Actually, Kirby, I was calling for the creation of a new SIG. There are two very different kinds of discussions that can fall under the heading of an Educational Special Interest Group. One is the kind of more theoretical discussions that generally take place here, and the other concerns the more concrete, practical issues of classroom teachers about finding and using instructional materials and planning lessons. While there are undoubtedly many folks who would want to be on both lists, there are many others who might not. As someone working on an introductory textbook using Python, I get mail from people interested in the book who write me and ask where they can go to get more resources. There are enough of these inquiries coming in now that I think it would be appropriate to create a new list to help this emerging community of teachers using Python to grow. jeff On Tue, 2001-08-28 at 12:12, Kirby Urner wrote:

At 11:06 AM 8/28/2001 -0400, Jeffrey Elkner wrote:

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I think Tim has an excellent idea here. Actually, a web page and a new interest group / mailing list would be even better. There is enough interest developing that the level of traffic will warrent a new group/list.

jeff

Seems a new official SIG type list would best be spawned if/when traffic *did* get to that level and was a lot of it not clearly edu-sig related. Seems for now that volume is rather low, and the proposed discussion branch is what edu-sig is supposed to be about, in part, no? But maybe this wasn't a proposal for a new SIG. Could be a Yahoo group or something.

Kirby

The wonderful folks at ibiblio.org have already set up Zope for the Open Book Project. I was already thinking about setting up a Wiki there for just the purpose you describe. Lex Berezhny will be maintaining that site when he gets back from the Ukraine. I'll keep you all up to date on its progress, and welcome suggestions as to how best to set it up. Thanks! jeff elkner yorktown high school arlington, va On Tue, 2001-08-28 at 11:54, Dethe Elza wrote:

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I keep hearing about more teachers who, like myself, are using Python to teach programming in high schools around the U.S. Perhaps it would be nice to have a page at python.org in the edu-sig section listing the schools and teachers who are using it. Of course I have no idea how we'd find everyone, and perhaps finding a small number of teachers listed on the page would be a disincentive for teachers who are just discovering Python.

I like this idea, especially if it can double as a lesson-plan repository. I think setting up a Wiki or a Zope where many people can participate in maintaining it might be more useful that a page at python.org (those don't seem to change very often).

What do y'all think? Oh, and let's not be exclusive to the US. Some of us in the free world teach python too %-)

--Dethe

If they'd be willing, I hereby nominate ibiblio for hosting the list of schools teaching Python and the future lesson plan repository. :-) Using Zope will make the project much easier to maintain and would allow for easy contributions from others who aren't responsible for the site directly.

Hear hear! I love the sound of a decision being made. -- Dethe Elza (delza@burningtiger.com) Chief Mad Scientist Burning Tiger Technologies (http://burningtiger.com) Living Code Weblog (http://livingcode.ca)