From mtobis at gmail.com  Fri Jun  1 03:29:08 2007
From: mtobis at gmail.com (Michael Tobis)
Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 20:29:08 -0500
Subject: [Edu-sig] [python-advocacy]  education as Python killer app
In-Reply-To: <565566.68512.qm@web54206.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
References: <43c8685c0705302326q59dda561jbb38dc262b4a05bc@mail.gmail.com>
	<565566.68512.qm@web54206.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <c3aa55550705311829q55c89c1dqefe6bd9b8818c2d7@mail.gmail.com>

As I understand it, raw_input will be renamed input in 3.0, and the
function currently implemented as input would go away, requiring you
to invoke eval(input("prompt")) if you need its functionality. Thus,
the PEP text you quote doesn't correspond to my understanding, based
on what I took from GvR's keynote at PyCon.

However, this is off topic for these lists and would be better taken
up on c.l.p. where someone in the know will be sure to clarify the
matter.

mt

On 5/31/07, hwg <hwg434 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> This quote is from a PEP which argues for keeping some form of raw_input():
>
>  The proposed plans for Python 3.0 would require the replacement
> of the single statement
>
> speed = raw_input("What is the average airspeed velocity of an unladed
> swallow?")
>
> by the more complicated
>
> import sys
> print("What is the average airspeed
>  velocity of an unladed swallow?")

From kirby.urner at gmail.com  Fri Jun  1 23:34:26 2007
From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner)
Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 14:34:26 -0700
Subject: [Edu-sig] [python-advocacy] education as Python killer app
In-Reply-To: <c3aa55550705311829q55c89c1dqefe6bd9b8818c2d7@mail.gmail.com>
References: <43c8685c0705302326q59dda561jbb38dc262b4a05bc@mail.gmail.com>
	<565566.68512.qm@web54206.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
	<c3aa55550705311829q55c89c1dqefe6bd9b8818c2d7@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <f604188c0706011434n7ca3d57am80b7c985990232f2@mail.gmail.com>

> > import sys
> > print("What is the average airspeed
> >  velocity of an unladed swallow?")

This dunna look right Kiptin <-- Scotty voice.

Also keep in mind that some courseware just comes with its
2.x version of Python, that we're not force marching so much
as leaving a trail of very usable dialects.  It's so easy to
install multiple Pythons, after all (easier than repointing all
the old scripts to the newest interpreter and library).

Kirby

From lac at openend.se  Sat Jun  2 09:22:05 2007
From: lac at openend.se (Laura Creighton)
Date: Sat, 02 Jun 2007 09:22:05 +0200
Subject: [Edu-sig] [python-advocacy] education as Python killer app
In-Reply-To: Message from "Michael Tobis" <mtobis@gmail.com> of "Thu,
	31 May 2007 20:29:08 CDT."
	<c3aa55550705311829q55c89c1dqefe6bd9b8818c2d7@mail.gmail.com> 
References: <43c8685c0705302326q59dda561jbb38dc262b4a05bc@mail.gmail.com>
	<565566.68512.qm@web54206.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
	<c3aa55550705311829q55c89c1dqefe6bd9b8818c2d7@mail.gmail.com> 
Message-ID: <200706020722.l527M5jD001448@theraft.openend.se>

In a message of Thu, 31 May 2007 20:29:08 CDT, "Michael Tobis" writes:
>As I understand it, raw_input will be renamed input in 3.0, and the
>function currently implemented as input would go away, requiring you
>to invoke eval(input("prompt")) if you need its functionality. Thus,
>the PEP text you quote doesn't correspond to my understanding, based
>on what I took from GvR's keynote at PyCon.
>
>However, this is off topic for these lists and would be better taken
>up on c.l.p. where someone in the know will be sure to clarify the
>matter.
>
>mt

Actually, this is on-topic for edu-sig.  And the person who knows
the most about it you can find there -- Andr? Roberge.  He had
the same objections, and implemented this approved PEP 
http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3111/  with Guido von Rossum
at PyCon this year.

Laura


From kirby.urner at gmail.com  Tue Jun  5 18:59:06 2007
From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner)
Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 09:59:06 -0700
Subject: [Edu-sig] More on the 'tourist' metaphor (vs. 'beginner')
Message-ID: <f604188c0706050959y1cd65d9dk9f50b64366c680ed@mail.gmail.com>

"""
I use the word "tourist" a lot, and I think computer world is so huge
that we're all tourists in big parts of it, when we wander far afield
(to be encouraged -- changes are we bring back new insights, or
maybe even move the home office).

A tourist in Python Nation might be a high mucky muck in the
Republic of Perl (they actually have their own names for these
things).

...

And when you're not a tourist anymore, what are you?  Maybe
a neighbor, a local, or "on staff" in some way -- different terms
apply, depending on the namespace.  I've you're a master of
Python, you might be a snake charmer in my book.
"""

url1 = "http://mail.python.org/pipermail/advocacy/2007-May/000243.html"

"""
I had opportunity to use the above "tourism" meme in my blog
the other day, with reference to Pioneer Century, an organized
cycling event.  In this event, I was ostensibly one of the tourists,
although like most the folks in this picture, I'm also an Oregonian
who motored to the event parking lot.

What I wrote in my blog:

Only a few cyclists marred the event by disrespecting signage and
taking to the middle of a busy highway. Local motorists, always
courteous, put a bright face on these antics, accepting that some
tourists may be prone to goofy behavior.
"""

url2 = "http://mail.python.org/pipermail/advocacy/2007-May/000243.html"

"""
Tinkering:
"""


>>> class Weird(str):
	def __new__(cls, arg):
		return str.__new__(cls, arg)
	def __mul__(self, arg):
		return self[arg]

	
>>> somestring = Weird("this is a string")
>>> somestring*10
's'
>>> somestring*4:6
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>> somestring*(4:6)
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>> slice
<type 'slice'>
>>> someslice = slice(5,7)
>>> somestring*someslice
'is'
>>>

"""
Kirby
"""

From kirby.urner at gmail.com  Tue Jun  5 20:01:45 2007
From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner)
Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 11:01:45 -0700
Subject: [Edu-sig] More on Tourism...
Message-ID: <f604188c0706051101l33c63bccqe74ebd6c879be797@mail.gmail.com>

Just to elaborate a little more, I think I'm in agreement with a lot of
Pythoneers that it's more than just a computer language, this glue
cohering our various Python-using communities (partially overlapping).

