The part that makes me especially queasy is the CP4E section on pages 10-11. I wish I had more to say there. It's fairly clear to those of us who weren't there that there were some problems, but it's not especially clear what they were or what we should learn from them. I'd very much appreciate input from those who were actually there!
Where is "there" exactly? Interesting paper, though of necessity you leave a lot out, such as how the Scheme people made tremendous strides in their CP4E mode, setting high standards with SICP. We hope Pythoneers don't dumb it all down by encouraging sloppy habits (the Schemers' worst fear). http://www.tuxdeluxe.org/node/153 http://lemonodor.com/archives/001497.html (tangentially related) As to "losing focus" and/or "herding cats" on edu-sig, I'm not sure if that's what happened, or if we're simply seeing from different perspectives. I see edu-sig like a water cooler (a watering hole) where people of diverse backgrounds come of their own volition to compare notes, shoot the breeze. That doesn't make it a management hub or anything -- we all go back to our respective meetings and decision-making processes. For example, the Jesuits, with hundreds of years of pedagogy to their credit, thousands of mostly-man hours designing curriculum, aren't necessarily interested in vetting their proposals to teach Python in some trademarked Jesuitical way via some organ within Python.org. They'll work within the Vatican or whatever it is that they do. Just a random example. Schools aren't obligated to be public with their planning is my point. The fact that Python itself is open source doesn't change that fact. So whereas I'm hopeful that edu-sig will continue to be a source of interesting filings (your paper and drafting process a case in point), I'm not expecting it to be much more than that, at least not for the many faculties with already semi-set ways of working together. Lots of proprietary stuff goes on that we only learn about on edu-sig long after the fact -- and that's OK (not a problem). On the other hand, some of us *are* committed to a more open source approach even w/r to curriculum design, at least in some aspects. I would encourage us to keep edu-sig a welcoming environment for such posters, which doesn't mean holding back all negative feedback (it's possible for curricula to suck, as well as to be wonderfully brilliant -- sometimes both at the same time). We shouldn't devolve into a mutual admiration society where "I'll just say good stuff about your stuff if you'll just say good stuff about my stuff" agreements dominate -- a recipe for lowering overall quality whenever and wherever. Fortunately, I see little danger of that happening here. Kirby