Schoolchildren in the One Laptop Per Child program are writing graphical games in PyGame.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pygame http://www.olpcnews.com/content/games/laptop_game_jam.html
Of course there's a lot of mythology about what schoolchildren are and aren't doing out there in the misty mountains of Peru or whatever, maybe getting Pippy booted up, reading about Fibonacci numbers, Pascal's triangle, turning to generator-based versions. Actually, learning about the stomach was a first exercise, once the dish was working, our chief of security Krstić (erstwhile) nearly breaking his neck during the install process (certainly risking it). http://radian.org/notebook/first-deployment In actual fact, Pygame is a rather low level API. A lot of what happens with Python is veteran C coders with SDL kudos or whatever, find to their relief a relatively painless way to turn fast code into an importable module within a "slow" interpreted RAD language. But so much game action isn't about "superhuman speed" -- just plod along with your human user, 99% wait cycles, and you'll be fine. So it turns out to *not* be so oxymoronic, to have game bindings for a relatively slow but intelligent snake, other scripting languages also. (IronScheme?). Here's a good example of when it makes sense to form a hybrid, in this case machine-facing system language with coder-facing agile (doesn't get all coders off the hook from learning low level languages -- just some of 'em). Guido, recall, was in a busy environment full of technophiles, familiar with ABC, when he went off to write Python on a Lisa. His "end users" weren't children, but experienced computerists, maybe with foci in sciences, mathematics... die-hard nerds already, geeks, not newbies. This is what Arthur (previously on edu-sig, lots in the archive) really *liked* about Python, and he let us know he'd fight any effort to dumb it down, make it "kid friendly" in a condescending way (like Alice in his view -- which I defended, because I'm a cartoon nut, love the idea of PySpongeBob). Better to have kids come to love adult tools of the trade was his attitude -- even wait until they're adults if that's what it takes.** But of course no one wants to wait that long. The dream has always been: more computing power to those who want it, no matter how young. We'll get XOs in utero (with mom's permission) if that's the genetic predisposition of the fetus (i/o hooks to umbilical cord?) -- a twisted geek fantasy I realize, OK to LOL. More seriously, Sugar itself is a lot like a Pygame creation, a 2D iPod-like interface with apps running as pie wedges, helping with the metaphor of finite memory (in a ring), but sure why not run several. This isn't a "toy" interface -- extremely futuristic in a direction I think we *are* set to go, Sugar a brilliant first draft of itself (with many forks and rebrandings as we go forward). Python is very lucky to be getting such a workout, in the hands of so many masters of their craft. http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2008/04/more-on-interface-design.html Back to Python books, I think the web edition format is best during the transition, as all those print statements are about to switch over to functional format as in "print( jabber jabber)" -- intead of "print jabber jabber". Why waste a lot of paper teaching newbies 2.x? Of course they'll need to learn retro dialects once making the commitment to Python more professionally (a huge "if" in many cases -- as it should be), but there's no reason not to go with "state of the art" on intro. That's a privilege of being a newbie: no ties to the past, no obligations, free to cut to the head of the line in some ways (in terms of using the most up to date code). Actually, now is a good time for CS departments to watch something special, as having a live, happy language also be such a moving target (a morpher, a transformer), in terms of jumping a chasm, from ASCII to Unicode, dropping cruft, sleeking out... that doesn't happen every day. Most languages of Python's maturity are considered "quasi-frozen" by the time they get to this point. "Shedding skin" wasn't an option, but Guido had this pre-announced break point (good model, now that we see the pay off). So those teaching "anthropology of computer language cultures" or whatever UC-type stuff, might use this as an opportunity, lots of interesting zine articles (adapted for-credit papers) just begging to be written (and published even!). Kirby PS: the Europython list is making me homesick for Vilnius, I should sign off rather than read about taxi cabs from the airport, but actually no, I'd rather stay tuned, plan to visit her again someday. ** Arthur was a financial sector guy near what used to be called the Pan Am building when we first met, had some beers. Much later we met up with Lansky and his boys, different part of Manhatten, had great free ranging talk on the meaning of liberal arts, C.P. Snow's chasm etc. Arthur was a strong player, miss him on edu-sig (sudden heart attack, like Russert).
