[Edu-sig] An interactive version of "How to Think Like a Computer Scientist, Learning Python"

[Jeffrey Elkner]

Dear Johannes,

I am *very* interested in a Crunchy Frog version of the book.  I've been working on the 2nd edition this summer, and the latest version can be found here:

http://ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCS/python.php

I had asked a summer intern of ours, David Muffley (sunami.2600 at gmail.com), to do just what you are offering, but it would be better if you could take the lead and he could provide you assistance if you need it.

A few thoughts that may be of help:

* the original source for the book is in lore, which is a subset of xhtml.  If the VLAM required for Crunchy will pass through lore without complaint, and if it will do "the right thing" on a site that doesn't have Crunchy running, then we could include the VLAM in the main source of the book.

* Nick Wheeler has been working on a debian package for Crunchy.  I plan to have it running as a server process on our classroom LTSP server, and have it automagically work for students who access the book.  I hope we can accomplish that.

* In the long term, I was thinking that a Jython version of Crunchy would allow it to be used on-line.

If you need any help with Lore, David Muffley said he would be available today.  You could also contact me as a backup.

Thanks!  It is great to see all the progress being made getting tools together for using Python in education.  The time since the last Pycon has been *very* active and successful.

jeff

On Fri, 11 Aug 2006 20:57:33 +0100, Johannes Woolard <johannes.wollard at gmail.com> wrote:
>Dear Jeffrey,
>
>I am one of the Summer of Code students working with the Python
>Software Foundation, specifically on educational software. I have been
>working on Andre Roberge's Crunchy Frog
>(http://www.crunchy.sourceforge.net/) and to finish off my summer's
>work I would like to create an interactive version of How to Think
>like a Computer Scientist.
>
>Creating interactive python tutorials with Crunchy is child's play -
>it would involve giving all of the examples some form of interactive
>element and inserting other interactive bits in the text where
>appropriate. You can look at some examples of what I mean if you
>download our current preview release from the sourceforge site.
>
>This would involve minimal changes to the text and content, but would
>I believe make the book even more educational and helpful.
>
>What is your opinion on this? Would you be happy for me to take the
>book and (I hope) develop it?
>
>yrs
>
>Johannes Woolard
>
>PS. I am CC'ing this to Andre Roberge, who is also working on crunchy frog.
>
>--
>Johannes Woolard,
>Entz Rep,
>Oriel College
>
>mobile: 07837880296
>