[Edu-sig] New Python MOOC on Coursera with 100% CC-BY Materials and Book

[Charles Severance]

Hi all,

I just wanted to let you know about a new Free University of Michigan Python course I am teaching on Coursera called "Programming for Everybody".

https://www.coursera.org/course/pythonlearn

The idea of the course is not to be a first Computer Science course - but instead to be a "programming literacy" / "computational thinking" aimed at somewhere between middle of high school and freshman in college or adult learners looking for an "on ramp" for learning about technology.

The course is based on 100% CC-BY materials available from:

http://open.umich.edu/education/si/coursera-programming-everybody/winter2014

We not only provide the slides and sample code uncer CC, but also ready-to-load course exports from Blackboard and Moodle.   There is also an open source Skulpt-based auto-grader that is part of the course that I host and make available at no charge as long as I don't run out of resources my University of Michigan-provided servers.

The book is a heavily adapted variant of Allen Downey and Jeff Elkner's Think Python book.   It is about 80% all new and published as "Python for Informatics".  All the electronic copies (including an iBooks version with embedded video tutorials) are free and the printed textbook is $8.99 on Amazon.

http://www.pythonlearn.com/book.php

I am hoping to use the high-profile of Coursera to attract a wide range of students and teachers from around the world to get a basic introduction to programming in Python in a way that they can perhaps take their skills and materials back and teach them locally.   I am hoping to create a learning community that can hep increase the number of high school and community college teachers who can competently teach a Python class.

I would hope that you might share this with various high school and college teachers that you think might be interested in participating in the course.

I owe thanks to lots of folks in the Python Edu community who did early work that I have built upon like Jeff, Allen, and Brad Miller (Skulpt).  

Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Charles Severance
University of Michigan 
School of Information
www.dr-chuck.com

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