The book, in HTML and PDF format, and all the games are located here: http://pythonbook.coffeeghost.net
I'm planning on doing more books at some point in the future after getting feedback.
First of all, thank you for your work and making this available.
I first saw a link to your book on del.icio.us and read *quickly* through a few sections of a few chapters. My first reaction was "hmm, no graphics ... I wonder how that would interest kids nowadays...". However, after looking at the beginning of the last two chapters, I thought that this approach could very well work.
Overall, it looked like a good progression of topics and something very much worthwhile. Still, I think that it might be useful to include at least one graphics based game. I would suggest to implement the Othello program using pyglet (www.pyglet.org), introducing it at the very end. Actually, I would have the kids download the finished Othello project and pyglet at the beginning, just to try it out, and point out that this is the game that they would be writing on their own at the end.
Just a thought... I should read it more closely to give you some more detailed feedback.
Cheers,
André
Thank you! Al Sweigart
_______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
-- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
2008/6/19 kirby urner <kirby.urner@gmail.com>:
Schoolchildren in the One Laptop Per Child program are writing graphical games in PyGame.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pygame http://www.olpcnews.com/content/games/laptop_game_jam.html
Of course there's a lot of mythology about what schoolchildren are and aren't doing out there in the misty mountains of Peru or whatever, maybe getting Pippy booted up, reading about Fibonacci numbers, Pascal's triangle, turning to generator-based versions.
That's why I prefer to point people to real reports where they can, if they like, talk to some of the people concerned. We have a few Wiki pages now, notably http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Experience. Most of the material there is pre-XO, but new information is coming in. Also http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Academic_Papers, which has field reports on deployments in Ethiopia and New York City. They haven't gotten to programming yet.
In actual fact, Pygame is a rather low level API.
I was making a contrast with the ASCII games in the book described. The children aren't ready for NumPy and SciPy, but that will come.
But so much game action isn't about "superhuman speed" -- just plod along with your human user, 99% wait cycles, and you'll be fine.
So it turns out to *not* be so oxymoronic, to have game bindings for a relatively slow but intelligent snake, other scripting languages also.
When Smalltalk first appeared, it took at least $10,000 worth of hardware to run it. Now we are down to $188 for something that also spends most of its time waiting between ticks.
Guido, recall, was in a busy environment full of technophiles, familiar with ABC, when he went off to write Python on a Lisa. His "end users" weren't children, but experienced computerists, maybe with foci in sciences, mathematics... die-hard nerds already, geeks, not newbies.
Guido is a contributing member of BayPiggies (San Francisco Bay Area Python Interest Group) and a fan of the OLPC project. He came to my presentation on the XO, where I had my son demonstrating Pippy. I met Guido on a mailing list when we were both trying to compile Sugar on Debian. Neither of us succeeded at the time, yet today there are Sugar packages in Debian and Ubuntu, and Etoys has just been accepted (although as non-Free, because Debian and Etoys people are unclear on each other's concepts about the proper form for source code).
This is what Arthur (previously on edu-sig, lots in the archive) really *liked* about Python, and he let us know he'd fight any effort to dumb it down, make it "kid friendly" in a condescending way (like Alice in his view -- which I defended, because I'm a cartoon nut, love the idea of PySpongeBob).
Dumb it down? Not going to happen. We're building a complete Python IDE for use in Sugar. There is good experience going back more than 40 years of introducing capable programming languages (Logo, LISP, Smalltalk, APL) in elementary schools. And by Logo I don't only mean Turtle Art.
Better to have kids come to love adult tools of the trade was his attitude -- even wait until they're adults if that's what it takes.**
But of course no one wants to wait that long. The dream has always been: more computing power to those who want it, no matter how young. We'll get XOs in utero (with mom's permission) if that's the genetic predisposition of the fetus (i/o hooks to umbilical cord?) -- a twisted geek fantasy I realize, OK to LOL.
