I'd move a REPL from the "nice to have" to the "mandatory" list. The interactive shell is really nice when the student just has to learn what a new function or method does.

The most common confusions students have told me about with IDLE are:

1) Mixing up the interactive shell and file editor windows.
2) Mixing up Python 2 and 3 (either the wrong code or running the wrong IDLE)

+1 for Python 3 only

+1 for using PyPI as a Python appstore. I think this idea has promise. One of Scratch's great features is that students can upload and show off their programs.

+1 for syntax highlighting. Don't discount how colorful text improves the coolness of coding for students. Even if they change the colors to look like a garish MySpace page.



On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 7:10 AM, Carrie Anne Philbin <carrieanne@raspberrypi.org> wrote:
Lots of great discussion but I'm losing track of our list, so I've moved it to a google doc. Please suggest amendments so that we can get a final list together to vote on before we turn to finding volunteers to help build it. Then we will take it to a testing phase to get feedback from real learners!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rXM2-Up59PbOEXqZHbo_jj-zPFkhc---kVVMinPp6M4/edit?usp=sharing 

Thanks,

Carrie Anne.

On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 12:48 AM, Dave Ames <david.john.ames@gmail.com> wrote:


On Tue, 22 Sep 2015 20:50 Nicholas H.Tollervey <ntoll@ntoll.org> wrote:

On 22/09/15 17:46, Dave Ames wrote:
> I would suspect that (rightly or wrongly) most school network
> technicians would be extremely wary of giving students access to a
> system shell of any kind.
>

Then most school network technicians are fools and should not have ANY
input in such decisions.

NOTE: I'm highly biased about this. ;-)

N.

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Absolutely no disagreement from me there. If they've configured everything correctly then access to the command line for students, should present absolutely no threat to the network. But!

The default state is "no command line", even though access to Python/Idle probably gives them at least the same level (if not more) of danger.

Dave





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