[Edu-sig] Webster Van Robot

[kirby urner]

On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 12:41 PM, Edward Cherlin <echerlin at gmail.com> wrote:
> This sounds like something we should hear about at PyCon 2009 in
> Chicago. Can you do it either as a presentation or a tutorial? If you
> can, we can organize a coding sprint for you.

Yeah, I'd like to do that again, had a great time last year, meeting
old and new people (to me), striking up some collaborations.  Budget
permitting, I'll be there again with or without a prepared speech or
presentation, again connecting with my two daughters, maybe bringing a
partner (Patrick Barton came last year, a Linus Pauling House regular,
but through his own Chicago based company, not on my ticket).

> Also, please consider any such educational Python projects for
> inclusion in Sugar on the OLPC XO. http://www.sugarlabs.org/.
>

My Python Briefing is about helping math teachers get their feet wet
in what's become an important set of tools in any mathematician's tool
kit (talking about "executable math notations" per Iverson (APL) not
Python specifically here), with all the necessary source code examples
already at my Oregon Curriculum Network web site, enough to inspire
plenty of imitators I think (that's my goal).  And it's not like I'm
the only source, plus took liberal helpings from other sites to get
going (what open source is all about, plus giving credit where credit
is due).

So I don't see any need for a coding sprint.  This isn't about
uploading some new version of Sage or anything close.
http://www.sagemath.org/  That's not to say I don't include Sage in my
Briefing -- I flip through lots of slides at high speed, saying I only
have 30-45 (minus Q&A) minutes and if they want me to slow down
that'll cost 'em. :)

I have lots of postings on file, in this archive and my blog, re OLPC
& XO, mainly explaining that P4E (Programming for Everyone, inheriting
from Guido's CP4E) is rather hardware agnostic, although of course we
care about specific APIs associate with this or that MIDI card or
whatever it might be (phidgets are "in" these days -- literal
embodiments of what might have been screen widgets, USB connected).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phidgets (hi Nat!).

Kirby

PS:  for those of you who didn't catch my talk last year, and in case
I'm unable to make Pycon next year, here's the entire talk with a
replaced video track (the cameras didn't follow the action very
closely, plus source code is unreadable at that distance):
http://showmedo.com/videos/video?name=1010050&fromSeriesID=101 (the
TECC academy I mention, show in a newspaper clipping from Alaska
paper, is actually based in Wasilla, which is entertaining for us,
maybe will get to do a Briefing there someday, though so far I'm
sticking closer to home (check blogs for my whereabouts)).