[Edu-sig] Writing presentation manager for OSCON, in Pygame

[Rodrigo Dias Arruda Senra]

 [ Kirby Urner ]
 ------------------------------------------------------------
 | Interesting work Rodrigo.

 Thank you. By the way, I hope you have found your missing coat.
 (I was the one giving speech right after yours at Goteborg ;o)

 | My setup code is not so friendly.

 It is friendly enough to be  weaved (someday) into my py2slide
 tool as  something like:

 | def setscene14(s):
 |     graphics = []
 |     for i in range(1,12):
 |         filename = "cubanim"+str(i).zfill(2)
 |         graphics.append(fpath + filename + ".png" )
 |     mobj0 = Content()
 |     mobj0.content_type = 'autoflip'
 |     mobj0.topleft = (400,100)
 |     mobj0.imagelist = graphics
 |     mobj0.milliseconds = 100
 | .... 
 | #cut 

 anim1 = _("""
 Closest Packing of Spheres
 ==========================

 .. scene:: setscene14

 """)

 Therefore, I could mix classic static slides with *cool* live-action slides
 as long as the target format (in this case: pygame) supports it.

 ** off-topic, but education related --> from this point on ** 

 By the way, I did not have the opportunity during Europython to tell you (Kirby) about
 an experiment I did here in Brazil while teaching introductory courses. So I'll dare
 telling it now to you and edu-sig as well.

 The motivation was the huge heterogeneity of students backgrounds in introductory
 courses. Some students knew how to program in C++, VB, PHP, etc while others barely
 had experience with computers (although that was an outlier).  

 The idea is called: The Big Brother. It's goal is to foster experienced students
 to "adopt, tutor, and monitor" the development of less experienced students during
 the course.

 In the beginning of the course everybody took a clustering exam, to classify students
 into: experienced (big brothers), grey, newbie. Students in grey zone can choose not to participate,
 or to migrate for any of the other two clusters.

 The catch is the following: A fraction of the measured progress in the newbie's grades goes to its respective
 big brother's grades. 

 There was a fierce battle to adopt the student that failed badly during the clustering exam.
 
 I beleive this is a win-win-win situation:
  - the teacher gets many free-of-charge assistants
  - newbies get the close attention they usually need
  - experienced students have a chance to earn extra credit

 I only had few opportunities to put that in practice. 
 # One of them teaching Python to Comp.Science undergraduates.
 So if you like the idea, and do it, I'm interested in feedback.

 best regards,
 Rod Senra
 
-- 
    
  Rodrigo Senra       <rsenra |at| acm.org>                      
 ------------------------------------------------
  GPr Sistemas  http://www.gpr.com.br                
  Blog          http://rodsenra.blogspot.com                    
  IC - Unicamp  http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~921234  
 ------------------------------------------------