From kirby.urner at gmail.com Mon Aug 1 21:35:49 2011 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2011 12:35:49 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] some analysis from OSCON (part 1 of 3) Message-ID: Lots of talk of a "code of conduct" going in, as I pieced it together later, with dribs and drabs on the organizer's list, which I've been on. We had some last minute plea for some small print boilerplate, like a EULA, that no one reads, until getting a Knock on the Door from Microsoft... Of relevance to education is my Hillsboro police story again. Here was this bunch of cops, in the age of Napster, being pushed by the IP lawyers to play "the bad ass enforcer" in the local public schools. They were to come in and scare the bejeezus out of kids telling them about the anti-piracy laws, possible jail sentences. Yet here this was, land of the free home of the brave, with parents who'd risked everything to come here for a better life for their kids, and here were these cops not telling them anything about free, legally free, and open software, not letting them in on the "dirty secret" (from the IP lawyers' view) that a lot of this so-called IP was relatively worthless, next to the joys of ownership of one's own free pile of code, which one could even help write and build community through doing (just like the lawyers did). So the police rebelled and created their own Linux lab to teach open source, hiring me 'n Collord to serve as instructors. The upshot: teens do not care to venture into a police station for just about any reason, especially not recent emigres with relatives already in trouble with the law. So the classes had problems with outreach. Really, this was something the teachers should have been doing as a part of their professional duties, but we all know America's teachers tend to be cringing and cowardly, not likely to champion civil rights or anything noble (e.g GNU). Or have times changed when we weren't looking? I guess they may have, as Saturday Academy was plenty bold enough, in screening parts of 'Revolution OS' and all the rest of it. Stallman keeps coming back to Portland (Hillsboro is our neighbor, an Intel HQS). OSCON is here for a reason. We know how to share and build community, while those IP lawyers gain a reputation around the world for being ugly and litigious, anything but a pleasure doing business with. Kirby -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From missive at hotmail.com Thu Aug 11 04:39:53 2011 From: missive at hotmail.com (Lee Harr) Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2011 07:09:53 +0430 Subject: [Edu-sig] [ANNC] pynguin-0.11 python turtle graphics application Message-ID: Pynguin is a python-based turtle graphics application. ??? It combines an editor, interactive interpreter, and ??? graphics display area. It is meant to be an easy environment for introducing ??? some programming concepts to beginning programmers. http://pynguin.googlecode.com/ This release continues to expand basic functionality and ??? explores more user-friendly options in the interface. Pynguin is tested with Python 2.7.1 and PyQt 4.8.3 and ??? will use Pygments syntax highlighting if available. Pynguin is released under GPLv3. Changes in pynguin-0.11: ??? Session ??????? - all settings now moved in to menus and settings dialogs ??? Pynguin API ??????? - added .label() method to have a label attached to a pynguin ??????????? - also accessible as .name attribute ??????? - added .speed() method to change speed from user code ??????? - viewcoords() now returns integers by default ??????????? - pass floats=True to get the float values instead ??????? - added .track() and .notrack() methods for user code ??? Canvas ??????? - added support for custom avatars ??????????? - both svg and bitmap images supported ??????? - fixed motion when drawing slow circles with pen up ??????? - don't draw circles when pen is up and speed is instant ??????? - expand canvas when resizing window ??? Integrated Editor ??????? - added "Test / Run all" button ??????? - improved handling of external .py files ??? Integrated Console ??????? - now gives correct call syntax when using test/run on classes ??? Examples ??????? - make examples use new viewcoords() API ??????? - fixed multi.pyn scatter example ??????? - make multi.pyn follow examples work with existing pynguins ??????? - demonstrate labels in multi.pyn follow example ??????? - fix penup() in oo.pyn ZZ example ??????? - add centered circle in oo.pyn ZZ example ??? General ??????? - fixed examples getting gzipped in .deb distribution file ??????? - added a way to dump contents of .pyn from command line From calcpage at aol.com Fri Aug 12 01:59:08 2011 From: calcpage at aol.com (A. Jorge Garcia) Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2011 19:59:08 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Edu-sig] Blogs, Videos, Songs and Documentaries for your viewing pleasure! In-Reply-To: <8CDF698E9AE446D-B30-36CAC@webmail-d048.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CDF698E9AE446D-B30-36CAC@webmail-d048.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <8CE2699CAD2506D-2210-247D0@webmail-m129.sysops.aol.com> Here's my blogs about Learning and Teaching Math and Computing with technology! http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/07/taking-show-on-road.html http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/08/flipping-classroom-to-flip-or-not-to.html http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/06/screencasting-101-to-be-or-not-to-be.html http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/08/fare-thee-well-summer-session-ii.html http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/08/fare-thee-well-summer-session-ii-part-2.html http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/08/fare-thee-well-summer-session-ii-part-3.html Here's my preCalculus, Calculus and CompSci screen-casts! http://www.youtube.com/calcpage2009 Here's some math and computer songs my studemts made for YouTube! http://www.youtube.com/cistheta2007#g/c/8E2A8DE4C0DA6B2A http://www.youtube.com/cistheta2007#g/c/FBA85F4CD27E8D4A Here's some computer documentaries I saved from crumbling VHS tapes for YouTube! http://www.youtube.com/cistheta2007#g/c/35534A5E32FB49A4 Thanx, A. Jorge Garcia Applied Math and CompSci http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com http://www.youtube.com/calcpage2009 From mokurai at earthtreasury.org Fri Aug 12 04:43:22 2011 From: mokurai at earthtreasury.org (mokurai at earthtreasury.org) Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2011 22:43:22 -0400 Subject: [Edu-sig] [ANNC] pynguin-0.11 python turtle graphics application In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9ff5475b55bcbc63b6b25e58a713bffe.squirrel@emailmg.ipage.com> The purely graphical Python version of turtle Graphics is Turtle Art/Turtle Blocks in the Sugar education software. http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4027 You are welcome to adapt the tutorials at http:wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/TurtleArt/Tutorials to Pynguin or any other version of Turtle Art. On Wed, August 10, 2011 10:39 pm, Lee Harr wrote: > > Pynguin is a python-based turtle graphics application. > ??? It combines an editor, interactive interpreter, and > ??? graphics display area. > > It is meant to be an easy environment for introducing > ??? some programming concepts to beginning programmers. > > > http://pynguin.googlecode.com/ > > > This release continues to expand basic functionality and > ??? explores more user-friendly options in the interface. > > > Pynguin is tested with Python 2.7.1 and PyQt 4.8.3 and > ??? will use Pygments syntax highlighting if available. > > Pynguin is released under GPLv3. > > > Changes in pynguin-0.11: > ??? Session > ??????? - all settings now moved in to menus and settings dialogs > > ??? Pynguin API > ??????? - added .label() method to have a label attached to a pynguin > ??????????? - also accessible as .name attribute > ??????? - added .speed() method to change speed from user code > ??????? - viewcoords() now returns integers by default > ??????????? - pass floats=True to get the float values instead > ??????? - added .track() and .notrack() methods for user code > > ??? Canvas > ??????? - added support for custom avatars > ??????????? - both svg and bitmap images supported > ??????? - fixed motion when drawing slow circles with pen up > ??????? - don't draw circles when pen is up and speed is instant > ??????? - expand canvas when resizing window > > ??? Integrated Editor > ??????? - added "Test / Run all" button > ??????? - improved handling of external .py files > > ??? Integrated Console > ??????? - now gives correct call syntax when using test/run on classes > > ??? Examples > ??????? - make examples use new viewcoords() API > ??????? - fixed multi.pyn scatter example > ??????? - make multi.pyn follow examples work with existing pynguins > ??????? - demonstrate labels in multi.pyn follow example > ??????? - fix penup() in oo.pyn ZZ example > ??????? - add centered circle in oo.pyn ZZ example > > ??? General > ??????? - fixed examples getting gzipped in .deb distribution file > ??????? - added a way to dump contents of .pyn from command line > > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > -- Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks From kirby.urner at gmail.com Sat Aug 13 18:51:54 2011 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2011 09:51:54 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] Blogs, Videos, Songs and Documentaries for your viewing pleasure! In-Reply-To: <8CE2699CAD2506D-2210-247D0@webmail-m129.