Vern and I have been chatting off list about his plans for an Education Room (ER? -- name collision) at Pycon 2013 (US). I've been thinking of exhibits, independently of the poster space, giving a sense of Python's span, as well has history, vis-a-vis the education systems. We've talked about Raspberry Pi and the RaspberryJam meetups these inspire, and OLPC -- I thought we should exhibit an XO tablet or two, running Sugar. Could we have those as prizes? Vern talked about his sense, chatting with educators, that we still lack a great set of resources for K-12 use. 'Mathematics for the Digital Age' is great, but couldn't we have more along these lines? 'How To Think Like a Computer Scientist' has also come a long way since Jeffrey Elkner helped bring it into Python culture, where it has remained. http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/ I find myself recommending it to students pretty often. Regarding the future of Python in K-12, I think there are other discussions going on that will have an impact. STEM is a buzzword these days, but more than that it's the old school idea of a more integrated curriculum, wherein S, T, E and M have much less of a "standalone" or "stand offish" attitude. For quite awhile, I was hoping to get a blend of CS and math topics (like in 'Digital Age') accepted for math credits in the State of Oregon. I wasn't the only one with this hope. We had that workshop / planning meeting about it 3 years ago now. [1] The "Digital Math" or "Computational Thinking" or Discrete Math" topics were floated. I was pushing a 4 year track parallel to established "analog math" so we could have some green field development. That's still a useful vision for me, but I've more recently been attracted to STEM as a way to bring more Python in particular into more student spheres. The idea of a machine as a "formal system" is strong enough to keep the math purists from retaliating too concertedly. It's not like we're getting off topic.[2] We shall see. I joked we should call it the World Domination Room in light of Python's evident success, a tongue-in-cheek allusion to a perennial theme within free software and open access movements. Speaking of World Domination, Michelle's experiment in an all-mostly women Python class went well per reports, with more maxed out sessions already scheduled. The PSF has been financially supportive. I joke that a lot of my students might be veiled when in public, given the distance ed protocol.[3] I evaluate between 100 - 200 projects and quizzes a day, from around the Global U. Anyway, some brain storming on the big picture and how it's going might help us steer the direction of the Education Room in 2013. Feel free to share overview. Kirby [1] Chris Brooks went on to WebMD and I lost touch with SAO, so I'm not sure if anyone meets about this still. I've stopped getting those emails. [2] http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/courses/logsys/machines.htm [3] http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2012/07/ppug-2012710.html ("perhaps some of them veiled in Tehran")
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi, I'm a former teacher currently working as a Python developer and I've stepped up to help organise the "Education" track at this year's PyconUK (happening in September - see http://pyconuk.org). Given this fact and the OP, education is making more in-roads to conferences so perhaps we could pool resources and / or share tips, ideas and so on..? In any case, my current thinking for PyconUK is to concentrate on teachers. Many ICT (information and communication technology) teachers do not have a background in computing - often they're business studies teachers who have side stepped into the subject. Furthermore, in the UK at least, Python has a good reputation among the CAS (Computing At School) group of teachers and there's a lot of interest from teachers to find out more. I have four aims: 1) Run an "Introduction to Python" tutorial a la open-hatch with an emphasis on welcoming teachers. 2) Following #1, run a code dojo (see http://ntoll.org/how-to-run-an-awesome-code-dojo.html) so teachers and developers get to interact with each other in solving a programming problem. This is important because it'll allow teachers to observe Python being used "in anger", encourage them to ask questions and get a peek into some of the machinations of development. 3) Facilitate the creation of schemes of work (perhaps a UK term, but basically a block of lessons concerning a specific topic). The final day of the conference is earmarked "sprints" and I see this as an opportunity for colleagues to get their heads together and start working on producing teaching resources released under a CC type license. One problem I foresee is that UK teachers have to make lesson plans OFSTED proof (OFSTED = UK education thought police / inspection monopoly). This usually results in an over-abundance of jargon, keywords and box ticking that probably isn't relevant to the wider educational community. 4) Just let teachers soak up Python by being at the conference, attending talks and chatting to developers. There's also a conference meal and various social events planned and I feel it important that they report back to the teaching community that the Python community is a nice place to be. Anyway, I see this as an opportunity to promote an international "teachers who use Python" type collaboration. Thoughts, comments, suggestions and critique most welcome! Nicholas. On 11/07/12 07:45, kirby urner wrote:
Vern and I have been chatting off list about his plans for an Education Room (ER? -- name collision) at Pycon 2013 (US).
I've been thinking of exhibits, independently of the poster space, giving a sense of Python's span, as well has history, vis-a-vis the education systems.
