[Edu-sig] Interactive tutorial

[Jeffrey Elkner]

This is way too cool!!  I like the idea of
www.python.org/cgi-bin/eval/python<version>, but if that isn't
practical, Yorktown High School (as one of the major beneficiaries of
this project ;-) would be glad to donate a server to it.  Just let me
know.

jeff elkner
yorktown high school
arlington, va

On 08 Jun 2001 10:33:59 -0700, Brent Burley wrote:
> Chris Meyers wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> I like that idea.  How about this variation:
> 
> The lesson text is an ordinary html doc.  In fact, Jeff's text could be
> used as is; it would merely be augmented with a bunch of "try it" links
> (a little icon of some sort would be nice).  These would be linked to
> exercises that would come up in a frame below the main document.  These
> forms could have anything in them, but would at a minimum have a text
> area initialized with a python code fragment and an <Evaluate> button
> which would evaluate the code and place the results in the same frame. 
> If you make a mistake, just click the back button, edit, and
> re-evaluate.
> 
> The python evaluation would be done by a server which could be running
> anywhere, even on the local machine.  How about a server that's running
> on the teacher's machine?  It could write to a log window every time a
> student submits some code so the teacher can see how everyone is doing. 
> The public python server could be useful for other purposes as well.  It
> could for example provide access to a number of different python
> versions to allow people to try out new features, compare performance,
> etc., without having to download and install anything.
> 
> I'm not sure how to deal with the fact that the url for the python eval
> server needs to be hard-coded into the lesson forms.  If there were a
> well-known, reliable server, hard-coding the url might not be so bad. 
> Anyone have any ideas on how to make the server url configurable?
> 
> Any volunteers for running the python eval server?  How about
> www.python.org/cgi-bin/eval/python<version> ;-) ?
> 
> 	Brent
> 
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