It's a webspace (docs, PEPs), a shared namespace, an in-common
history, players, characters (benevolent dictator)... the usual stuff of
ethnography.  I could also mention rituals:  lightning talks, sprints,
meetups, Zopefests.

And then there's the language itself, with its many __ribs__.

Part of that shared ethnography is Monty Python the comedy troupe,
and I make a big deal out of explaining that at the start of my Python
courses in part because it's a good segue into the whole idea of what
a "namespace" is (a concept with currency in the XML community as
well).

However, Monty Python, though still a Broadway phenomenon
('Spamalot' on the marquee last time I was through, which was late
last year, Eric Idle of IDLE fame in the credits), is not common
knowledge among OLPC kids. Which is *not* to say I think we
should drop it.  On the contrary, with YouTube and the like, these
allusions will become easier and more fun to explain (in the form
of short clips, streaming media).

Nevertheless, those kids in Cambodia just getting their laptops
and cranking up to "learn programming" or whatever they're expected
to do, aren't going to have this shared context of British comedy,
at least not right away.

All an OLPC kid might know, from cursory English, Amerish or
perhaps some Caribbean brew, is that Pythons are a kind of snake
(constrictors more specifically, not venemous).  And a Ruby is a
gemstone (usually red), like an emerald (green).  A Perl is a
valuable thing too (from oysters), but look how it's spelled (some
won't notice or care about the difference though, leading to
like Perl Divers in Panama -- a group of coders).  Java is of
course the legal drug.

Geekdom more generally has experimented with martial arts
metaphors, like kung fu (there was some TV show where the
one geek had to admit the other geek had more of it -- was
that a Buffy episode?  Yes, I think it was).  A reason there
is many people, males often more overtly, like to display rank,
often by means of costume (white, yellow, brown and black
belts are just the beginning -- wait'll you see epaulets).

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Epaulets
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0618067469/thecostumersmani

I'm not posing as the only answer man here, but I don't mind
remaining a font of suggestions, as many others of us are.  Lots
of good suggestions come from edu-sig IMO, from many corners.

My suggestion is to embrace the snake imagery whole heartedly
and not just in the form of permuting and punning on Py.  In my
case, I actually have a constrictor in my office (my daughter will
be buying a mouse for it on the way home from school today).
It's not a Python though, but a baby Corn. Here's its picture:
http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2007/05/newest-family-member.html

Not every culture is intrinsically snake friendly, depending on local
myth and so on.  But kids are typically open minded to fairy tales
from other traditions, and that's what they see on satellite TV:
mythologies from around the world, some rather alien-seeming.
Rather than try to accommodate and "water down" the snake
associations, for "marketing reasons", I think core Python culture
should be unabashedly willing to help the snake world preserve
itself and thrive.  We respect and enjoy snakes.  We don't teach
mindless fear and panic ala 'Snakes on a Plane'.

There's a link here to the word "geek" which implies "circus performer"
if you study the etymology.  Circus kids are likewise open minded
and by definition friendly with animals (elephants, horses...), even
if some freaks bite the heads off chickens on occasion (more geek
etymology). This helps close the loop with comedy *troupe* and
*flying circus.*

Another suggestion.  Snakes naturally bridge to dragons in all
kinds of lore, much of it in the Fantasy section.  A pro snake
attitude translates to a pro dragon attitude.  I won't try to unpack
all the consequences in this post. I go into more depth in my
talk proposal to Europython, which I'll eventually put at my
website.

Kirby

From kirby.urner at gmail.com  Fri Jun  8 20:17:15 2007
From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner)
Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 11:17:15 -0700
Subject: [Edu-sig] CGI with string.Template
Message-ID: <f604188c0706081117n4a86a711l4a920ca73bd04fc0@mail.gmail.com>

I've heard talk of retiring the string module but have a hard time
believing it, given the potential of Template to make things easier
for some of us.  Just because all methods of the float type may
be accessed using dot notation doesn't mean we want to get rid
of 'import math'.  Think of 'import string' as 'import math' for type
str ( str instead of float, or cmath instead of math for type(1j)).

Anyway, below I've appended a little script I wrote to keep
my foot in the door once a scholarship became available (my
company is private for-profit, looks at scholarships as
accounts receivable for my skills as a teacher, consultant or
whatever, for which DWA bills me out at a handsome rate
(or so I like to suppose)).

The more formal paper came later, once more details emerged.
The Abstract was the last puzzle piece to fall in to place:

Cutting and pasting from the PDF (sorry that doesn't look good):

"""
Abstract

My paper for EuroPython 2005 explored what I call Pythonic
Mathematics, a way of presenting pre-computer analytical content
within the OO paradigm, including pre-college.1 This thinking informed
my participation in Shuttleworth Foundation planning meetings and my
presentation to the London Knowledge Lab in the following year.2 This
year, I'm delving yet more deeply into Pythonic Math, while also
weaving in some more cultural threads, especially the "design science"
thread with its geodesic spheres and other graphical content, the
theme of my OSCON 2005 presentation.3 I've been field testing these
combinations in my home town of Portland, through a school called
Saturday Academy.4 Whereas Guido named Python for Monty Python,
begetting allusions which aren't going to go away, there's more we
might do to make our snake come across as charming and smooth, not too
slimy or oily (negative attributes customarily associated with snakes
by the more snake-unfriendly).5
"""

I'm down to hammering out details with local hoteliers at this
point, may have lost the LOT flight (no one said anything bad
about Warsaw, when I made inquiries on the EuroPython list
-- there's a flight from Chicago).

