 2015 - Edu-sig

In search of ... feedback
by Charles Cossé Jan. 16, 2015

Jan. 16, 2015

(Very sorry about the 2x post ... but only way to add missing subject at this point) Dear Edu-Sig Folks, Below is a link to a short pdf (840 words) describing a project that makes kids study and learn in exchange for internet access. The software behind the project uses Python in several places, as well as a Raspberry Pi and JavaScript. With these ingredients I have managed to cause non-math-loving children to beg for math, and much more. I would like to generate some discussion here on the edu-sig with anyone interested. I hope there are some! Thanks in advance for any and all feedback, Charles Cossé, Ph.D. Asymptopia Software http://www.asymptopia.org/media/project_files/AutoTeachBriefOverview.pdf

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Last day to submit talks to Python Education Summit
by Chalmer Lowe Jan. 15, 2015

Jan. 15, 2015

Today is the last day to submit talks proposals to the Python Education Summit to be held at PyCon this year. How do YOU teach Python/Programming? http://www.google.com/moderator/#16/e=211b44 Chalmer

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real advice to a real student (comments welcome)
by kirby urner Jan. 14, 2015

Jan. 14, 2015

Student (paraphrase): What else do I need to know besides Python to get a job in IT? Might some jobs involve telecommuting and not physically going anywhere? ----- My answer: Good questions. There are many walks of life for those with coding skills. If you were to attend the expo hall at Pycon (generic name for a "Python circus"), the booths, where companies recruit Python coders, range from Disney to DNA analysis work. Oft times, your value to a team comes as coding skills plus some domain specific knowledge, by which I mean some special familiarity with the needs of specific clientele. To take an example, I became familiar with the needs of small nonprofit groups to keep track of members and subscribers, to help people register for events, and later to harvest and warehouse medical procedure related data. My coding skills were valuable but also my ability to understand a client's need. I was an independent for-hire contractor. In that role, I was not back office but always in demand at some suite or headquarters, but then I also had my own office for coding. A big divide in the work experience is between people who code "solo" i.e. for or by themselves, perhaps sharing code over the web, and people in teams, organized by project and community managers. Many different ecosystems prevail, and some involve telecommuters. I am a telecommuter myself in that OST mentors are scattered across several cities and each has responsibility for providing a place of work. My office is in a 2nd floor with wifi and as it happens has an actual physical python for me to take care of, a pet snake. The Python community (the community of Python users) is of course not just one community. Those who use it for web development, i.e. for coding websites, form a large pie slice, I will guess (a wild guess) they account for 50% of Python's vitality. The other 50% consists of academic and scientific establishments needing to glue together elaborate pipelines for data processing, such as the Hubble space telescope. They have an in-house language but are committed to making Python a tool of choice. I know because I taught the Hubble instrumentation people a few years back. They liked Python's scientific computing capabilities. It felt like a comfortable language to them. This 50%-50% description is of course a gross over-simplification but I just wanted to give you a clear idea of different subcultures within the user sphere. In conclusion, I encourage you to deepen your Python studies by choosing an area you may already care about or have some experience in and try to think of a Python angle i.e. what would a coder or team of coders contribute to this enterprise? Rather than speculate as to this other interest you might cultivate, I will leave it to you to write again and tell me more, should you wish to, of the sorts of topics that capture your attention. Do you want to work for large companies? Do you want to teach coding skills to others? Do you enjoy any particular kind of study? I enjoy marketing campaigns or PR campaigns i.e. ways to change the ecosystem of ideas. In that vein, I think about how to advertise Python as a language and have suggested and then started using the slogan 'Just Use It'. If you know about advertising, you might recognize the similarity with 'Just Do It', used by Nike. Google it if curious. The fun thing is: Nike and Python actually have a mythological connection in Greek Mythology, so my training as a philosophy student actually comes into play as well. I like working in areas that take best advantage of what I already know, while challenging me to learn new things at a rate I can handle. Kirby