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CDF698E9AE446D-B30-36CAC@webmail-d048.sysops.aol.com> <8CE2699CAD2506D-2210-247D0@webmail-m129.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 4:59 PM, A. Jorge Garcia wrote: > Here's my blogs about Learning and Teaching Math and Computing with > technology! > http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/07/taking-show-on-road.html Really glad you're collecting and posting these in one place. Great to getting a read on technology in the classroom, as used by a pro who also bucks the system, doesn't sucker for vendor lock-in at every turn e.g. knows free Ubuntu has viable real time desktop capturing mp4 capability. > http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/08/flipping-classroom-to-flip-or-not-to.html ( might be a mistake in the Java on this one myBody += myBody + etc.) > http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/06/screencasting-101-to-be-or-not-to-be.html > http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/08/fare-thee-well-summer-session-ii.html > http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/08/fare-thee-well-summer-session-ii-part-2.html > http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/08/fare-thee-well-summer-session-ii-part-3.html > My storyboard school in the Oregon high desert (branch campus) is quite bicycle centric, with students coming back with lots of data. Bicycles and riders are likely equipped with sensors, are outfitted for GPS navigation. Two of our cyclers just came back from Yamhill county, 4 days in farm and forest lands, harvesting data (this is real, not storyboard). GIS was used, but no real time GPS this time, and no sensors were left behind. Tags: Project Earthala, Dignity Village, EPCOT West, XRL (eXtremely Remote Living) The goal is to build up an electronic, interactive representation of the surrounding ecosystem and to use it in association with county engineers to implement various new energy harvesting technologies, such as the solar steam dish from Infinia (sterling engine), various dwelling machine solutions (or call them tents, yurts or whatever). Note: urban schools may accept the same challenge. Urban geocaching is already a recognized sport. A professor from Rochester and I had a long talk with the CTO of Immersive Media (Portland office) about their back pack dodeca-cams, not unlike those on Google Cars. The files generated by these things (devices) go to the school's rack for stitching together in student-faculty designed mashups. As an intranet, our installation closely models a GIS shop, perhaps with ESRI products (a Python angle). Imagine hiking trails tagged with immersive media files such that campsites might be viewed "on tape" even just by dialing in coordinates, or hitting a blip on the map (shared / projected). Yes, like Picassa. > Here's my preCalculus, Calculus and CompSci screen-casts! > http://www.youtube.com/calcpage2009 > > Here's some math and computer songs my studemts made for YouTube! > http://www.youtube.com/cistheta2007#g/c/8E2A8DE4C0DA6B2A > http://www.youtube.com/cistheta2007#g/c/FBA85F4CD27E8D4A > > Here's some computer documentaries I saved from crumbling VHS tapes for > YouTube! > http://www.youtube.com/cistheta2007#g/c/35534A5E32FB49A4 > > Thanx, > A. Jorge Garcia > Applied Math and CompSci > http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com > http://www.youtube.com/calcpage2009 > Our "math is an outdoor sport" tagline goes with this camp / school blend where we encourage lots of physical activity in connection with computation and statistical analysis, with calculus for curves. Also goes with the BarCamp metaphor. The so-called "self quantification movement" (quite visible at OSCON 2011 already) is feeding into this lineage as well. Runners like uploading and sharing their sensor data. Athletes are forever comparing stats, and that's math, stats, bioinformatics. Our two cyclers are foodies and each was testing a diet. STEM is deliberately a blend and working hard to keep each subject distinct from the others has that "bad old days" flavor of when people hyper-specialized. "Is this computer science or bio-engineering?" -- why would you need to bog down in such questions? The majors we seek to attract have environmental science concerns and a lot of the sensors we're installing have a biometric angle. If you saw the movie 'Gasland' you know there's a lot to be monitored and modeled -- an ongoing project in multiple counties. No one private organization has jurisdiction, especially given all the public lands involved, not forgetting public air. Plenty of room for school involvement, with universities winning contracts, receiving grants. You might see more of these schools popping up in the Stans or Nigeria for example (some UN funding), as these student populations are just as concerned about environmental quality, and are just as capable of running Ubuntu etc. http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2010/08/foss-in-afghanistan.html Oregon hikers are increasingly ask for wifi / cell in the wilderness and that's giving eco-scientists (STEM students) more options with webcams, weather stations, air and water quality sensors etc. Anyway, just painting a picture of the memes I'm harvesting when watching your videos. What if we just have like a bed sheet strung between trees for a screen, with camp and star light for backdrop? We want to learn Python, in conjunction with an API for pulling up data about the ecosystem (called "place based education" in the literature). Should we aim for more portable projection capability? Or should we design certain sites to have geocached equipment accessible to those with the right "treasure maps"? Lots to think about. Link to mathfuture: http://groups.google.com/group/mathfuture/browse_thread/thread/ebafa7896fd9ca74 Kirby From calcpage at aol.com Sat Aug 13 23:12:15 2011 From: calcpage at aol.com (A. Jorge Garcia) Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2011 17:12:15 -0400 Subject: [Edu-sig] =?utf-8?q?Blogs=2C_Videos=2C=09Songs_and_Documentaries_?= =?utf-8?q?for_your_viewing_pleasure!?= In-Reply-To: References: <8CDF698E9AE446D-B30-36CAC@webmail-d048.sysops.aol.com> <8CE2699CAD2506D-2210-247D0@webmail-m129.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: kirby urner wrote: On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 4:59 PM, A. Jorge Garcia wrote: > Here's my blogs about Learning and Teaching Math and Computing with > technology! > http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/07/taking-show-on-road.html Really glad you're collecting and posting these in one place. Great to getting a read on technology in the classroom, as used by a pro who also bucks the system, doesn't sucker for vendor lock-in at every turn e.g. knows free Ubuntu has viable real time desktop capturing mp4 capability. > http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/08/flipping-classroom-to-flip-or-not-to.html ( might be a mistake in the Java on this one myBody += myBody + etc.) > http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/06/screencasting-101-to-be-or-not-to-be.html > http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/08/fare-thee-well-summer-session-ii.html > http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/08/fare-thee-well-summer-session-ii-part-2.html > http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/08/fare-thee-well-summer-session-ii-part-3.html > My storyboard school in the Oregon high desert (branch campus) is quite bicycle centric, with students coming back with lots of data. Bicycles and riders are likely equipped with sensors, are outfitted for GPS navigation. Two of our cyclers just came back from Yamhill county, 4 days in farm and forest lands, harvesting data (this is real, not storyboard). GIS