What I'll do for the talk is run Python's native itty bitty server
and not depend on the Internet, and only for a little of the demo.

I have my own expensive small travel projector, which I won't
want to blow by giving it a wrong voltage, so I'm still stressing
about adapters, transformers and what not.  Maybe bringing
the projector is a bad idea...

My patter might be less about the code below, which is very simple
and I'm not trying to be condescending, and more about how
we might rank ISPs in terms of Python friendliness.

It's already a minority of ISPs who allow account-owner script
writers to run processes via ssh (considered a "geek level" task
-- hardly, in and of itself).  Of these, some keep a dusty old
Python lying around, perhaps a 1.x, and think that ought be
just fine fine.  No string.Template.  No lots of kwel stuff.  So
a first criterion for defining an ISP as Python-friendly might be:
having a fairly current Python in /usr/bin or whatever, available
to would-be scripters.

Here's an example of an ISP that knows how to sound Python
friendly (and I think they're quite sincere):
http://www.webfaction.com/python-isp
(not my ISP by the way, I have no known financial ties to
this company (yet anyway)).

Kirby

====

#!/usr/bin/python2.5

#       Paper and .py module for Europython
#           by Kirby Urner, 4D Solutions
#                    May 29, 2007

# If you run this in Python, you'll get my paper with a
# two paragraph abstract.  If you run it again, you'll
# get the same abstract, with the other paragraphs
# reordered.

# The primitive paragraph sequencer below suggests
# a non-linear network for a model i.e. one that
# "connects around in all circumferential directions"
# (Fuller) as hypertext (http).

# My Pythonic hypertoons take similar approach, but
# with multiple passes through each node and more
# clearly defined "edges" connecting them.  Instead
# of paragraphs, I've used geometric transitions in
# VPython. I'd be happy to talk about these in a demo.

# http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=hypertoons&hl=en

# Shall I attach a bibliography of mostly URLs?

import sys
import cgitb; cgitb.enable()

from random import shuffle
from string import Template

sys.stderr = sys.stdout

webpage = Template(
"""Content-Type: text/html

<html>
<head><title>EuroPython Proposal</title></head>
<body>
<table align="center" width="550">
<tr><td>
<div align="center">
<h4>$Title</h4>
</div>

<em>Abstract</em>:<br />
$Abstract

<hr />

<p>$Para0</p>
<p>$Para1</p>
<p>$Para2</p>
<p>$Para3</p>
<p>$Para4</p>

</td></tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
""")

nodeA = """
CP4E or Computer Programming for Everybody was
Guido van Rossum's attempt to harness the power
of Python to best advantage:  let's use the charm
of our snake to recruit more people into the
circle of "knows how to program".  Python isn't
the only language suitable for CP4E work.  The
more the merrier in some ways, with Python always
there as a potential glue language."""

nodeB = """
I came to Python as a former math teacher and
career programmer, looking for ways to explore
geometry.  These were the early days of the Net
and few Polyhedra were available, even as GIFs
or JPEGs, let alone in VRML or as yet not
invented X3D.  I started in xBase with Visual
FoxPro, then moved to Java then Python in short
order.  Python has been my top drawer language
for geometry studies ever since."""

nodeC = """
Teachers are struggling with the puzzle of how
to incorporate computing machines within a
traditional curriculum inherited from times
when "computers" were human beings, tasked
with doing figures, quickly and accurately --
a clerical task.  The schools were designed to
mass produce future "computers" of the human
variety.  Then came many leaps in technology,
and yet we're still stuck with much the same
training in the early years.  We waste students'
time."""

nodeD = """
South Africa is one of those places where the
disparity between have and have-not is huge, and
education has no credibility unless it shows very
clearly how it's designed to close that gap,
including the so-called 'digital divide.'  The
Shuttleworth Foundation, in collaboration with
others in the public and private sector, is
prototyping Kusasa, a curriculum designed to
teach mastery over the process of learning to
use tools, including but not limited to computers."""

nodeE = """
The dream of giving each child access to powerful
computing and communications devices, able to
access the world's libraries, has bubbled to the
surface again in the form of Negroponte of MIT's
One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative.  Alan Kay
of SmallTalk fame has been another subscriber to
this "Dynabook" vision and was present at a summit
meeting in London, hosted by Mark Shuttleworth,
designed to get Kusasa going.  Guido van Rossum
and myself came from the Python community.  Others
represented the South African government, academia,
and other CP4E computer languages."""

nodeF = """
Not being a resident or citizen of South Africa,
I've been working on a CP4E project in Portland,
via Saturday Academy, to teach about the culture
of open source collaboration, design science,
and positive futurism.  I draw from Guido's work,
plus acknowledge Kenneth Iverson of APL fame as
a major influence (he later gave us the J language
in collaboration with Roger Hui and his son).
I came away from the summit in London hoping to
prototype Kusasa-like content in Oregon.  I've
been pretty successful in doing that."""

nodeG = """
Per my presentations at OSCON and EuroPython in
2005, I'm influenced by the Buckminster Fuller
syllabus, a branch of American Transcendentalist
literature.  As a philosophy guy from Princeton,
with a thesis on Wittgenstein, it was natural for
me to look for contemporary philosophers and to
study their work.  This led me into Fuller's
network and subsequent geometry studies, around
the same time as I got a math teaching job at
St. Dominic Academy in Jersey City, NJ.  Although
I later switched careers, I never lost my interest
in this geometry, hence my search for a good
computer language with which to pursue my studies."""

nodeH = """
OSCON, Pycons, and most recently Portland Barcamp
have also taught me a lot, about geek culture and
its collaboration tools.  By working together, I
think we can keep OLPC and CP4E in good working
order, achieving positive results for people around
the world.  If you happen to be lucky enough to be
using Python, then we already have many ideas on
which you might build, to make teaching (including
peer teaching) a potentially important and relevant
part of your career.  This is the subject of my talk."""

