[Edu-sig] Interactive tutorial

[Chris Meyers]

This looks really interesting. I'm sure Jeff would have no 
objections. With (hopefully) teaching a Python class this summer I 
would be happy to both contribute and use material.

Here's an idea. How about a cgi web page that delivers the 
explanations and maybe the code that needs correcting. The cgi 
program is written in Python of course. It would take the users 
correction and "eval" it, returning either the answer or an error 
message (capturing any errors traps and stdout). That way people 
could play with Python without actually going thru the installation 
process.

One would have to guard against sabotoge. A timer to keep infinite 
loops at bay, maybe a dummy "os" module to fingers out of where 
they don't belong. redefine "open". Although isn't there a reduced
execution mode like Java has?

Or come to think of it, could such a page be done in Jython for 
local interpretation of expressions or program snipplets and links 
for new material?

Chris Meyers


06/07/2001 4:55:37 PM, Brent Burley <Brent.Burley@disney.com> 
wrote:

>I stumbled onto this today:
>
>TclTutor : Interactive Computer Aided Instruction for Tcl
>http://www.msen.com/~clif/TclTutor.html
>
>It has 43 short lessons, each of which presents a discussion, some
>sample code that needs fixing, and an output area for running the 
code. 
>The lesson text is formatted with a terseness setting that can be 
set to
>beginner, user, or expert.  The lessons themselves are coded as a
>marked-up subset of html.
>
>Does anything like this exist for python?  Would it be useful?  It 
seems
>like it would be fairly easy to create this in python.  The work 
of
>course would be in creating decent lessons; a good starting point 
might
>be to adapt Jeff Elkner's text (presuming the open documentation 
license
>would allow such usage).
>
>	Brent Burley
>
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