[Edu-sig] My experience teaching Python

[Kirby Urner]

At 02:10 PM 02/22/2000 -0600, Dustin James Mitchell wrote:
>On Tue, 22 Feb 2000, Martijn Faassen wrote:
>
>> 'for' loops presented more problems, though! I had quite a bit of
difficulty
>> to explain that the for block gets executed for each element in the
sequence,
>> and that the variable (for variable in foolist) refers to something else
>> each time in the execution. I need to think on a better way to express
>> things apparently-tricky thing.
>
>I had the same troubles.  Anybody got any brainstorms on this one?

Maybe show 'em something like:

  >>> for i in ['I','am','learning','Python']: print i

  I
  am
  learning
  Python
      
>And that's a math issue, not a programming issue.  It's always nice to
>cross people over that gap, because math like that (0 times anything is 0)
>is something everyone is familiar with, and thus grounds the learning in
>something familiar.

Yes, I'm thinking math and computer language can help bootstrap 
one another.  CP4E = computer literacy + numeracy.

Kirby

PS:  Dumb typos in previous post of mine, in the URLs I gave 
for my on-line Python-learning essay:

    http://www.inetarena.com/~pdx4d/ocn/numeracy0.html
    http://www.inetarena.com/~pdx4d/ocn/numeracy1.html
    http://www.inetarena.com/~pdx4d/ocn/numeracy2.html

is what I _should_ have written.