More seriously, Sugar itself is a lot like a Pygame creation, a 2D iPod-like interface with apps running as pie wedges, helping with the metaphor of finite memory (in a ring), but sure why not run several. This isn't a "toy" interface -- extremely futuristic in a direction I think we *are* set to go, Sugar a brilliant first draft of itself (with many forks and rebrandings as we go forward). Python is very lucky to be getting such a workout, in the hands of so many masters of their craft.
http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2008/04/more-on-interface-design.html
Back to Python books, I think the web edition format is best during the transition,
Another project that comes out of OLPC is a complete redesign of the concept of a textbook. A PDF is already better than a printed book if your screen has adequate resolution (the XO does). For a start, PDFs can be hyperlinked, with full-text search. But what can a textbook be if every student has a computer with a known set of software capabilities? Sugar includes a digital oscilloscope program with both time and frequency domain display. How does that affect your physics textbooks, or for that matter, teaching music? What else can we use it for? What if all textbooks can assume the presence of Python with NumPy and SciPy? What if we can embed Dr Geo in geometry books, or a symbolic math engine in algebra, calculus, and science books? What if Text-to-Speech is always available to read material out loud, whether for those learning to read, or those who want to do something hands-free under computer guidance? Alan Kay does a great demo in which children are taught how to program a car on the screen in Smalltalk, and shown what happens if you add a constant increment to the speed of the car in each time interval. And also tell the car to put a dot on the screen before moving. Then the pattern of dots has well-known properties that the children can be led to discover: The intervals are as successive odd numbers, which sum to squares for the total distance travelled. Good. Now get the children outside with the camera function on their XOs enabled, and have them take a video of something being dropped from the school roof. Take frames at some regular interval, overlay them, and observe the locations of the object--the same pattern we got from the uniformly accelerated car! So we can teach ten-year-olds roughly how Galileo discovered the law of gravity for a uniform field. Galileo didn't have software or a camera, or even a clock, or any guidance. He had to slow the process down by rolling balls down a groove in a piece of wood and cutting notches every so often so that the ball would make a sound at each one. When he got the spacing right, so the the intervals between clicks were the same, he worked out the math from there. Of course he also worked out that uniform motion horizontally compounded with uniformly accelerated motion vertically gives you a parabola. We can demonstrate this trivially on the computer, but it is more interesting to ask children to watch water fountains, and to try to recognize the shape of the arc. This is something that the Greeks could have done, but missed. Being demonstrably smarter in a very specific way than Plato or Aristotle or Appolonius of Perga (author of The Conic Sections) is a rare treat for children.
as all those print statements are about to switch over to functional format as in "print( jabber jabber)" -- intead of "print jabber jabber". Why waste a lot of paper teaching newbies 2.x? Of course they'll need to learn retro dialects once making the commitment to Python more professionally (a huge "if" in many cases -- as it should be), but there's no reason not to go with "state of the art" on intro. That's a privilege of being a newbie: no ties to the past, no obligations, free to cut to the head of the line in some ways (in terms of using the most up to date code).
We only have a few large deployments of XOs. Most will come after 3.0 comes out.
Actually, now is a good time for CS departments to watch something special, as having a live, happy language also be such a moving target (a morpher, a transformer), in terms of jumping a chasm, from ASCII to Unicode, dropping cruft, sleeking out... that doesn't happen every day. Most languages of Python's maturity are considered "quasi-frozen" by the time they get to this point. "Shedding skin" wasn't an option, but Guido had this pre-announced break point (good model, now that we see the pay off).
So those teaching "anthropology of computer language cultures" or whatever UC-type stuff, might use this as an opportunity, lots of interesting zine articles (adapted for-credit papers) just begging to be written (and published even!).
Kirby
PS: the Europython list is making me homesick for Vilnius,
My grandfather was from Vilnius. You might like to check out Andrius Kulikauskus's Minciu Sodas, which is based there.
I should sign off rather than read about taxi cabs from the airport, but actually no, I'd rather stay tuned, plan to visit her again someday.