was used, but no real time GPS this time, and no sensors were left behind. Tags: Project Earthala, Dignity Village, EPCOT West, XRL (eXtremely Remote Living) The goal is to build up an electronic, interactive representation of the surrounding ecosystem and to use it in association with county engineers to implement various new energy harvesting technologies, such as the solar steam dish from Infinia (sterling engine), various dwelling machine solutions (or call them tents, yurts or whatever). Note: urban schools may accept the same challenge. Urban geocaching is already a recognized sport. A professor from Rochester and I had a long talk with the CTO of Immersive Media (Portland office) about their back pack dodeca-cams, not unlike those on Google Cars. The files generated by these things (devices) go to the school's rack for stitching together in student-faculty designed mashups. As an intranet, our installation closely models a GIS shop, perhaps with ESRI products (a Python angle). Imagine hiking trails tagged with immersive media files such that campsites might be viewed "on tape" even just by dialing in coordinates, or hitting a blip on the map (shared / projected). Yes, like Picassa. > Here's my preCalculus, Calculus and CompSci screen-casts! > http://www.youtube.com/calcpage2009 > > Here's some math and computer songs my studemts made for YouTube! > http://www.youtube.com/cistheta2007#g/c/8E2A8DE4C0DA6B2A > http://www.youtube.com/cistheta2007#g/c/FBA85F4CD27E8D4A > > Here's some computer documentaries I saved from crumbling VHS tapes for > YouTube! > http://www.youtube.com/cistheta2007#g/c/35534A5E32FB49A4 > > Thanx, > A. Jorge Garcia > Applied Math and CompSci > http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com > http://www.youtube.com/calcpage2009 > Our "math is an outdoor sport" tagline goes with this camp / school blend where we encourage lots of physical activity in connection with computation and statistical analysis, with calculus for curves. Also goes with the BarCamp metaphor. The so-called "self quantification movement" (quite visible at OSCON 2011 already) is feeding into this lineage as well. Runners like uploading and sharing their sensor data. Athletes are forever comparing stats, and that's math, stats, bioinformatics. Our two cyclers are foodies and each was testing a diet. STEM is deliberately a blend and working hard to keep each subject distinct from the others has that "bad old days" flavor of when people hyper-specialized. "Is this computer science or bio-engineering?" -- why would you need to bog down in such questions? The majors we seek to attract have environmental science concerns and a lot of the sensors we're installing have a biometric angle. If you saw the movie 'Gasland' you know there's a lot to be monitored and modeled -- an ongoing project in multiple counties. No one private organization has jurisdiction, especially given all the public lands involved, not forgetting public air. Plenty of room for school involvement, with universities winning contracts, receiving grants. You might see more of these schools popping up in the Stans or Nigeria for example (some UN funding), as these student populations are just as concerned about environmental quality, and are just as capable of running Ubuntu etc. http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2010/08/foss-in-afghanistan.html Oregon hikers are increasingly ask for wifi / cell in the wilderness and that's giving eco-scientists (STEM students) more options with webcams, weather stations, air and water quality sensors etc. Anyway, just painting a picture of the memes I'm harvesting when watching your videos. What if we just have like a bed sheet strung between trees for a screen, with camp and star light for backdrop? We want to learn Python, in conjunction with an API for pulling up data about the ecosystem (called "place based education" in the literature). Should we aim for more portable projection capability? Or should we design certain sites to have geocached equipment accessible to those with the right "treasure maps"? Lots to think about. Link to mathfuture: http://groups.google.com/group/mathfuture/browse_thread/thread/ebafa7896fd9ca74 Kirby _____________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig at python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig Holy cow! That's high praise indeed from the great Kirby! Yes, I have a rep for bucking the system, but they let me get away with it as I have a good track record! This will be my 28th year teaching in New York State public schools and I have 6 to go before retirement. I don't know how much longer I can buck the system with all these new teacher evaluation procedures... BTW, you are correct about the 'myBody +=' issue. I forgot it was on that video. We did correct it in the next class but I didn't record it. I've been screencasting my Math classes mostly over the last 5 years or so. Maybe next year's screencasting project will be CompSci. Thanx, A. Jorge Garcia Applied Math and CompSci http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com http://www.youtube.com/calcpage2009 Sent via DROID on Verizon Wireless -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From millbr02 at luther.edu Fri Aug 26 16:23:36 2011 From: millbr02 at luther.edu (Brad Miller) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2011 09:23:36 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] Announcement: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist -- Interactive Edition Message-ID: <73A8A4AC1C03402C950C57B11B63E1BF@luther.edu> Hello, As part of my Sabbatical this past year I've been working on a new edition of How to Think Like a Computer Scientist (by Elkner et. al) with my colleague David Ranum. The idea behind this new edition is to make it interactive, to encourage students to learn by doing and to explore. The three main features we've added to previous editions are: Videos: Each section has (or will have) a 5-10 minute screencast explaining the written concepts verbally. Interactive Python interpreter. Using Skulpt -- an open source javascript implementation of Python. Codelens code visualizer -- Based on the Online Python Tutor by Philip Guo this element allows students to step forward and backward through the code and to see the values of variables To make it easy to add these features I wrote 3 new sphinx directives, so adding the interactive code features is not onerous. When we finish our last pass through the book, we'll make all the code available on bitbucket. We'll be using this book in our introductory course this fall at Luther, and adding more videos as we move through the semester. You can take a look at our work here: http://thinkcspy.appspot.com You'll need a gmail account to access the book. You'll also need a modern browser that supports html5, the interactive features rely heavily on Javascript and the canvas element. (Safari, Firefox 6, Chrome) The reason is that the interactive code allows you to save your changes and reload them again later. I've added an administrative back-end to the book so that we can have students do homework right in the browser. I'd love to hear your feedback and ideas for other interactive features. Brad -- Brad Miller Associate Professor, Computer Science Luther College -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kirby.urner at gmail.com Fri Aug 26 18:40:56 2011 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2011 09:40:56 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] OO and story problems Message-ID: I've been haunting the math-teach list, as usual, suggesting we take a page from AP computer science and build our math around an interlinked, themed, consistent set of story problems -- rather than making these "meaningless" (deliberately). The opponents in this debate bring up the specter of political manipulation, propaganda, tainted "pure math" with someone's good ideas about applications. My approach to math teaching, as readers here know (some of 'em), is to bake OO into the matrix pretty early, meaning the idea of "math objects" (vectors, polyhedrons, rational numbers) connects to our Pythonic notion of types. Here's some background reading for any wanting to sample the more detailed nuances of this thread (on-going, and for over a decade for sure). http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=2289577&tstart=0 (most posters long time veterans of this list, with carved out positions) I also take it a step further in that the story problems under consideration often have a strong "off your duff" component, in that your mathematical reasoning translates into physical expenditure of energy. Yes, sounds a lot like summer camp (the "self quantification movement" also syncs up). http://fastwonderblog.com/2011/07/30/crunching-the-numbers-open-source-community-metrics-at-oscon/ http://hashtags.foxepractice.com/healthcare-hashtag-analytics.php?hashtag=QuantifiedSelf http://www.4dsolutions.net/presentations/urnermindstorm.pdf Kirby From ccosse at gmail.com Fri Aug 26 20:42:46 2011 From: ccosse at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Charles_Coss=E9?=) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2011 12:42:46 -0600 Subject: [Edu-sig] OO and story problems In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Greetings, Kirby, just thought I'd throw-out-there that physics/astronomy can offer a context that is neither meaningless, nor open to political propaganda. Of course anything can be twisted, but at least it's relatively free from the specters that your opponents point out. Just a .02 cent thought .... Cheers, Charles Cosse On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 10:40 AM, kirby urner wrote: > I've been haunting the math-teach list, as usual, > suggesting we take a page from AP computer > science and build our math around an interlinked, > themed, consistent set of story problems -- rather > than making these "meaningless" (deliberately). > > The opponents in this debate bring up the specter > of political manipulation, propaganda, tainted "pure > math" with someone's good ideas about applications. > > My approach to math teaching, as readers here > know (some of 'em), is to bake OO into the matrix > pretty early, meaning the idea of "math objects" > (vectors, polyhedrons, rational numbers) connects > to our Pythonic notion of types. > > Here's some background reading for any wanting > to sample the more detailed nuances of this thread > (on-going, and for over a decade for sure). > > http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=2289577&tstart=0 > > (most posters long time veterans of this list, with > carved out positions) > > I also take it a step further in that the story problems > under consideration often have a strong "off your > duff" component, in that your mathematical reasoning > translates into physical expenditure of energy. > > Yes, sounds a lot like summer camp (the "self > quantification movement" also syncs up). > > > http://fastwonderblog.com/2011/07/30/crunching-the-numbers-open-source-community-metrics-at-oscon/ > > http://hashtags.foxepractice.com/healthcare-hashtag-analytics.php?hashtag=QuantifiedSelf > http://www.4dsolutions.net/presentations/urnermindstorm.pdf > > Kirby > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > -- AsymptopiaSoftware|Software at theLimit http://www.asymptopia.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kirby.urner at gmail.com Fri Aug 26 22:51:05 2011 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2011 13:51:05 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] OO and story problems In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/8/26 Charles Coss? : > Greetings, Kirby, > just thought I'd throw-out-there that physics/astronomy can offer a context > that is neither meaningless, nor open to political propaganda.?? Of course > anything can be twisted, but at least it's relatively free from the specters > that your opponents point out.? Just a .02 cent thought .... > Cheers, > Charles Cosse Yes sir. Quoting from that very thread (on math-teach): +++ My approach is like John Saxon's "spiraling" in that I'd rather connect a lot of story problems into a consistent framework, in part for mnemonic value.[1] One may work on more than one framework. The focus on food distribution below does not preclude using the solar system and its states of affairs to anchor other stories. Indeed, these scenarios partially overlap. The universe is multi-disciplinary. Geometry + Geography is an organizing heuristic (a first divide, as distinct from the older trivium / quadrivium). +++ http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=7532037&tstart=0 Thanks for jumping in. Kirby From carl at free.org.nz Sat Aug 27 04:07:08 2011 From: carl at free.org.nz (Carl Cerecke) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2011 14:07:08 +1200 Subject: [Edu-sig] Announcement: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist -- Interactive Edition In-Reply-To: <73A8A4AC1C03402C950C57B11B63E1BF@luther.edu> References: <73A8A4AC1C03402C950C57B11B63E1BF@luther.edu> Message-ID: Looks good. Nice work. How about exercises in a similar style to codingbat.com? That would be really valuable I think. Cheers, Carl. On 27 August 2011 02:23, Brad Miller wrote: > Hello, > > As part of my Sabbatical this past year I've been working on a new edition > of How to Think Like a Computer Scientist (by Elkner et. al) with my > colleague David Ranum. The idea behind this new edition is to make it > interactive, to encourage students to learn by doing and to explore. The > three main features we've added to previous editions are: > > - Videos: Each section has (or will have) a 5-10 minute screencast > explaining the written concepts verbally. > - Interactive Python interpreter. Using Skulpt -- an open source > javascript implementation of Python. > - Codelens code visualizer -- Based on the Online Python Tutor by > Philip Guo this element allows students to step forward and backward through > the code and to see the values of variables > > To make it easy to add these features I wrote 3 new sphinx directives, so > adding the interactive code features is not onerous. When we finish our > last pass through the book, we'll make all the code available on bitbucket. > > We'll be using this book in our introductory course this fall at Luther, > and adding more videos as we move through the semester. > > You can take a look at our work here: http://thinkcspy.appspot.com > > You'll need a gmail account to access the book. You'll also need a modern > browser that supports html5, the interactive features rely heavily on > Javascript and the canvas element. (Safari, Firefox 6, Chrome) The reason > is that the interactive code allows you to save your changes and reload them > again later. I've added an administrative back-end to the book so that we > can have students do homework right in the browser. I'd love to hear your > feedback and ideas for other interactive features. > > Brad > > -- > Brad Miller > Associate Professor, Computer Science > Luther College > > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kirby.urner at gmail.com Sat Aug 27 05:20:15 2011 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2011 20:20:15 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] Announcement: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist -- Interactive Edition In-Reply-To: References: <73A8A4AC1C03402C950C57B11B63E1BF@luther.edu> Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 7:07 PM, Carl Cerecke wrote: > Looks good. Nice work. > +1 Blogged a link: http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2011/08/how-to-think-like-computer-scientist.html Great contribution to computer lit. Kirby >> Hello, >> As part of my Sabbatical this past year I've been working on a new edition >> of How to Think Like a Computer Scientist (by Elkner et. al) with my >> colleague David Ranum. ?The idea behind this new edition is to make it >> interactive, to encourage students to learn by doing and to explore. ?The >> three main features we've added to previous editions are: From philhwagner at gmail.com Sat Aug 27 07:22:39 2011 From: philhwagner at gmail.com (Phil Wagner) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2011 22:22:39 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] Announcement: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist -- Interactive Edition Message-ID: Wow Brad, I'm so glad you are keeping up this project. It was the tutorial that got me started on Python, what I provide to all of my students, and my top recommendation on my blog. To have additional resources and support for teachers will be wonderful. Thank you so much. Looking through this, makes me feel like a new standard has been set for online textbooks! As far as feedback, is it possible that the video could be in widescreen? I'm not sure how it was recorded but it squishes everything in. The code boxes are brilliant, but I ran an infinite while loop in one and it froze up the page. Not a big deal in Chrome since each window runs independently of each other and I just closed it. I could see this happening 20 seconds into a course. Could be a feature not a bug and I am certainly not advocating for "locking it down" but thought I would mention it. Thanks again! Your resources are making a huge impact and opening doors for people who might not otherwise have discovered the joys of programming. -- www.brokenairplane.com (Ed-Tech