[Edu-sig] Re: The right learning environment

[Kirby Urner]

At 10:30 PM 3/20/2002 -0500, Arthur wrote:

>Sad and ironic that the most satisfying discussions I have
>had about Python and education have been conducted outside
>the Python community - mostly with me as an advocate, and -
>from all I can tell - seeming to be making perfect sense
>to people. Impressive people.

I don't find that sad.  It's good news.  Here and elsewhere
among Pythonistas, I think you'll find little argument re
Python's suitability as a teaching language.  Only preaching
to the choir is what'd be sad.

As for the specifics of pedagogy, that varies with the
audience (past experience important) and the teacher
(ditto).

>And here I never get a sense of making sense at all.

Yeah, I couldn't understand how pushing Notepad made any
sense -- a sucky little program :-D.  But now I think you
just meant "any ol' text editor" -- you were advocating
unbundling Python from any specific IDE.  I don't have a
huge problem with that -- I just think newbies should
know what's available, starting with IDLE simply because
it installs with the product (unless you skip the Tk
install).

Because Python doesn't have a native GUI, but is designed
to piggy back on other GUI-builder languages which
export an API, it makes some sense to have a GUI text
editor for programming in which Python itself has a
glue language role -- makes the shell and/or editor
you're using be a demonstration of Python's abilities.
IDLE fits this bill as well (but so do other IDEs).

PyCrust is certainly a useful tool -- last I checked, it
was a shell, w/o a text editor, and this would promote
the kind of unbundled approach you're advocating.  And
as long as the shell is in the picture (and I prefer
GUI-based, but it's not mandatory), I think we're doing
Python justice.

What I don't like are teaching approaches heavily
influenced by C or Java which pretend you can only
write scripts/programs, and don't explore the interactive
potential of a command line environment.  Yet the latter
is a wonderfuls scratch pad in which to test/learn
the basics of the language, with immediate feedback.
To bypass the shell is to make a huge pedagogical
error, IMO.

Kirby


>Yes, I find it frustrating.
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>Art
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