[Edu-sig] PyCon Education Summit Update

[kirby urner]

On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 8:06 AM, Vern Ceder <vceder at gmail.com> wrote:

<< snip >>

> Also, I've developed a basic statement of the topics we'll be covering:
>
> "As I see it there are the three core issues that most impact Python
> education today: engagement, curriculum and teaching. So I'm proposing that
> we frame the topics for the summit accordingly.
>
> Engagement -  By "engagement" I mean getting people involved - attracting
> learners and letting them know why they should be eager to learn Python,
> recruiting teachers, sponsors and supporters with the skills needed to
> facilitate that learning, and then keeping everyone involved in the
> community. You could also call this "outreach" or even "marketing". Whatever
> you call it, we need to attract people who want to learn Python and the
> people and the people to help satisfy that need.
>

Wow Vern, you've come a long way with this, good to see it's evolving
into an event with a definite shape, size still unknown.

I hope we might have a similar summit at OSCON with all interactive
languages (those with an REPL) invited (if already in the OSCON subset
which I'm well aware is Open Source only e.g. no Mathematica).

The way I articulate my own position these days is that to learn
mathematics the way it's needed in STEM, you need at least one
computer language.**

That computer language may well be Python but I'm in no way expecting
or wanting some convergence to a single choice, as I think diversity
is the only healthy response to complexity and "one language fits all"
is of course a distopian ideology that must be countered wherever it
surfaces.

That being said, Python seems to be in high demand at my school and
that's without much direct advertising or recruitment.  Our logo (a
Red Leaf) was nowhere at OSCON (somewhat ironically).

Kirby