[Edu-sig] Re: Student teaching and tutorials

[Arthur]

>What the greatest teaching tool ever for me would a >python tutorial on how
to build a message board/forum.

I strongly suspect that such a tutorials already exists.

In the form of working programs, which you can take apart, and analyze, and
break, and then fix, and change, and break again, and fix again.

But it might be necessary to be a bit patient, and take a step at a time.
Understanding some of the basics of networking (I don't) before you try to
go on to something more full blown, like a message board.

I second Lee's recommendation that his book and his pygear software might be
a good place to start.

http://staff.easthighschool.net/lee/computers/book/

I do know that at least one of his demos show how to make a pygame game into
a multi-player network game, with Twisted.  Appropriate, because Twisted,
which started by younger folks developing a multi-player gaming environment
in Python, has become an extremely important and visible Python project.

Please *don't* wait for someone to write the precise tutorial you might have
in mind.  Everything you need to know is out there. If you are willing to
learn how to learn - using the work many people have generously made
available on the Internet, for free, and with nothing hidden from view.

Lee tells it to you straight.

<quote>
"""It is my belief that the only way to know what a computer can do, and
what you can make a computer do, is to try to make the computer do what you
want it to do.
In other words: You cannot learn to program by reading a book. You must
write code. Lots of code.

As you read this book, keep that in mind. Try the examples, certainly, but
if the examples or the text inspires an idea of your own, by all means work
on that for a while. The book will be here. You can always come back and
pick up where you were.

Play, have fun, see what you can do, then come back and read some more. It
is the best way to learn."""

</quote>

The only step further that I can imagine from Lee's approach, is a book
focused as a tutorial on using Open Source resources in learning to program.
Learning how to learn, circa 2003.

Good idea, Art.

Art