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Trinket tutorials with browserside Turtle
by Jurgis Pralgauskis Jan. 11, 2015

Jan. 11, 2015

https://hourofpython.com/a-visual-introduction-to-python/ quite nice and easily embedable anywhere.. And it somehow handles synchronized input as well (ex, in https://hourofpython.com/a-visual-introduction-to-python/turtles/saying-hel… ) -- Jurgis Pralgauskis tel: 8-616 77613; Don't worry, be happy and make things better ;) http://galvosukykla.lt

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Re: [Edu-sig] Edu-sig Digest, Vol 138, Issue 16
by Jeff Elkner Jan. 9, 2015

Jan. 9, 2015

On Fri, Jan 9, 2015 at 11:08 AM, kirby urner <kirby.urner(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I think the mailing list listowner role and coordinating PES are entirely > separate roles. > > For example we could rotate the latter while keeping the former fixed for > many years. > > The edu-sig page has never mentioned PES. > > I'd have no problem with Jeff doing both, but I see no reason to confuse > the listowner responsibility with any specific event. > > Other Pycons besides the North American one will have their EduSummits > most likely. > > No one person is going to coordinate them all. > > Kirby Just as a point of information, the Pycon Education Summit is being coordinated by Chalmer Lowe and Jessica Nickel (see https://us.pycon.org/2015/events/edusummit), not me.

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Re: [Edu-sig] Edu-sig list owner
by Laura Creighton Jan. 9, 2015

Jan. 9, 2015

-------- Just FYI: The list owner of a mailman mailing list doesn't have to be one person. You can have several owners. This is useful when the workload is high or you want to make sure that there is always somebody awake who is owner of the list. I don't think either of these are relevant here, but Jeff, if you find you need help, just ask. Laura

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Re: [Edu-sig] Python Education Summit
by Andre Roberge Jan. 9, 2015

Jan. 9, 2015

Hi everyone, Hoping *my* message will make it to the edu-sig list ... Please read the important announcement from Chalmer Lowe below. @Jeff: any chance you could investigate the mailing list issue and ownership? I never did so myself when I was maintaining the edu-sig page ... and perhaps I should have. André On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 12:16 PM, Chalmer Lowe <chalmer.lowe(a)gmail.com> wrote: SNIP > > I have attempted to reach out to the edu-sig on four occasions to > advertise to them that the Edu Summit was coming. > > On two occasions, I sent edu-sig messages to the distro with a full > rundown on the details, but neither of them made it through. I reached out > to wilson at visi.com, who is purportedly the owner of the edu-sig distro > for assistance in late December, but got NO response. > > I thought it was potentially due to some sort of spam filtering, > especially since my posts included links and comments such as 'sign up', > etc. so over the past several days, I have tried to send very simple test > messages to the edu-sig mailing list, all to no avail. > > I am on the distro and get messages from it, but can't send to it. I see > that you can send to the distro... so if you would be so kind as to assist > and wouldn't mind posting the following to the edu-sig distro (at least > until I get my account problems worked out), I would be most grateful for > the help... > > <start>--------------------------------------------- > > For those who wish to go to the Python Education Summit please feel free > to sign up at the EventBrite Link... There was an error and the invite-only > caveat is not applicable in years past, so please feel free to sign up and > tell your friends. > > http://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-pycon-2015-education-summit-tickets-1502916… > > The Pycon Description of the Summit: > https://us.pycon.org/2015/events/edusummit/ > > For the current list of proposed talks... see our Google Moderator Site > http://www.google.com/moderator/#16/e=211b44 > > And of course, we are always looking for people willing to help out: > http://pycon.blogspot.com/2014/12/looking-for-volunteers-pycon-2015.html > <end>--------------------------------------------- > > > >

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Re: [Edu-sig] Getting more involved with education and the PSF...
by Jeff Elkner Jan. 9, 2015

