[IPython-dev] Developing a MOOC with IPython notebooks

[Matthias Bussonnier]

Hi Anton, 

Le 22 déc. 2014 à 15:32, Anton Akhmerov <anton.akhmerov at gmail.com> a écrit :

> Hi everyone,
> 
> I am a part of the team developing an EdX online course on topology in
> condensed matter (see http://tiny.cc/topocm), and I'd like to ask
> several IPython notebook questions.
> 
> We decided to develop the course predominantly using IPython/Jupyter
> notebooks for several reasons. First and foremost, the notebooks are
> really awesome; thanks to the team and community for developing this
> great tool.

Thanks !

> On a smaller scale, the notebooks allow to share content with people
> not willing to register on EdX, to tightly integrate the programming
> elements of the course with the rest of the content, and finally to
> decouple the course development from the EdX studio.
> We intend to develop all of the course as a bunch of IPython notebooks
> and develop a custom tool that uses nbconvert to generate EdX folder +
> xml + content course structure.
> The reason why that last part is an advantage is because there is no
> notion of version control in the studio, and it's a relatively
> rudimentary tool with a heavy GUI.
> In a longer term perspective we could also run a jupyterhub instance
> to relieve the course users from the need to setup their own
> programming environment (this doesn't seem to be an option right now
> due to the time constraints).

Great all this is good news, thanks for sharing ! 

> * Is the rough release date for v3.0 known? There are several
> important modifications to the notebook format that make this change
> relevant for us. I also hear that the release is planned soon, so do
> you aim for a release some time in January?

We are hopping for January, Yes. 

> * What are the best practices for keeping notebooks in git? We've
> found nbdiff, but it seems limited: for example it doesn't do anything
> to diff markdown cells. Is there a better way?

There is nbflatten from Thomas Kluyver:
https://gist.github.com/takluyver/bc8f3275c7d34abb68bf

though it is not perfect. We don't have good solution for now.

> * What are the current options for creating rich graphic content that
> doesn't rely on having a live kernel? I know of mpld3, ipywidgets, and
> bokeh. For us ipywidgets seem like the best solution so far, but it's
> a pet project of Jake Vanderplas that didn't see any action in around
> half a year. So I wonder if there is anything more alive in that
> respect, that'd be great. Perhaps in v3?

We have a draft of static widgets that record the cross product of all the state your 
widget can take and could reply it on a static version, still this is pretty experimental
and require ill the computation to be done in advance by the kernel and stored, 
which is limited.

Maybe other will have more input. 


> * In general, do you have any further advice?

Did you had a look at jupyter/nbgrader in the context of classes/courses it might be useful. 
Keep  sending us feedback and use cases that will help us a lot in the future development. 

I'm sure other will have more things to say, sorry not to have been of much help, 
-- 
Matthias


> 
> Thanks,
> Anton Akhmerov
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