nodes = [nodeA, nodeB, nodeC, nodeD, nodeE, nodeF, nodeG, nodeH]

abstract = "<p>%s</p>\n<p>%s</p>" % (nodeA, nodeH)

shuffle(nodes)

title = """
Paper and .py module for Europython 2007<br />
by Kirby Urner, 4D Solutions<br />
May 29, 2007<br /><br />"""

pagedict = {"Para0":nodes[0],
            "Para1":nodes[1],
            "Para2":nodes[2],
            "Para3":nodes[3],
            "Para4":nodes[4],
            "Para5":nodes[5],
            "Para6":nodes[6],
            "Para7":nodes[7],
            "Title":title,
            "Abstract":abstract}

print webpage.substitute(pagedict)

====

Note subtle "bug" but I've decided to keep it:  only five lucky paragraphs
make the "top five" and get web served.  The rest don't make the cut --
unless the user reloads, then maybe.  A "reward" for those that do.

From kirby.urner at gmail.com  Mon Jun 11 02:46:42 2007
From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner)
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 17:46:42 -0700
Subject: [Edu-sig] CGI with string.Template
In-Reply-To: <f604188c0706081117n4a86a711l4a920ca73bd04fc0@mail.gmail.com>
References: <f604188c0706081117n4a86a711l4a920ca73bd04fc0@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <f604188c0706101746k3079a7ecuc8508650b51d42dc@mail.gmail.com>

> The more formal paper came later, once more details emerged.
> The Abstract was the last puzzle piece to fall in to place:
>

I didn't give the URL that time.

Connecting the Dots...
http://www.4dsolutions.net/presentations/urner_europython_2007.pdf

Dr. Charles Bolton, professor emeritus of sociology just dropped by
with two pages of single spaced comments, written on an old typewriter
(yes, he's showing his age, late 70s I think, drives a Taurus wagon).

I've excerpted a couple comments from his notes for sharing more widely:

http://www.4dsolutions.net/presentations/bolton_re_ctd_2007.pdf

I'm grateful to get his feedback.  He has a lot of puzzle pieces, re
some American
thinkers especially.  Helps add perspective, like Dr. Bob Fuller, also emeritus,
provides re his mentor Karplus and such literature.

http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2006/12/window-on-physics.html
http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2007/01/surveying-scene-synergeo-32124.html

Kirby

From kirby.urner at gmail.com  Tue Jun 12 05:48:59 2007
From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner)
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 20:48:59 -0700
Subject: [Edu-sig] Europython paper accepted...
Message-ID: <f604188c0706112048h604767a7v3fa46a5f43ddbc55@mail.gmail.com>

Excellent, I've got a slot after lunch on Day 1 of Europython:

http://www.europython.org/sections/tracks_and_talks/draft-timetable

Still focusing on string.Template, looking to recode my paradigm
"math objects" using X3D output (XML flavored -- there's also a more
VRML-like format).

I've proposed to Joyce (CEO) that I work up a new Saturday Academy
class focusing on Python + X3D, perhaps presuming some Python.
She seems willing to explore it further.

I still have another section of my regular Pythonic math course
scheduled for this summer, where we use VPython and POV-Ray:

http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/pymath.html

I found this 2003 article a helpful reintroduction to the subject of
these relatively new 3D tools:

http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/08/06/x3d.html

Kirby

PS: One of the philosophers mentioned in passing in my Lithuania
paper, Richard Rorty, died recently.  There's a write up in today's
New York Times.  He was a good teacher for me back when I was
focusing on philo at Princeton (1976-1980).  He advised me on my
undergrad thesis on Wittgenstein's later writings.

More views re RR:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/christopher_hayes/2007/06/richard_rorty.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-seery/richard-rorty-ironicall_b_51611.html

From kirby.urner at gmail.com  Wed Jun 13 21:46:29 2007
From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner)
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 12:46:29 -0700
Subject: [Edu-sig] Europython paper accepted...
In-Reply-To: <f604188c0706112048h604767a7v3fa46a5f43ddbc55@mail.gmail.com>
References: <f604188c0706112048h604767a7v3fa46a5f43ddbc55@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <f604188c0706131246kc183a73s33ac9fb55595236f@mail.gmail.com>

> Still focusing on string.Template, looking to recode my paradigm
> "math objects" using X3D output (XML flavored -- there's also a more
> VRML-like format).
>

I've got a first edition added to my CP4E collection at the
Oregon Curriculum Network website:

http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/pyx3d.html

This'll help me advocate for an X3D course within Saturday
Academy, which, if I'm to teach it, would involve using the
source code I'm sharing above.

Kirby

From kirby.urner at gmail.com  Thu Jun 14 19:12:15 2007
From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner)
Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 10:12:15 -0700
Subject: [Edu-sig] More CP4E News
Message-ID: <f604188c0706141012lbd74922ma46a15e6577137f6@mail.gmail.com>

I'd misread some signs and thought I was off the list for OSCON
for this year, but I'm on, talking CP4E, provided I make a certain
June 25 deadline with some filings, which I think I can do.

Yesterday I converted from DVD and uploaded as a low rez
Google Video some pro Saturday Academy PR to my blog:

http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2007/06/sa.html

This institution figures prominently in my version of the CP4E
initiative, complementary (and complimentary) to Guido's.
Speaking of whom, great slides from Guido from Beijing, including
of Olympics 2008 facilities still under construction.  A Google trip.

On the pedagogical front, Dr. Sonnenfeld at New Mexico tech,
a proud python owner (as in the literal snake) with his son Cody
and Company, wonders aloud at the paucity of Python (the
computer language literature) in the form of childrens books,
especially given all the buzz the adults're talkin' (me included).

His kids are ready to learn, but with what?  Where's the kid-friendly
fantasy angle?

