[Microbit-Python] Notes from "developers meet teachers" session

[David Whale]

Some of this is browser specific, if you are using the in-browser
experience, and Touch Develop and Blocks an Code Kingdoms suffer the same
fate.

Safari on Mac does not have a way (apparently) of naming the saved file,
from a file downloaded via a javascript application - it always calls it
'Unknown'. The hex and the SAVE'd (serialised code) file both get called
Unknown, which is doubly confusing.

At an event a couple of weeks ago where 1000 kids attended, we tried the
Chrome method of defaulting the save location to the micro:bit, but it was
confusing for two reasons

1) There was no download progress inside Chrome, and if you didn't think to
look at the flashing LED on the *back* of the micro:bit, you had no way to
know the download was in progress or indeed had finished. This caused the
children to press the download again, and two concurrent downloads
happened, which confuses the micro:bit and makes matters worse.

2) If you save directly to the micro:bit drive, you don't now have a local
copy of your program (e.g. to store on a USB memory stick), and to save it,
you then have to download it again to a different location (by which time
you might have accidentally edited the program and got something different
saved to what was working). We saw this a number of times when children
wanted to take a copy of their program onto a USB memory stick. The default
download location was then a pain, because you had to find a way to change
it to save it on the USB memory stick.

In the end, we re-configured the computers to just save in the 'default
downloads folder'.

Also note, the instructions on the screen of the other editors say 'drag
the downloaded .hex file onto your micro:bit' - so this further confused
users.

You might also like to know that the TD and blocks have an 'import code'
feature, so that if you get your .hex and your saved code files mixed up,
you can still import from the .hex file - presumably they serialise the AST
inside the .hex file at the cost of a small amount of flash space on the
real micro:bit, so that the code is always retrievable. Does the python
support this (seems like a good idea given that the script is already
embedded inside the .hex file anyway).

David.


___________________________________________________________
David Whale, B.Sc (Hons), MIET
*Software Engineer and IET Schools Liaison Officer, Essex*

email:  dwhale at theiet.org
twitter: @whaleygeek
blog:  blog.whaleygeek.co.uk

Co-author of global bestselling book "Adventures in Minecraft"
<http://amzn.to/ZGfxZG> - lets get kids coding!
Now in English, Spanish, Chinese and Russian.


On 27 December 2015 at 14:13, Harry Percival <harry.percival at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi gang,
>
> Y'all may know Nick ran a session with Computing At School to introduce
> teachers to Python developers.  Here are the notes I took while working
> with the teacher I met:
>
>
> ## possible confusion from no. of arguments to method that looks like a
> function
>
> >>> microbit.display.set_pixel(2,3)
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
> TypeError: function takes 4 positional arguments but 3 were given
>
> --> error msg confusing, 2 or 3 or 4 arguments?
>
>
> ## some things that are different from normal Python
>
> - random function is not like python one!  grr
>
> - perhaps more confusingly, sleep uses different units from time.sleep.
> arg!
>
> (neither of these are dealbreakers, just maybe something to warn ppl
> about?)
>
>
>
> ## workflow of save + flashing, the editor
>
> download / save / remember to rename is annoying.  but we found a shortcut
> - you can save directly to the flash drive.
>
> re: editor, we found ourselves wanting a shortcut key for save/download
>
> re editor, we wanted to save the file out of the editor.  maybe having a
> button for that is too much, but we did struggle to copy + paste into
> notepad cos it had linux line endings.
>
> ## other misc
>
> x,y pixels starting at top left is not like standard x,y in maths... but,
> ok.
>
> re microrepl readme:  teacher asks, what is a virtualenv?
>
>
> Sorry these are in rough form, hope they might spark some ideas or just
> provide some useful background knowledge for ppl.
>
> Hope you're all having a great christmas!
>
> HP
>
>
> --
> ------------------------------
> Harry J.W. Percival
> ------------------------------
> Twitter: @hjwp
> Mobile:  +44 (0) 78877 02511
> Skype:         harry.percival
>
> _______________________________________________
> Microbit mailing list
> Microbit at python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/microbit
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/microbit/attachments/20151227/f23bae11/attachment.html>