** Arthur was a financial sector guy near what used to be called the Pan Am building when we first met, had some beers. Much later we met up with Lansky and his boys, different part of Manhatten, had great free ranging talk on the meaning of liberal arts, C.P. Snow's chasm etc. Arthur was a strong player, miss him on edu-sig (sudden heart attack, like Russert).
The book, in HTML and PDF format, and all the games are located here: http://pythonbook.coffeeghost.net
I'm planning on doing more books at some point in the future after getting feedback.
First of all, thank you for your work and making this available.
I first saw a link to your book on del.icio.us and read *quickly* through a few sections of a few chapters. My first reaction was "hmm, no graphics ... I wonder how that would interest kids nowadays...". However, after looking at the beginning of the last two chapters, I thought that this approach could very well work.
Overall, it looked like a good progression of topics and something very much worthwhile. Still, I think that it might be useful to include at least one graphics based game. I would suggest to implement the Othello program using pyglet (www.pyglet.org), introducing it at the very end. Actually, I would have the kids download the finished Othello project and pyglet at the beginning, just to try it out, and point out that this is the game that they would be writing on their own at the end.
We could use an Othello in Sugar, and lots of other games. I have books and books full of card games, board games, math games...African games like Mancala and Mlabalaba, classic games like Go, any of the games already available as Free Software...Anybody who is short of ideas for themselves or for students can ask me about them. We also need people to work on game infrastructure, like a collaboration framework that supports viewing and kibitzing without the players seeing the comments. Something that many online game servers provide for chess, go, bridge...
Just a thought... I should read it more closely to give you some more detailed feedback.
Cheers,
André
Thank you! Al Sweigart
-- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay
On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 4:11 PM, Edward Cherlin <echerlin@gmail.com> wrote:
2008/6/19 kirby urner <kirby.urner@gmail.com>:
<< SNIP >>
PS: the Europython list is making me homesick for Vilnius,
My grandfather was from Vilnius. You might like to check out Andrius Kulikauskus's Minciu Sodas, which is based there.
Hey thanks for that informative posting Edward, lots I didn't know mixed with some familiar stuff I enjoy revisiting. My overlap with Alan Kay was courtesy of Mark Shuttleworth who threw together this high powered meeting in London aimed at thinking through a strategy for South Africa (some government representation, other private sector). We pow wowed for about 2.5 days, Gunner clerking.[1] I blogged about it live at the time [2] plus have had some time to reflect since then, lots of field testing ideas. I haven't been the South Africa in the interim (used to go there more often when my parents lived in Lesotho) but do check on Kusasa from time to time, to see how it's going.[3] Love them Freedom Toasters! [4] Kirby [1] http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=708462278 [2] http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2006/04/shuttleworth-summit-day-two.html [3] http://www.kusasa.org/ [4] http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2008/05/legally-free.html
On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 5:34 PM, kirby urner <kirby.urner@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 4:11 PM, Edward Cherlin <echerlin@gmail.com> wrote:
2008/6/19 kirby urner <kirby.urner@gmail.com>:
<< SNIP >>
PS: the Europython list is making me homesick for Vilnius,
My grandfather was from Vilnius. You might like to check out Andrius Kulikauskus's Minciu Sodas, which is based there.
Hey thanks for that informative posting Edward, lots I didn't know mixed with some familiar stuff I enjoy revisiting.
A pleasure.
My overlap with Alan Kay was courtesy of Mark Shuttleworth who threw together this high powered meeting in London aimed at thinking through a strategy for South Africa (some government representation, other private sector).
Andrius, I, and a fairly high-powered group of others have been working on a strategy for the world. The basic elements that I am working on right now are renewable electric power, WiMax for Internet connections, microfinance, and OLPC. Later I propose to work on linking schools around the world and teaching the students how to go into business together. Each component supports the others better than linearly to increase the community's total access to economic opportunity even in the poorest and most remote villages. We have others working on community, agriculture, health, and various other components of a complete set of solutions.