Given the popularity of Piratology and Dragonology books, you'd
think O'Reilly'd already have something similar (actually that'd be
a departure -- it's kid book authors and illustrators with track
records we need, mixing OLPC & CP4E (a "head first" for kids
-- like not too dumbed down, even with all those twisted aqua
teen type graphics)).

You'd think with a gorgeous snake already in the picture, there'd
be such a literature.  Plus we like Perl's camels.  Plus CP4E ain't
just about Python.  It's about using open source to make the world
more intelligible in terms of the cave painting programs it'd need.
Like we don't have time to do a full version of anything.  We're on
a quick tour.  But look:  here's a supermarket (revealed in code,
lots of SQLAlchemy), and here's a bank (TurboGears?).

But before we get to "boring" (to young kids) banks and super-
markets (bazaars), I think kids love to think about animals.

Animals never lose their freshness.  I've gone on and on about
my Dog and Monkey classes in this archive, put that's just a
pointer, a prototype.

There's a huge animated cartoons industry I'm not planning to
reinvent (why would I?).  If the goal is to embrace CP4E, then
I think it's obvious we're awash in relevant tools for propagating
it, as multiple curricula (multiple namespaces).

Is Linux a horse?  Geeks [heart] Apache.

So in my next sa: class, I plan to give much more credence to
the cyberspace as ecosystem model, visualizing accordingly.
As my readers know, I'm already committed to MVC as a long
term key meme, so tie the ecosystem model and vizualizations
to M and V respectively, with the mediating language a "controller"
(could be Python, could be something else entirely).

One way this translates, is I'll introduce the four principal collections:
string, list, tuple and dict, and then I'll hand out source code and
ask them to color pen highlight these structures when and where
they're able to eyeball 'em in working code.  This takes practice,
especially given how syntax varies, allows multiple idioms, a lot of
embeddedness and so on.  I'm not encouraging writing obfuscated
code (they'll see enough of that anyway), but I do recognize that
production Python isn't just Dick and Jane seeing Spot run.

Listing 1:  exercise:  circle a dict object being initialized.  What
alternative syntax might the writer have used?  Give a short
example in the space provided: ___________________________

    def _edges(self, someobj):
        # cylinders
        thevertices = someobj.vertices
        for edge in someobj.edges:
            v1 = edge.v0
            v2 = edge.v1
            vrmldata = self._orient((v1,v2))
            length,roty,rotx = (vrmldata[1],vrmldata[2],vrmldata[3])

            edict = dict(
                radius    = edge.radius,
                color     = colordict[someobj.ecolor],
                length    = length,
                translate = "%r %r %r" % vrmldata[0],
                roty      = "0 1 0 %s" % roty,
                rotx      = "1 0 0 %s" % rotx)

            someobj.text = someobj.text + gl_theedge.substitute(edict)

[ http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/pyx3d.html x3dtoyz.py ]

Kirby

From tk at dydimustk.com  Fri Jun 15 02:45:34 2007
From: tk at dydimustk.com (thomas knoll)
Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 19:45:34 -0500
Subject: [Edu-sig] More CP4E News
In-Reply-To: <f604188c0706141012lbd74922ma46a15e6577137f6@mail.gmail.com>
References: <f604188c0706141012lbd74922ma46a15e6577137f6@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <59a26bd90706141745r1cf5efb0t4c5cbaff44cf40b7@mail.gmail.com>

Psst...

By the way, If python doesn't step it up in this area, all the kiddies
are going to start learning Ruby on Rails *not that there's anything
wrong with that*. But Why is kicking butt and taking names when it
comes to making programing easy to learn. If you don't believe me, go
take a peek at http://hacketyhack.net/

gratia vobis et pax,
TK

    +    .:dydimustk.com:.   |   Freelance Apostle

________________________________________
Thomas Knoll    651.210.2321    tk at dydimustk.com
skype:dydimustk

From radenski at studypack.com  Fri Jun 15 03:37:47 2007
From: radenski at studypack.com (Atanas Radenski)
Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 18:37:47 -0700
Subject: [Edu-sig] More CP4E News
In-Reply-To: <59a26bd90706141745r1cf5efb0t4c5cbaff44cf40b7@mail.gmail.com>
References: <f604188c0706141012lbd74922ma46a15e6577137f6@mail.gmail.com>
	<59a26bd90706141745r1cf5efb0t4c5cbaff44cf40b7@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20070614183747.aonl7ttftww0owks@webmail.studypack.com>



Quoting thomas knoll <tk at dydimustk.com>:
> take a peek at http://hacketyhack.net/

I peeked at hacketyhack.net, and this is what I saw:

===>>> Copy and paste from http://hacketyhack.net/ >>>

YOUR FIRST PROGRAM

One of Hackety Hack's sincere pledges is to make the most common code  
very easy and short. Downloading an MP3 should be one line of code. A  
blog should be very few.

For example, our sample blog:

blog = Table("MyBlog").recent(10)
Web.page {
   blog.each do |entry|
     title entry[:title]
     puts entry[:editbox]
   end
}

<<<===

It does not seem likely that a first program like the above one can be  
understood by a 13-year old beginner - or by any beginner for that  
matter. Kids can type it, of course, and run things, but do they get a  
clue? Coding is complex and learning how to do it is complex, no  
matter what. It can be less complex or more complex but it is always  
complex.

The hacketyhack.net site says: "Downloading an MP3 should be one line  
of code."

Hell, I do not use any code to download an MP3. I just click a link :-)

I guess, it is an interesting site, anyway. Thank you for pointing to  
it. But things cannot be this easy as they claim - like they are  
presented in 'eat all you want and loose weight' commercials.