Blog, Tutorials, and Resources) Connect with me on: Twitter , LinkedIn, and Google+ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lac at openend.se Sat Aug 27 07:49:15 2011 From: lac at openend.se (Laura Creighton) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2011 07:49:15 +0200 Subject: [Edu-sig] Announcement: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist -- Interactive Edition In-Reply-To: Message from Phil Wagner of "Fri, 26 Aug 2011 22:22:39 PDT." References: Message-ID: <201108270549.p7R5nFM9026063@theraft.openend.se> Wow Brad, this is really cool. Have you given any thought to making this work with Google Translate so that people whose native language is not English can just use the thing? Laura From nicolas.pettiaux at ael.be Sat Aug 27 08:50:07 2011 From: nicolas.pettiaux at ael.be (Nicolas Pettiaux) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2011 08:50:07 +0200 Subject: [Edu-sig] Announcement: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist -- Interactive Edition In-Reply-To: <201108270549.p7R5nFM9026063@theraft.openend.se> References: <201108270549.p7R5nFM9026063@theraft.openend.se> Message-ID: Thank you very much Brad. As a native French speaking python teacher, I had the same question as Laura. How to best adapt your lessons and efforts to other languages ? Quite evidently, the recorded lectures have to be subtitled (for example with universal subtitles - see http://www.universalsubtitles.org/) or recorded again in these other languages, but again for these, the transcription that would be in http://www.universalsubtitles.org/ would be very useful. Nicolas 2011/8/27 Laura Creighton : > Wow Brad, this is really cool. ?Have you given any thought to making > this work with Google Translate so that people whose native language > is not English can just use the thing? > > Laura > -- Nicolas Pettiaux, dr. sc? - lepacte.be - hetpact.be - ? l'?re Libre - ? promouvoir les libert?s num?riques en Belgique ?? - alerelibre.be From millbr02 at luther.edu Sat Aug 27 17:00:17 2011 From: millbr02 at luther.edu (Brad Miller) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2011 10:00:17 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] Announcement: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist -- Interactive Edition In-Reply-To: References: <201108270549.p7R5nFM9026063@theraft.openend.se> Message-ID: Thanks for the encouraging words everyone! I will look into the Google Translate option, its something I haven't investigated before. David and I have this idea for the videos that it would be really cool to get a whole collection of them hosted as part of this book. Different languages would be great, and of course it might be very interesting for the students as different people are going to explain the concepts in different ways. The way I explain something may not click with a particular student but the way of you you explains it might. Phil: I'm looking into some kind of a timer for the Skulpt environment that may solve the infinite loop problem. For now we'll just rely on closing the tab or refreshing the page. Carl: Exercises akin to codingbat.com are already on my todo list. This is definitely just a first iteration, I think there are lots of interesting things yet to come. Brad -- Brad Miller Associate Professor, Computer Science Luther College On Saturday, August 27, 2011 at 1:50 AM, Nicolas Pettiaux wrote: > Thank you very much Brad. > > As a native French speaking python teacher, I had the same question as > Laura. How to best adapt your lessons and efforts to other languages ? > Quite evidently, the recorded lectures have to be subtitled (for > example with universal subtitles - see > http://www.universalsubtitles.org/) or recorded again in these other > languages, but again for these, the transcription that would be in > http://www.universalsubtitles.org/ would be very useful. > > Nicolas > > 2011/8/27 Laura Creighton : > > Wow Brad, this is really cool. Have you given any thought to making > > this work with Google Translate so that people whose native language > > is not English can just use the thing? > > > > Laura > > > -- > Nicolas Pettiaux, dr. sc - lepacte.be (http://lepacte.be) - hetpact.be (http://hetpact.be) - > ? l'?re Libre - ? promouvoir les libert?s num?riques en Belgique ? - > alerelibre.be (http://alerelibre.be) > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org (mailto:Edu-sig at python.org) > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sarina at MIT.EDU Sat Aug 27 17:31:54 2011 From: sarina at MIT.EDU (Sarina Canelake) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2011 11:31:54 -0400 Subject: [Edu-sig] Announcement: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist -- Interactive Edition In-Reply-To: References: <73A8A4AC1C03402C950C57B11B63E1BF@luther.edu> Message-ID: Hi Carl, I am a master's student, and for my project I am building an interactive Python tutor system, hopefully with 150-250 problems, as well as embedded video. Some of my inspirations have been the Khan Academy and codingbat. I'm beta testing the tutor in a course I teach over MIT's IAP period (January term) and I hope to be releasing it as a free product through MIT's Open CourseWare by next summer. Currently the problems are for Python 2.7.x, as that's what we use in the EECS department here. If it seems like more people are transitioning to Python 3, I can potentially release a second version of the tutor that uses a Python 3 interpreter. Regards, Sarina On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 10:07 PM, Carl Cerecke wrote: > Looks good. Nice work. > > How about exercises in a similar style to codingbat.com? That would be > really valuable I think. > > Cheers, > Carl. > > On 27 August 2011 02:23, Brad Miller wrote: > >> Hello, >> >> As part of my Sabbatical this past year I've been working on a new edition >> of How to Think Like a Computer Scientist (by Elkner et. al) with my >> colleague David Ranum. The idea behind this new edition is to make it >> interactive, to encourage students to learn by doing and to explore. The >> three main features we've added to previous editions are: >> >> - Videos: Each section has (or will have) a 5-10 minute screencast >> explaining the written concepts verbally. >> - Interactive Python interpreter. Using Skulpt -- an open source >> javascript implementation of Python. >> - Codelens code visualizer -- Based on the Online Python Tutor by >> Philip Guo this element allows students to step forward and backward through >> the code and to see the values of variables >> >> To make it easy to add these features I wrote 3 new sphinx directives, so >> adding the interactive code features is not onerous. When we finish our >> last pass through the book, we'll make all the code available on bitbucket. >> >> We'll be using this book in our introductory course this fall at Luther, >> and adding more videos as we move through the semester. >> >> You can take a look at our work here: http://thinkcspy.appspot.com >> >> You'll need a gmail account to access the book. You'll also need a modern >> browser that supports html5, the interactive features rely heavily on >> Javascript and the canvas element. (Safari, Firefox 6, Chrome) The reason >> is that the interactive code allows you to save your changes and reload them >> again later. I've added an administrative back-end to the book so that we >> can have students do homework right in the browser. I'd love to hear your >> feedback and ideas for other interactive features. >> >> Brad >> >> -- >> Brad Miller >> Associate Professor, Computer Science >> Luther College >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Edu-sig mailing list >> Edu-sig at python.org >> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > > -- Sarina Canelake MIT EECS -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kurner at oreillyschool.com Sun Aug 28 07:23:30 2011 From: kurner at oreillyschool.com (Kirby Urner) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2011 22:23:30 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] Announcement: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist -- Interactive Edition In-Reply-To: References: <73A8A4AC1C03402C950C57B11B63E1BF@luther.edu> Message-ID: On Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 8:31 AM, Sarina Canelake wrote: > Hi Carl, > > I am a master's student, and for my project I am building an interactive > Python tutor system, hopefully with 150-250 problems, as well as embedded > video. Some of my inspirations have been the Khan Academy and codingbat. > > Heads up re talk at OSCON this year by Scott Gray (full disclosure: I work for the guy) ranting against several categories of interactive courseware, but namely "watch a