Jan. 9, 2015

Two questions: 1. Andre, what do I need to do to begin maintaining that page? 2. Is there anyone in this thread not on edu-sig? My next reply will go only to the list. On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 10:09 AM, Jessica Nickel <jessanickel(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Sounds like a plan. I would be happy to talk with Selena about the work to > bridge the gap between k-12 educators and Python programmers. I was a k-12 > teacher for 10 years (music) and I have been working in schools with my > program to teach python coding to kids for the past year and a half, so I do > have some experience in that area. > > > > > On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 10:02 AM, Jeff Elkner <jeff(a)elkner.net> wrote: >> >> Great! So it seems we have two short term goals: >> >> 1. Get someone to agree to maintain the website (I'm volunteering if >> there isn't anyone else chomping at the bit to do it). >> 2. Reach out to Selena Deckelman to help her with her efforts to >> bridge the gap between developers and K-12 teachers (a noble goal >> indeed!). >> >> Do we agree that edu-sig is the sensible place to hold this conversation? >> >> If we do, can we ask Selena to join the list if she is not already >> there? I'll also encourage folks like Lee Harr (cc'd here), the >> creator of the wonderful Pynguin environment >> (https://code.google.com/p/pynguin/) to join the list and the >> discussion. >> >> On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 8:01 AM, Naomi Ceder <naomi.ceder(a)gmail.com> >> wrote: >> > One point of info I can add - the person you're thinking of running for >> > PSF >> > board is Selena Deckelman, who was on Nate's panel at the edu summit. >> > She's >> > been very into bridging the gap between developers and K-12 teachers. >> > >> > Naomi > >

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Re: [Edu-sig] Edu-sig Digest, Vol 138, Issue 11
by Jeff Elkner Jan. 9, 2015

Jan. 9, 2015

>> In terms of the website, I think the edu-sig home page is a good place to >> start: >> https://www.python.org/community/sigs/current/edu-sig >> >> I notice when I'm at the maillist info page and click on edu-sig home page, >> prominent at the top, I do NOT actually go to the above page, but to a >> SIGs-in-general page: >> >> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig >> ---> https://www.python.org/community/sigs >> >> This is clearly broken, and a test of our new administrative muscles would >> be >> to get that fixed, I would think. Yes, Kirby, I noticed this problem too. I don't have access to change that link. >> On the home page itself I find at least one dead end link, e.g. under >> Miscellaneous >> >> Software Carpentry <http://swc.scipy.org/> by Greg Wilson is a course on >> software development >> skills for scientists and engineers. >> >> That's not working at all. Maybe it just moved? I can edit the edu-sig home page, but the Software Carpentry link is working fine for me. Jeff

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followup link to more posts re my edu-related initiative / outreach project
by kirby urner Jan. 8, 2015

Jan. 8, 2015

On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 9:15 AM, kirby urner <kirby.urner(a)gmail.com> wrote: Edu-wise my focus believe or not has been the Python community in > Bangalore, actually IT more generally, but women more specifically. > > Long story on math-teach. I try not to duplicate too much of what I post. > However I should at least post a link for any curious browsers, not all that easy to find otherwise, unless you already know where to look: http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=2662930 The short of it is CP4E (Guido's project) + HP4E (imitating the meme). CP4E is introduced on the edu-sig home page. HP4E is an old theme of mine in this archive, easiest summarized with an image search: http://bit.ly/1zXpa0V (just a Google image search on "hexapent") This started to get rolling around EuroPython / Chalmers which was at the same time as a Nano-Tubes convention, so buckyballs were in the air (I must have breathed some in). "Adding this spin to own's Powerpoints gives an edge in IT" is my mantra for the PyLadies of Bangalore (et al). Kirby PS: If I don't get to Edu-Summit this year, I should at least make the next two as ya'll will be in my home town for 2016, 2017, woo hoo.

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