Atanas
-- 
Atanas Radenski
mailto:radenski at studypack.com   http://studypack.com
mailto:radenski at chapman.edu     http://www1.chapman.edu/~radenski

Quoting thomas knoll <tk at dydimustk.com>:

> Psst...
>
> By the way, If python doesn't step it up in this area, all the kiddies
> are going to start learning Ruby on Rails *not that there's anything
> wrong with that*. But Why is kicking butt and taking names when it
> comes to making programing easy to learn. If you don't believe me, go
> take a peek at http://hacketyhack.net/
>
> gratia vobis et pax,
> TK
>
>     +    .:dydimustk.com:.   |   Freelance Apostle
>
> ________________________________________
> Thomas Knoll    651.210.2321    tk at dydimustk.com
> skype:dydimustk
> _______________________________________________
> Edu-sig mailing list
> Edu-sig at python.org
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
>



From tk at dydimustk.com  Fri Jun 15 03:45:25 2007
From: tk at dydimustk.com (thomas knoll)
Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 20:45:25 -0500
Subject: [Edu-sig] More CP4E News
In-Reply-To: <20070614183747.aonl7ttftww0owks@webmail.studypack.com>
References: <f604188c0706141012lbd74922ma46a15e6577137f6@mail.gmail.com>
	<59a26bd90706141745r1cf5efb0t4c5cbaff44cf40b7@mail.gmail.com>
	<20070614183747.aonl7ttftww0owks@webmail.studypack.com>
Message-ID: <59a26bd90706141845s30c634d3hb628af427c01ac7b@mail.gmail.com>

Atanas,

I agree with everything you said.

But this time just go take a peek at hacketyhack.

Don't think to hard, just take a peek at it.

And then find me an intro to python site that *looks* half as
interesting as that one.

I'm cheering for python here. I can't wait until I know enough python
to start writing tutorials and developing how-to-program-in-python
websites. But I don't yet. If one of you beat me to it, please
consider making python *look* exciting to learn.

gratia vobis et pax,
TK

    +    .:dydimustk.com:.   |   Freelance Apostle

________________________________________
Thomas Knoll    651.210.2321    tk at dydimustk.com
skype:dydimustk


On 6/14/07, Atanas Radenski <radenski at studypack.com> wrote:
>
>
> Quoting thomas knoll <tk at dydimustk.com>:
> > take a peek at http://hacketyhack.net/
>
> I peeked at hacketyhack.net, and this is what I saw:
>
> ===>>> Copy and paste from http://hacketyhack.net/ >>>
>
> YOUR FIRST PROGRAM
>
> One of Hackety Hack's sincere pledges is to make the most common code
> very easy and short. Downloading an MP3 should be one line of code. A
> blog should be very few.
>
> For example, our sample blog:
>
> blog = Table("MyBlog").recent(10)
> Web.page {
>    blog.each do |entry|
>      title entry[:title]
>      puts entry[:editbox]
>    end
> }
>
> <<<===
>
> It does not seem likely that a first program like the above one can be
> understood by a 13-year old beginner - or by any beginner for that
> matter. Kids can type it, of course, and run things, but do they get a
> clue? Coding is complex and learning how to do it is complex, no
> matter what. It can be less complex or more complex but it is always
> complex.
>
> The hacketyhack.net site says: "Downloading an MP3 should be one line
> of code."
>
> Hell, I do not use any code to download an MP3. I just click a link :-)
>
> I guess, it is an interesting site, anyway. Thank you for pointing to
> it. But things cannot be this easy as they claim - like they are
> presented in 'eat all you want and loose weight' commercials.
>
> Atanas
> --
> Atanas Radenski
> mailto:radenski at studypack.com   http://studypack.com
> mailto:radenski at chapman.edu     http://www1.chapman.edu/~radenski
>
> Quoting thomas knoll <tk at dydimustk.com>:
>
> > Psst...
> >
> > By the way, If python doesn't step it up in this area, all the kiddies
> > are going to start learning Ruby on Rails *not that there's anything
> > wrong with that*. But Why is kicking butt and taking names when it
> > comes to making programing easy to learn. If you don't believe me, go
> > take a peek at http://hacketyhack.net/
> >
> > gratia vobis et pax,
> > TK
> >
> >     +    .:dydimustk.com:.   |   Freelance Apostle
> >
> > ________________________________________
> > Thomas Knoll    651.210.2321    tk at dydimustk.com
> > skype:dydimustk
> > _______________________________________________
> > Edu-sig mailing list
> > Edu-sig at python.org
> > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
> >
>
>
>

From jeff at taupro.com  Fri Jun 15 13:00:33 2007
From: jeff at taupro.com (Jeff Rush)
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 06:00:33 -0500
Subject: [Edu-sig] More CP4E News
In-Reply-To: <f604188c0706141012lbd74922ma46a15e6577137f6@mail.gmail.com>
References: <f604188c0706141012lbd74922ma46a15e6577137f6@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <46727151.2000701@taupro.com>

kirby urner wrote:
> 
> On the pedagogical front, Dr. Sonnenfeld at New Mexico tech,
> a proud python owner (as in the literal snake) with his son Cody
> and Company, wonders aloud at the paucity of Python (the
> computer language literature) in the form of childrens books,
> especially given all the buzz the adults're talkin' (me included).

I've never seen programming books in the form of children's books -- can you
point me at some for -other- programming languages?  I'm curious what they
would look like, and maybe we can get some for Python if we have examples and
names of publishers who've already done it.


> His kids are ready to learn, but with what?  Where's the kid-friendly
> fantasy angle?
> 
> Given the popularity of Piratology and Dragonology books, you'd
> think O'Reilly'd already have something similar (actually that'd be
> a departure -- it's kid book authors and illustrators with track
> records we need, mixing OLPC & CP4E (a "head first" for kids
> -- like not too dumbed down, even with all those twisted aqua
> teen type graphics)).

Hmm, as you say O'Reilly isn't a primary source of children's books, but the
kid book authors and illustrators in turn are not sources of programming
books.  How the heck are you going to get them to work together?  They think
differently and don't have established relations.


