[Edu-sig] Re: Python Anxiety

[Kirby Urner]

Here's an email from the front lines.  I asked Shelley's permission to
post it to edu-sig and she gave it -- and of course I invited her to
join this discussion list, which she says she'll plan to do soon,
once she gets some other things out of her in box.

My reply to Shelley's letter follows (next post).  I hope this might
generate some further discussion on our list.  Shelley will be able to
catch up on the thread via the web archives if she likes.

Kirby

=============================================

Date: Sun, 06 Apr 2003 00:29:48 +0100
From: Shelley Walsh
To: urnerk@qwest.net
Subject: Python Anxiety

Hi Kirby,

I don't know whether you remember me, but I have seen your posts many times
in the various math education groups, and it was through you that I
discovered Python. The first time I saw it, I was absolutely delighted with
its potential for helping with math understanding. But lately I have become
disillusioned, because I am constantly finding that students don't like
Python, and I can't at all figure out why. I thought at first it was because
I was teaching students who were very computer illiterate, but then recently
I have had the opportunity to teach a Discrete Mathematics for Computing
distance education class, and again I saw great potential for using Python
to make the abstract ideas more concrete, but again it has fallen flat. Many
of these students have programmed in C++ and Java, so you would think they
could learn enough Python for what I was suggesting in 5 minutes. I don't
know C++ and Java and it only took me a slight bit longer. I have given them
so many opportunities for extra credit projects having to do with it that
they could all have perfect scores for the class if they wanted, but nobody
has taken the bait. But partly this doesn't surprise me, because these
distance education students are very lazy. There are a lot of people that do
DE for a free ride, and the familiar is always more comforting to such
people.

But what really shocked me was the experience I had today with my colleagues
when I tried to show it to them as something with great potential for help
with understanding algebra. I was just showing them how you could use it as
something better than a hand calculator for doing such things as solving
equations by searching, which I think is a really good idea for keeping
students in touch with the base meaning of solving equations. And one of my
colleagues practically expressed horror and said that this would totally put
him off of mathematics. And others expresses similar opinions. I remember
the first time I saw you write about how you could define a function in the
console mode def f(x): return x**2, and then proceed to evaluate it on form
a composition function, I immediately thought that was just such a great way
for students to see such things right in front of their eyes, for them to no
longer be abstract. But he seemed to think it would take him hours to master
the syntax of it and for the students it would be just one more thing to
learn when they were already afraid of the subject. And partly from some of
the reactions I have gotten from students, it seems that he is likely to be
right. For him the fact that it there is a : and a return instead of just an
equal sign was totally daunting and the ** makes it even worse.

So my question for you is have you found this kind of Python anxiety, and if
so how have you dealt with it?
-- 
Shelley Walsh
shelley.walsh9@ntlworld.com
http://homepage.mac.com/shelleywalsh