We've talked about Raspberry Pi and the RaspberryJam meetups these inspire, and OLPC -- I thought we should exhibit an XO tablet or two, running Sugar. Could we have those as prizes?
Vern talked about his sense, chatting with educators, that we still lack a great set of resources for K-12 use. 'Mathematics for the Digital Age' is great, but couldn't we have more along these lines?
'How To Think Like a Computer Scientist' has also come a long way since Jeffrey Elkner helped bring it into Python culture, where it has remained.
http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/
I find myself recommending it to students pretty often.
Regarding the future of Python in K-12, I think there are other discussions going on that will have an impact.
STEM is a buzzword these days, but more than that it's the old school idea of a more integrated curriculum, wherein S, T, E and M have much less of a "standalone" or "stand offish" attitude.
For quite awhile, I was hoping to get a blend of CS and math topics (like in 'Digital Age') accepted for math credits in the State of Oregon. I wasn't the only one with this hope.
We had that workshop / planning meeting about it 3 years ago now. [1]
The "Digital Math" or "Computational Thinking" or Discrete Math" topics were floated. I was pushing a 4 year track parallel to established "analog math" so we could have some green field development.
That's still a useful vision for me, but I've more recently been attracted to STEM as a way to bring more Python in particular into more student spheres.
The idea of a machine as a "formal system" is strong enough to keep the math purists from retaliating too concertedly. It's not like we're getting off topic.[2]
We shall see. I joked we should call it the World Domination Room in light of Python's evident success, a tongue-in-cheek allusion to a perennial theme within free software and open access movements.
Speaking of World Domination, Michelle's experiment in an all-mostly women Python class went well per reports, with more maxed out sessions already scheduled. The PSF has been financially supportive.
I joke that a lot of my students might be veiled when in public, given the distance ed protocol.[3] I evaluate between 100 - 200 projects and quizzes a day, from around the Global U.
Anyway, some brain storming on the big picture and how it's going might help us steer the direction of the Education Room in 2013. Feel free to share overview.
Kirby
[1] Chris Brooks went on to WebMD and I lost touch with SAO, so I'm not sure if anyone meets about this still. I've stopped getting those emails.
[2] http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/courses/logsys/machines.htm
[3] http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2012/07/ppug-2012710.html ("perhaps some of them veiled in Tehran") _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
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On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 4:36 AM, Nicholas H.Tollervey <ntoll@ntoll.org> wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Hi,
I'm a former teacher currently working as a Python developer and I've stepped up to help organise the "Education" track at this year's PyconUK (happening in September - see http://pyconuk.org).
That all sounds like excellent thinking and planning Nicholas. My experience is a minority will seize on the new toys / tools and share their delight with peers. Many will only be swayed if they see student enthusiasm tick up as well, but that requires getting that far (so where's the door to get in again? -- not math class they say). The idea of a classroom especially outfitted for computer-based learning is still new and undeveloped. The idea of "passing a terminal around" or better, having students enabled to share their screens in real time, front projected, or to join the teacher at the command line (two keyboards feed the same console), or to split the console among screens... we don't try enough such experiments. I always thought HP would get into that, but then "selling classrooms" is not quite like "selling cath labs" (more GE's line of business) -- could be though, if schools were built more like hospitals. PythonAnyhwere: https://www.pythonanywhere.com/ http://python-in-the-lab.blogspot.de/ (Lantz is looking interesting) More open sorcery needed. The economic bottleneck in my state of Oregon is that CS is an elective meaning it doesn't count towards requirements. The idea that getting serious at the command line, learning all that open source jazz, could count towards the math requirement was what we floated, as three years of math is required, by order of the state. The lawyers who write such standards *may* know computers exist but this should not be taken for granted. Remember, Oregon is home to places like Boring, Fossil and Remote. And Dufur:
"Ask not what Dufur can dufur you, but what you can dufur Dufur".replace("dufur", "do for") # Heh.
So say you've done your algebra / geometry and need one more year of math, and maybe calculus isn't quite your cup of tea. We've got this other thing for you then. Piece of cake. Didn't fly yet though, except informally it's what half the kids are doing anyway. Like my daughter (18) got help rooting her phone to upgrade the OS, but don't expect any classes in your high school to help with that. You're lucky if there's one dusty room with Ubuntu somewhere. If you wanna learn fast, make up excuses to stay home, where the bandwidth is better. Sad but true. But with teachers coming up to speed more.... could be a whole new ballgame. School could become relevant again, maybe! Kirby
participants (2)
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kirby urner -
Nicholas H.Tollervey