[python-uk] The London Python Dojo is this Thursday

[Nicholas H.Tollervey]

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Hi,

Just catching up with this thread...

Regarding mismatch of skills. In teacher parlance this is called
differentiation - setting things up (in a classroom or event like the
dojo) so participants of different levels can all still have a
positive learning experience.

The usual way *I* do this is to point out that attendees have
responsibilities: if you're a beginner you *must* ask questions and
not accept confusing, jargon filled gobble-de-gook as a satisfactory
answer. Alternatively, if you're an experienced Python developer your
practice as a programmer and understanding of the way things work is
improved by reflecting upon and explaining in as simple a way as
possible the problem or solution at hand.

As for sticking to any "dojo" format - I think that "painting by
numbers" (blindly following a dojo recipe) is not a great way to go.
My advice is always to do what works for you (as a group). If you're
not getting what you want from the dojo - mention it (as has happened)
and, if required, make an improvement. To my mind, this applies
equally to our current team based format as it does to the original
more formal way of running things.

I deal with most of these things in this blog post (especially the
presentation at the end):

http://ntoll.org/article/how-to-run-an-awesome-code-dojo

Regarding problems: they need to be solvable in about an hour. Some
problems suggested in the dojo are blatantly bonkers. Some look
interesting but are, after a little reflection, obviously going to be
hard (like this month's). I know *I* try to guide the choice of
problems when I'm acting as cat-herder so we find a challenging,
do-able and fun problem to solve. ;-)

The dojo appears to be a do-ocracy and I'm pleased to see that we, as
a community, are coming together, discussing how the dojo can be
improved and I'm pretty confident that "stuff will happen". We're a
cosmopolitan group so there's I don't see why this can't be reflected
in the way we do things in the dojo. If you want to cat-herd a dojo
please get in touch - it's not as hard as the name suggests and it's
actually quite a lot of fun.

Nice one!

Nicholas.

On 12/07/13 11:24, a.grandi at gmail.com wrote:
> Thank you for the nice evening guys :)
> 
> It was amazing to meet you all and to try to learn something new.
> 
> I have a suggestion for the next time. Maybe it's just me that I'm
> a newbie... I don't know...but... I would suggest to split us in 
> groups/projects with this target: experts, intermediate, basic.
> This will allow new people to partecipate and maybe people like me
> to code something.
> 
> This was my second Dojo I attended and even this time I didn't feel
> at the level of coding the proposed problem. After a while it can
> be boring :P
> 
> Why don't we try to bring also intermediate and basic problems to 
> solve so that people at any level can try coding something?
> 
> Looking forward to meet you all next time!
> 
> On 7 July 2013 13:13, Tom Viner <tom at viner.tv> wrote:
>> Greeting from Florence and the EuroPython conference,
>> 
>> As the sprint pizza boxes get cleared away, it reminds me,
>> there's a London dojo to announce for this Thursday!
>> 
>> Pizza and social coding for the win. Everyone welcome.
>> 
>> We've got our O'Reilly give-away book ready, it's Think
>> Complexity including examples in Python.
>> 
>> Remember, we're back at the office of Fry-IT this month.
>> 
>> Get your tickets here: 
>> https://ldnpydojo.eventwax.com/london-python-code-dojo-season-4-episode-11/
>>
>>
>> 
Cheers,
>> Tom
>> 
>> @tomviner - @ldnpydojo
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________ python-uk mailing
>> list python-uk at python.org 
>> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-uk
>> 
> 
> 
> 

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