video then play the match game with canned quiz show type questions". There's no "making with tools", no "apprenticeship". Anyway, just saying there's a spectrum. This isn't about passing judgment on any particular system, either. Our Python Track has lots of "no brainer" quiz questions for student reinforcement. It's not like this doesn't feel like a school (though more asynchronous and with less emphasis on externally imposed deadlines). The projects tend to be Python modules, or pairs, with one unit testing the other. Teachers provide feedback. Any time you see complete automation on the back end, I say you have a competitive edge if you add a human touch. Our testing instruments are all hand graded, and projects come with real advisers, albeit not in real time (it's an asynchronous UI). Kirby -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mokurai at earthtreasury.org Sun Aug 28 07:38:24 2011 From: mokurai at earthtreasury.org (mokurai at earthtreasury.org) Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2011 01:38:24 -0400 Subject: [Edu-sig] OO and story problems In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <777158afae9c2af135b6e393c6a3210b.squirrel@emailmg.ipage.com> On Fri, August 26, 2011 2:42 pm, Charles Coss? wrote: > Greetings, Kirby, > just thought I'd throw-out-there that physics/astronomy can offer a > context > that is neither meaningless, nor open to political propaganda. It turns out that many Young-Earth Creationists deny the existence of all of geology (including all methods of dating rocks using radioactive isotopes) and most of astronomy. We cannot, in their view, see light from objects more than 10,000 light-years away, which is most of this galaxy and all of any others, and nothing that we can see can be older than that. But they generally won't fight you on those issues the way they will on all of us being descended from (presumably Black) Africans, and they won't insist on the stars being part of the solid firmament over the Earth where the rains came through in Noah's Flood. ^_^ > Of course > anything can be twisted, but at least it's relatively free from the > specters > that your opponents point out. What?!? You don't know about NASA faking the moon landings? > Just a .02 cent thought .... I have one word for any of you who want meaningful story problems: sports The leading world sports, including baseball, soccer, cricket, rugby, tennis, and golf, have well over a century each of recorded statistics of amateur and professional leagues. One can do all kinds of probability and statistics, of course; the combinatorics of tournaments; the paradoxical aspects of rating systems; and a wide range of physics problems. There is no need for synthetic interest when you have the real thing. Students who don't care for sports can do chess (human or AI) or whatever else of comparable depth interests them. Or politics, thus leading to the thorniest question of civics: What should we do when government does not act in a satisfactory manner? in parallel with the question What should we do when the rules or laws of a game or of a tournament are clearly unsatisfactory? (Officiating in World Cup Soccer has come under particular criticism in recent years, as has the practice of deliberately making a red card (expulsion) foul in the last minute of a game to prevent a goal by the other side.) I recommend the book Money Ball for showing how questions of genuine interest in sports have had real financial consequences in US baseball. For example, fans love batting averages, but on-base percentage is a much better predictor of winning games. > Cheers, > Charles Cosse > > On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 10:40 AM, kirby urner > wrote: > >> I've been haunting the math-teach list, as usual, >> suggesting we take a page from AP computer >> science and build our math around an interlinked, >> themed, consistent set of story problems -- rather >> than making these "meaningless" (deliberately). >> >> The opponents in this debate bring up the specter >> of political manipulation, propaganda, tainted "pure >> math" with someone's good ideas about applications. >> >> My approach to math teaching, as readers here >> know (some of 'em), is to bake OO into the matrix >> pretty early, meaning the idea of "math objects" >> (vectors, polyhedrons, rational numbers) connects >> to our Pythonic notion of types. >> >> Here's some background reading for any wanting >> to sample the more detailed nuances of this thread >> (on-going, and for over a decade for sure). >> >> http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=2289577&tstart=0 >> >> (most posters long time veterans of this list, with >> carved out positions) >> >> I also take it a step further in that the story problems >> under consideration often have a strong "off your >> duff" component, in that your mathematical reasoning >> translates into physical expenditure of energy. >> >> Yes, sounds a lot like summer camp (the "self >> quantification movement" also syncs up). >> >> >> http://fastwonderblog.com/2011/07/30/crunching-the-numbers-open-source-community-metrics-at-oscon/ >> >> http://hashtags.foxepractice.com/healthcare-hashtag-analytics.php?hashtag=QuantifiedSelf >> http://www.4dsolutions.net/presentations/urnermindstorm.pdf >> >> Kirby >> _______________________________________________ >> Edu-sig mailing list >> Edu-sig at python.org >> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig >> > > > > -- > AsymptopiaSoftware|Software at theLimit > http://www.asymptopia.org > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > -- Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks From sarina at MIT.EDU Sun Aug 28 08:20:55 2011 From: sarina at MIT.EDU (Sarina Canelake) Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2011 02:20:55 -0400 Subject: [Edu-sig] Announcement: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist -- Interactive Edition In-Reply-To: References: <73A8A4AC1C03402C950C57B11B63E1BF@luther.edu> Message-ID: Hi Kirby, Thanks for the feedback. I've enjoyed reading your posts on the list, and the specific concerns you address are well worth considering. If you don't mind, I'd like to give some background on my project. The tutor system is being developed for use in conjunction with - not as a substitute for - a few MIT courses. I am a TA for 6.00 (ref: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-00-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-fall-2008/) which is Python geared for non-EECS majors; I'm testing the system with 6.189, a course I've developed for January term (ref: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-189-a-gentle-introduction-to-programming-using-python-january-iap-2011/). 6.01, "Introduction to EECS", is already utilizing a beta version of the tutor. I think the tutor will work best in conjunction with a class, primarily for students who feel left behind by the instruction. I became a CS major late in the game - my junior year of college - and I struggled with the coursework, as I felt there weren't enough practice problems at the introductory level. The given homework problems often tested advanced understanding of the material, while I struggled to understand the basics. Like I said, this is being developed for internal MIT use, but I believe that if I spend effort developing this that it should be released openly. Yes, the tutor we have developed is entirely automated. I have spent the summer primarily working on the problems, but as the fall progresses and we work towards developing a partnership with OCW, I hope it will be possible to make the system adaptable for educator use. Perhaps we will be able to enable administrative accounts, or allow educators to mirror the system fully so they can add problems (including non-auto graded ones, which would enable input of open-ended essay or coding questions) as they please, as well as view their students' solutions. I don't know the technical limitations of OCW as of yet, so I can't say what we'll do. At the very least, I hope to provide practice problems to my students who feel left behind, who often email me desperately asking me for places they can go for simple problems to practice their Python before exams. One thing I hope to do with videos is to provide ones that, after a solution is submitted for a problem, walks through a few different ways of approaching it. I notice that my students often lack a good way of approaching a problem, but when we work through it a second time, they have an easier time grasping what they *ought *to have looked for and anticipated. I notice students who are willing to spend the time to reconsider their work on an earlier problem often become better, more analytical programmers. Finally, I