> Listing 1:  exercise:  circle a dict object being initialized.  What
> alternative syntax might the writer have used?  Give a short
> example in the space provided: ___________________________

An interesting idea for teaching - showing source and asking students to
reason -about- it, instead of writing programs from scratch for exercises.
I'll have to consider applying this in some Python educational ideas I have.

-Jeff


From matt at schinckel.net  Fri Jun 15 13:07:44 2007
From: matt at schinckel.net (Matthew Schinckel)
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 20:37:44 +0930
Subject: [Edu-sig] More CP4E News
In-Reply-To: <46727151.2000701@taupro.com>
References: <f604188c0706141012lbd74922ma46a15e6577137f6@mail.gmail.com>
	<46727151.2000701@taupro.com>
Message-ID: <2521244f0706150407w389f4224uae21de6d28dd8e7d@mail.gmail.com>

On 15/06/07, Jeff Rush <jeff at taupro.com> wrote:
> kirby urner wrote:
> >

[snip]

>
> > Listing 1:  exercise:  circle a dict object being initialized.  What
> > alternative syntax might the writer have used?  Give a short
> > example in the space provided: ___________________________
>
> An interesting idea for teaching - showing source and asking students to
> reason -about- it, instead of writing programs from scratch for exercises.
> I'll have to consider applying this in some Python educational ideas I have.
>

This is actually the approach I have been taking with my class -
rather than expect them to write code, although they will need to do
this, I provide them with code, and then we discuss what the code is
doing, and why.

Matt.

-- 
Matthew Schinckel <matt at schinckel.net>

The Feynman Problem-Solving Algorithm:
  (1) write down the problem;
  (2) think very hard;
  (3) write down the answer.

From jeff at taupro.com  Fri Jun 15 14:04:37 2007
From: jeff at taupro.com (Jeff Rush)
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 07:04:37 -0500
Subject: [Edu-sig] More CP4E News
In-Reply-To: <59a26bd90706141845s30c634d3hb628af427c01ac7b@mail.gmail.com>
References: <f604188c0706141012lbd74922ma46a15e6577137f6@mail.gmail.com>	<59a26bd90706141745r1cf5efb0t4c5cbaff44cf40b7@mail.gmail.com>	<20070614183747.aonl7ttftww0owks@webmail.studypack.com>
	<59a26bd90706141845s30c634d3hb628af427c01ac7b@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <46728055.1070500@taupro.com>

thomas knoll wrote:
> Atanas,
> 
> I agree with everything you said.
> 
> But this time just go take a peek at hacketyhack.
> 
> Don't think to hard, just take a peek at it.
> 
> And then find me an intro to python site that *looks* half as
> interesting as that one.
> 
> I'm cheering for python here. I can't wait until I know enough python
> to start writing tutorials and developing how-to-program-in-python
> websites. But I don't yet. If one of you beat me to it, please
> consider making python *look* exciting to learn.

Thomas, thanks for the link - it is interesting.  The Python community has a
severe shortage of those with graphical artist talent, unfortunately.  You can
see this in how many of the Python sites, especially www.python.org, are very
text-oriented, with not even icons of any kind.  And there have been several
calls for artists to help with the design of flyers and presentations, with no
 real response.  Odd, as I'd think in any sizable distribution of people there
would be a significant number with some drawing skills.  Python, perhaps
because of the beauty of its source, seems to attract the word-oriented people
over the picture-oriented (or tactile-oriented) people.

I agree that we need a more visual message though, especially for children.

-Jeff


From kirby.urner at gmail.com  Fri Jun 15 17:06:39 2007
From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner)
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 08:06:39 -0700
Subject: [Edu-sig] More CP4E News
In-Reply-To: <46727151.2000701@taupro.com>
References: <f604188c0706141012lbd74922ma46a15e6577137f6@mail.gmail.com>
	<46727151.2000701@taupro.com>
Message-ID: <f604188c0706150806v18cda3f2wb020d7ed92c77d07@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/15/07, Jeff Rush <jeff at taupro.com> wrote:
>
>
> I've never seen programming books in the form of children's books -- can
> you
> point me at some for -other- programming languages?  I'm curious what they
> would look like, and maybe we can get some for Python if we have examples
> and
> names of publishers who've already done it.


"Good questions dude"  -- imagining a certain facilitator in a
small conference room.  He was all surfer Bay Area talk or
something, effective at the time.

Here's the arc as I see it.  Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming,
terse and "telegraphic" as Tim Peters calls it, is the "in a nutshell"
reference, but then Stanford started using 'Concrete Mathematics'
as build up (recommended by Tim in this archive, near the start).

Then comes Jason and me yakking up 'Who is Fourier?' by the
LEX Institute, a language learning think tank.  Like 'Concrete' and
like the wildly successful 'For Dummies' ('Complete Idiots' and so
on), there's a lot of doodling, marginalia, jokes.  The jocularity
component is way up.  Then comes O'Reilly with 'Head First into
Java' and we're really seeing the culmination of a trend.

What I think has happened is CS has shed its skin as a wannabe
staid math, has proved its points, in terms of utility, sophistication,
future etc., and now can afford any pretense at trying to be
pretentious.  The readership is there, already impressed and ready
to learn.  So the key thing is to use *psychology* (including
"sublymonal" like in those Sprite commercials).

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=sprite+ad+obey+sublymonal&btnG=Search

Where you see the "for kids" approach amped up is on satellite TV,
like on http://www.nick.com/

http://brandnoise.typepad.com/brand_noise/2006/09/cartoon_packagi.html

We're not there yet with the books, but I think the arc will continue,
with aqua teens (and duckman) teaching Python, as it were.

Kirby


> His kids are ready to learn, but with what?  Where's the kid-friendly
> > fantasy angle?
> >
> > Given the popularity of Piratology and Dragonology books, you'd
> > think O'Reilly'd already have something similar (actually that'd be
> > a departure -- it's kid book authors and illustrators with track
> > records we need, mixing OLPC & CP4E (a "head first" for kids
> > -- like not too dumbed down, even with all those twisted aqua
> > teen type graphics)).
>
> Hmm, as you say O'Reilly isn't a primary source of children's books, but
> the
> kid book authors and illustrators in turn are not sources of programming
> books.  How the heck are you going to get them to work together?  They
> think
> differently and don't have established relations.