We pow wowed for about 2.5 days, Gunner clerking.[1]
Your plan looks interesting. I have Wikied some thoughts about what textbooks should turn into when we have a known software base including SciPy, and also some thoughts about what should happen to the curriculum as we find out more about how to make subjects accessible at ever-earlier ages. There is some work on Kindegarten Calculus, for example, teaching the concepts but not the apparatus. Alan Kay has a demo in which ten-year olds are pointed in two directions, in simulation and in real life, and then encouraged to combine the results in order to figure out that Galilean gravity means constant acceleration. If you then get children to look at water fountains (something the Greeks failed to notice properly) and show them how to model Galilean relativity with constant horizontal motion, they get to discover parabolic motion. Relating that to conic sections visually is easy, but the proofs have to wait until later.
I blogged about it live at the time [2] plus have had some time to reflect since then, lots of field testing ideas.
I haven't been the South Africa in the interim (used to go there more often when my parents lived in Lesotho) but do check on Kusasa from time to time, to see how it's going.[3] Love them Freedom Toasters! [4]
Kirby
[1] http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=708462278 [2] http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2006/04/shuttleworth-summit-day-two.html [3] http://www.kusasa.org/ [4] http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2008/05/legally-free.html
-- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay
On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 7:33 PM, Edward Cherlin <echerlin@gmail.com> wrote:
Andrius, I, and a fairly high-powered group of others have been working on a strategy for the world. The basic elements that I am working on right now are renewable electric power, WiMax for Internet connections, microfinance, and OLPC. Later I propose to work on linking schools around the world and teaching the students how to go into business together. Each component supports the others better than linearly to increase the community's total access to economic opportunity even in the poorest and most remote villages. We have others working on community, agriculture, health, and various other components of a complete set of solutions.
I agree with the need for an integrated approach. My paper for the Shuttleworth Summit had a lot about using energy as a unifying concept (not an original idea) and linking energy to money (also not original with me -- part of the systems theory movement within economics, tracing back through Kenneth Boulding and others, as you probably know).[1]
Your plan looks interesting. I have Wikied some thoughts about what textbooks should turn into when we have a known software base including SciPy, and also some thoughts about what should happen to the curriculum as we find out more about how to make subjects accessible at ever-earlier ages. There is some work on Kindegarten Calculus, for example, teaching the concepts but not the apparatus. Alan Kay has a demo in which ten-year olds are pointed in two directions, in simulation and in real life, and then encouraged to combine the results in order to figure out that Galilean gravity means constant acceleration. If you then get children to look at water fountains (something the Greeks failed to notice properly) and show them how to model Galilean relativity with constant horizontal motion, they get to discover parabolic motion. Relating that to conic sections visually is easy, but the proofs have to wait until later.
My sense of it is that lesson planners around the world are not waiting for any consensus to emerge, are just barreling ahead. Did you know RMS was through Sri Lanka in January? Great FOSS community in that neck of the woods. Anyway, it's great as a gnu math teacher ([nt] -- not trademarked), to be able to take advantage of a fully enabled web browser (Java, Shockwave, Flash... Crunchy Frog) if fortunate, even more goodies if more fortunate still (I enjoy lending my XO to children, just got it back from Baibi (long way to go [2])). I'm mostly focusing close to home with my field testing (lots of reports in my journals), as this is the bioregion / economy I'm already the most integrated into, plus Portland's been called an "open source capital" (so why would I want to move?) but I'm certainly sharing ideas with counterparts elsewhere (lots of two way streets). We've got a charter high school running Edubuntu, which I hope gets some attention at the upcoming Ubuntu conference (coincides with OSCON). I've been working the TECC in Alaska which I talk about in my Chicago talk, congrats to Anna on passing that test (we talked today).[3][4] Still not sure how Pythonic we'll get with those, whereas with Saturday Academy I've trailblazed rather extensively, taking a break this summer though.[5] Kirby [1] http://urnerk.webfactional.com/presentations/urnermindstorm.pdf [2] http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2008/04/quaker-spectrum.html [3] http://youtube.com/watch?v=hbeHdg8mtdc [4] http://tecc-alaska.org/ [5] http://www.saturdayacademy.org/
-- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay
participants (2)
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Edward Cherlin -
kirby urner