fully recognize that everyone learns differently. I have minor dyslexia and thus have a tough time self-teaching from books. If the system I develop helps even a handful of kids, I'll be pretty happy to have made a difference. Thanks again, Sarina On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 1:23 AM, Kirby Urner wrote: > On Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 8:31 AM, Sarina Canelake wrote: > >> Hi Carl, >> >> I am a master's student, and for my project I am building an interactive >> Python tutor system, hopefully with 150-250 problems, as well as embedded >> video. Some of my inspirations have been the Khan Academy and codingbat. >> >> > Heads up re talk at OSCON this year by Scott Gray (full disclosure: I work > for the guy) ranting against several categories of interactive courseware, > but namely "watch a video then play the match game with canned quiz show > type questions". There's no "making with tools", no "apprenticeship". > Anyway, just saying there's a spectrum. > > This isn't about passing judgment on any particular system, either. Our > Python Track has lots of "no brainer" quiz questions for student > reinforcement. It's not like this doesn't feel like a school (though more > asynchronous and with less emphasis on externally imposed deadlines). The > projects tend to be Python modules, or pairs, with one unit testing the > other. Teachers provide feedback. > > Any time you see complete automation on the back end, I say you have a > competitive edge if you add a human touch. Our testing instruments are all > hand graded, and projects come with real advisers, albeit not in real time > (it's an asynchronous UI). > > Kirby > > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > > -- Sarina Canelake MIT EECS -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kirby.urner at gmail.com Sun Aug 28 09:09:00 2011 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2011 00:09:00 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] OO and story problems In-Reply-To: <777158afae9c2af135b6e393c6a3210b.squirrel@emailmg.ipage.com> References: <777158afae9c2af135b6e393c6a3210b.squirrel@emailmg.ipage.com> Message-ID: 2011/8/27 : > It turns out that many Young-Earth Creationists deny the existence of all > of geology (including all methods of dating rocks using radioactive > isotopes) and most of astronomy. We cannot, in their view, see light from > objects more than 10,000 light-years away, which is most of this galaxy > and all of any others, and nothing that we can see can be older than that. > But they generally won't fight you on those issues the way they will on > all of us being descended from (presumably Black) Africans, and they won't > insist on the stars being part of the solid firmament over the Earth where > the rains came through in Noah's Flood. ^_^ Cosmologies come under geography in my Geometry + Geography heuristic. I encourage sharing many cosmologies and use a spectrum of literal versus symbolic (to be simplistic about it). Karen Armstrong wrote pretty well on this didn't she ('Battle for God' etc.) Some creation myths, such as Bucky's in 'Tetrascroll', aren't designed to be taken literally ("a cosmic fairy tale" is the subtitle). I liked 'Sita Sings the Blues', an adaptation of the Ramayana. http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2011/08/sita-sings-blues-movie-review.html I'm hoping Gagus will like my idea of using Indonesian shadow puppets to teach Python. We have enough lighting for puppets after dark. Welcome to XO country right? Rugged and outdoorsy. Richard Stallman in Sri Lanka: I have a poster about that in my blog. http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2011/04/richard-stallman-at-psu.html >> Of course >> anything can be twisted, but at least it's relatively free from the >> specters >> that your opponents point out. > > What?!? You don't know about NASA faking the moon landings? > Lets cut people some slack though: they are often the target of misinformation campaigns. Salvos go out daily from these "news sources" as you know. NASA's are pretty good (I subscribe to a news feed). Some others are pretty terrible. In general the defenses seem kinda weak around here, even against only mediocre spin doctors. I've got a pretty entertaining rant about that from 2005: http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2005/12/big-foot-strikes.html >> Just a .02 cent thought .... > > I have one word for any of you who want meaningful story problems: sports > Yes, sports is a fine entry point, I agree, especially when you zoom in on the human body and just focus on athletics in the sense of scripted / practiced motion, picking up dance, theater and musical performance. In the field I describe, we've had a triathlete join us, using our story problem output as a chief source of nutrition. Solving our story problems requires exertion. Not everyone is equally able to do all the problems, but that's not a big worry. We talk about our various gifts and leadings and divvy the labor. Self organization is key, without too much overhead. One of my fears is that as we grow bigger and more successful, our bureaucratic layer will grow. > The leading world sports, including baseball, soccer, cricket, rugby, > tennis, and golf, have well over a century each of recorded statistics of > amateur and professional leagues. One can do all kinds of probability and > statistics, of course; the combinatorics of tournaments; the paradoxical > aspects of rating systems; and a wide range of physics problems. There is > no need for synthetic interest when you have the real thing. Students who > don't care for sports can do chess (human or AI) or whatever else of > comparable depth interests them. Or politics, thus leading to the > thorniest question of civics: What should we do when government does not > act in a satisfactory manner? in parallel with the question What should we > do when the rules or laws of a game or of a tournament are clearly > unsatisfactory? (Officiating in World Cup Soccer has come under particular > criticism in recent years, as has the practice of deliberately making a > red card (expulsion) foul in the last minute of a game to prevent a goal > by the other side.) > Questions of ethics matter yes. And what are young bodies doing with themselves to keep in shape? We usually separate that question from mathematics, but as I've been saying, the self quantification movement is suggesting a lifestyle where we take bold interest in our many personal statistics. This naturally feeds into the baseball fascination (for example), where statistics have been king for a long time. I'd not want to encourage couch potato approaches to sports. Archery. Now there's a good one. Also skating of various kinds, and skiing (including on water). First Person Physics fits in here too. As a certified scuba diver, I can tell you we got quite a bit of physics and chemistry in the lectures. Gas laws, Boyle's Law, no Gibbs Phase Rule that I recall but it would have fit. > I recommend the book Money Ball for showing how questions of genuine > interest in sports have had real financial consequences in US baseball. > For example, fans love batting averages, but on-base percentage is a much > better predictor of winning games. > I write about geocaching quite a bit... (have done some, more planned). Facility with statistics bolsters the school's ability to marshal data about its local environment. Ideally, a school is a repository of local lore and history (which the students study). In practice, the local is often eclipsed by some "standard" (blech). Doesn't have to be either / or. I don't want to give the impression it's all about statistics though. My thread with the math teachers goes into geometry quite a bit, usually spatial, not just plane. Then there's a passage on Vegetable Group Soup, which turns out to be group theory (Galois Fields, Cayley Tables and like that). There's Python for this part, but also Flash, JavaScript, lots of other stuff. Kirby From kirby.urner at gmail.com Mon Aug 29 03:59:41 2011 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2011 18:59:41 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] Yet another online Python... Message-ID: Just alerted to this one by the chairman: http://pythonfiddle.com/ Still checking it out. Kirby From vceder at gmail.com Mon Aug 29 04:23:10 2011 From: vceder at gmail.com (Vern Ceder) Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2011 21:23:10 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] Yet another online Python... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Kirby, Have you also heard of http://www.learnpython.org/ ? (I might have missed you mentioning it, been busy). It's another entry into the fray that's been underway for the past few months. Cheers, Vern On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 8:59 PM, kirby urner wrote: > Just alerted to this one by the chairman: > > http://pythonfiddle.com/ > > Still checking it out. > > Kirby > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > -- Vern Ceder vceder at gmail.com, vceder at dogsinmotion.com The Quick Python Book, 2nd Ed - http://bit.ly/bRsWDW -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kirby.urner at gmail.com Mon Aug 29 17:00:14 2011 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2011 08:00:14 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] Announcement: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist -- Interactive Edition In-Reply-To: References: <73A8A4AC1C03402C950C57B11B63E1BF@luther.edu> Message-ID: On Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 11:20 PM, Sarina Canelake wrote: > Hi Kirby, > Thanks for the feedback. I've enjoyed reading your posts on the list, and > the specific concerns you address are well worth considering. If you don't > mind, I'd like to give some background on my project. I'm glad you found your way to this list Sarina as it's definitely an apropos place to archive details about your project, the thinking behind it and so forth. Python got a big boost when MIT started to become more Python-centric in its courseware, some of which is free and open source. Speaking for myself (not any of my co-workers) I have no objections to automated grading / scoring as an option. The Python interpreter is itself automatic and a great source of impersonal (non-judgmental) feedback. Some students respond better in anonymous automatic situations as they do not feel judged by another human who might know them (an invasion of privacy). The thing Scott wants to combat is too much passivity in the culture. It's a generic problem with a lot of schooling, when it becomes an extension of spectator sports, with the learner the passive spectator. No one technology or learning experience can be singled out. Even television may inspire lots of activity -- especially if you make it, don't just watch it. That sense of "hard fun" where you struggle with a program, and don't just have to fill in the blanks or do multiple choice, has to be developed somewhere. Automated feedback services have their role. The mathematics curriculum I write about and implement / field test where feasible (quite a few opportunities) has people actually biking around town hauling vegetables in trailers. Down the road, our work will involve the placement of sensors, environmental monitors, here there and everywhere, again using bikes sometimes (sometimes going on foot, sometimes kayaks or canoes). MIT has been an inspiration for some of this thinking. This web site for example: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/landman-report.html Also the movie 'Gasland'. Kirby From pivanov314 at gmail.com Tue Aug 30 00:16:31 2011 From: pivanov314 at gmail.com (Paul Ivanov) Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2011 15:16:31 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] Yet another online Python... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110829221631.GB24711@ykcyc> Vern Ceder, on 2011-08-28 21:23, wrote: > Have you also heard of http://www.learnpython.org/ ? (I might have missed > you mentioning it, been busy). It's another entry into the fray that's been > underway for the past few months. > On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 8:59 PM, kirby urner wrote: > > Just alerted to this one by the chairman: > > > > http://pythonfiddle.com/ > > > > Still checking it out. Perhaps this has been previously mentioned, but I've also tried and enjoyed http://www.pythonanywhere.com/ best, -- Paul Ivanov 314 address only used for lists, off-list direct email at: http://pirsquared.org | GPG/PGP key id: 0x0F3E28F7 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: Digital signature URL: From john.graves at aut.ac.nz Tue Aug 30 03:15:43 2011 From: john.graves at aut.ac.nz (John Graves) Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2011 13:15:43 +1200 Subject: [Edu-sig] Wiki-to-Speech at Kiwi PyCon Message-ID: <4E5CE27F020000E900022724@smtpdom.aut.ac.nz> Just returned from a weekend at Kiwi PyCon http://nz.pycon.org/2011/jan/23/kiwi-pycon-2011-wellington-27-28-august-te-whaea/ where we had some great talks. This was my lightning talk about Wiki-to-Speech (16 slides, includes computer generated voice overs): http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12838403/20110822/pycon2011.htm I'm working now to make as many other talks as possible available as Wiki-to-Speech presentations. For example, here is a Wiki-to-Speech version of Saturday's keynote by Jeff Rush - The magic of metaprogramming http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12838403/20110827/metaprogramming.htm How the Wiki-to-Speech version was made: ---------------------------------------- The notes for Jeff's talk were captured on an Etherpad: http://ietherpad.com/kiwipycon2011-jeff-rush as were notes from half (one track) of the rest of the conference http://ietherpad.com/kiwipycon2011 Jeff provided his slides as a directory of S5 files. Here is the S5 tool: http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/ I took screen shots of those slides and pasted them into an Open Office Impress presentation http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12838403/20110827/metaprogramming.odp putting the text from my Etherpad notes in the speaker notes for each slide. The slide images and .odp file were then processed by the Wiki-to-Speech from ODP utility (odp2wts.py) available from http://wikitospeech.org (compiled for Mac and Windows) http://openallureds.org (source) which generated the slide voice overs using text-to-speech and wrapped the slide images and resulting .mp3 and .ogg files in HTML with a bit of navigation. One great suggestion from Francois Marier http://www.slideshare.net/fmarier was to take the generated output one step further, using the slide images and computer generated text-to-speech to produce a video by using ffmpeg. This is now an enhancement request on the open source Wiki-to-Speech project http://code.google.com/p/open-allure-ds/issues/detail?id=12 if anyone is interested in helping out. How would you like to be able to create slides, add what you want said to the speaker notes and have the presentation output as a video with computer generated voice overs? John Graves PhD Student Auckland University of Technology New Zealand john.graves at aut.ac.nz http://bit.ly/JohnGravesLinkedIn (+64) 021 213 8367 (mobile) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nicolas.pettiaux at ael.be Tue Aug 30 07:04:05 2011 From: nicolas.pettiaux at ael.be (Nicolas Pettiaux) Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2011 07:04:05 +0200 Subject: [Edu-sig] Yet another online Python... In-Reply-To: <20110829221631.GB24711@ykcyc> References: <20110829221631.GB24711@ykcyc> Message-ID: Dear And there is also the new version of ipython that still need ironing that has just been presented at http://euroscipy.org in Paris where there are very advanced notebooks. I'll let his main developper present the project if he wants to (I know that Fernando will not be available in the next week or so) 2011/8/30 Paul Ivanov : > Vern Ceder, on 2011-08-28 21:23, ?wrote: >> Have you also heard of http://www.learnpython.org/ ? (I might have missed >> you mentioning it, been busy). It's another entry into the fray that's been >> underway for the past few months. > >> On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 8:59 PM, kirby urner wrote: >> > Just alerted to this one by the chairman: >> > >> > http://pythonfiddle.com/ >> > >> > Still checking it out. > > Perhaps this has been previously mentioned, but I've also tried > and enjoyed http://www.pythonanywhere.com/ > > best, > -- > Paul Ivanov -- Nicolas Pettiaux, dr. sc? - lepacte.be - hetpact.be - gsm : 0496 24 55 01 ? l'?re Libre - ? promouvoir les libert?s num?riques en Belgique ?? - alerelibre.be From PMEDINA at ccisd.net Tue Aug 30 13:41:41 2011 From: PMEDINA at ccisd.net (Medina, Pat) Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:41:41 +0000 Subject: [Edu-sig] PyTexas Message-ID: <30BBE65B7E95794F9F4A82F64395F82C43D958BE@TLC-MBX02.ad.ccisd.net> For those in Texas who may be interested, PyTexas 2011, the fourth annual free Python programming conference for Texas and the surrounding region, will take place Saturday September 10 and Sunday September 11, 2011 at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. Please refer to www.pytexas.org/2011 for more information. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: