[IPython-dev] ipythonblocks & PyCon Talk

[Erik Bray]

On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 9:54 PM, Matt <jiffyclub at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> One of the (many) reasons I love the IPython Notebook is its potential for education. One way it can be leveraged is via the rich outputs possible, which allowed me to write the ipythonblocks package. ipythonblocks provides an object that displays itself as a colored HTML table that students can manipulate. See my blog post here: http://j.mp/ZNEBM5.
>
> The Notebook has other education friendly properties, especially its ability to stand alone as a self-contained environment. No switching between editors, shells, and docs… At PyCon in March I'm going to be giving a talk on teaching with the Notebook (http://j.mp/TNSzda). I'll probably spend a couple minutes of the talk relaying thoughts and anecdotes from other Software Carpentry instructors and I'd like to invite anyone here who uses the Notebook as a teaching tool to send me any particularly compelling stories that illustrate the Notebook's value in the classroom.

This reminds me--if you haven't already you might want to consider
demonstrating ipython_nose in your PyCon talk.  Your mention of never
having to leave ipython notebook reminded me of it.  It should "just
work" if you `pip install
git+https://github.com/taavi/ipython_nose.git` and then in IPython do
%load_ext ipython_nose.  Then you can write nose tests right in
IPython and run them with %nose.  It works in the CLI, but is
especially slick in the notebook.