Think how young the O'Reilly brand is, compared to Walt Disney say.
A new crop of geeks is only now starting to have kids.  The open source
revolution is all post boomer.  Yes, you and I caught it too, but we'd
already gone through the PC revolution with IBM versus Apple.  That
was an earlier time.  The next wave will produce a new literature.  Plus
there's already a wave behind that and so on.  Expect change.


> Listing 1:  exercise:  circle a dict object being initialized.  What
> > alternative syntax might the writer have used?  Give a short
> > example in the space provided: ___________________________
>
> An interesting idea for teaching - showing source and asking students to
> reason -about- it, instead of writing programs from scratch for exercises.
> I'll have to consider applying this in some Python educational ideas I
> have.
>
> -Jeff
>
>

Yes.  I talk about recall versus recog (even to them) and how we learn
language from immersion in adults speaking fully formed sentences,
learn new language likewise, from being around expert speakers.
This is recog.  Doing it from scratch, as a source, an author, is
recall.  In between is a whole spectrum of part recog, part recall.

I use heavy recog in early exposure, as I'm more into having them
decipher mature code examples, the very ones used in our class,
complete with vector and rhombic dodecahedron classes talking out
to VPython, POV-Ray and more recently X3D.  I have them learn
about common structures, such as initializing objects, populating
data structures, then have 'em eyeball source a lot, applying their
recog skills.  Then will come tweaking, messing about with little
changes -- to colors for example.  To numbers of things, parameters.

"Blank canvas" programming is really only a small percentage of
what employed programmers do.  A lot of it involves tweaking inherited
work.  Someone new to programming is already immersed in an
environment where source code is already ubiquitous.  The first
question isn't "is it there, running in the background" but "is it
open or closed" (i.e. "can I see it, will I recognize when I do?").

Kirby
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From kirby.urner at gmail.com  Fri Jun 15 17:14:33 2007
From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner)
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 08:14:33 -0700
Subject: [Edu-sig] More CP4E News
In-Reply-To: <f604188c0706150806v18cda3f2wb020d7ed92c77d07@mail.gmail.com>
References: <f604188c0706141012lbd74922ma46a15e6577137f6@mail.gmail.com>
	<46727151.2000701@taupro.com>
	<f604188c0706150806v18cda3f2wb020d7ed92c77d07@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <f604188c0706150814q6c1bce48qbf52b826a1a59984@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/15/07, kirby urner <kirby.urner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> What I think has happened is CS has shed its skin as a wannabe
> staid math, has proved its points, in terms of utility, sophistication,
> future etc., and now can afford any pretense at trying to be
> pretentious.  The readership is there, already impressed and ready
>


"can afford to lose..." I should have said.

In other words, we *don't* want a purely lexical approach where we do like
those old math books and just go theorem, proof, remarks, definitions,
theorem, sardonic remark, proof, corollary, small figure, definitions, more
weird notation, theorem, proof.  Index.

We're planning to get way more right brained about all this, in part because
we're moving away from static text to more animated and interactive
interfaces.  Like the DoD does, in training its recruits (sometimes using
Python as a glue language, like we saw at Pycon that time (West Point grads
train in a modified Unreal Tournament engine simulating needing to know how
to speak Iraqi politely or die, with a voice recognizer ala Dragon's a part
of the VR apparatus)).

Kirby
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From da.ajoy at gmail.com  Sat Jun 16 17:54:41 2007
From: da.ajoy at gmail.com (Daniel Ajoy)
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2007 10:54:41 -0500
Subject: [Edu-sig] More CP4E News
In-Reply-To: <mailman.5.1181988002.14946.edu-sig@python.org>
References: <mailman.5.1181988002.14946.edu-sig@python.org>
Message-ID: <4673C171.23008.17F51FA6@da.ajoy.gmail.com>

> Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 06:00:33 -0500
> From: Jeff Rush <jeff at taupro.com>
> 
> I've never seen programming books in the form of children's books -- can you
> point me at some for -other- programming languages? 


The Great Logo Adventure : 
Electronic copy of the actual book on learning Logo by Jim Muller 
(Graciously donated by Jim)

http://www.softronix.com/logo.html


Daniel


From kirby.urner at gmail.com  Sat Jun 16 22:46:29 2007
From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner)
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2007 13:46:29 -0700
Subject: [Edu-sig] More re Imagery
Message-ID: <f604188c0706161346w74f8c5fs9ec22e608f5ddc15@mail.gmail.com>

I liked how Jerritt Collord (collord.net) started our Adventures in
Open Source course for out three teen guinea pigs.  This was
a pilot staged in West Precinct, Hillsboro Police Department,
Saturday Academy providing the instructors (that'd be Jerritt
and myself). Summer of 2004.

He started with tcp/ip right off the bat.  Kind of the polices' worst
nightmare, in a way, to have someone who knows about packet
sniffing showing wannabe hackers how to sniff packets, how to
dissect these little capsules with payloads, looking for pathologies.

But that was the whole point: we're showing you the ropes, as
future pioneers, developers, and maintainers of the Internet, not
as future criminals.  You'll need the same skills.  You'll need to
build up your internal model of how it all works, making it rich
in detail, a readily extensible model should your job require
going even deeper into the internals of ethernet frames or
whatever. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet

So like of course (!) you need to understand about tcp/ip, just
as police do (Heuston, exFBI and our liason in HPD, helped
run a computer forensics lab plus ran that speakers' program,
CRIME, at the Oregon Zoo).

This is where 'Warriors of the Net' comes in, a great little cartoon
modeling tcp/ip as an accessible visualization involving little trucks
in tubes.  This visualization likewise connects to container shipping
for more adult content, per one of those high quality analyst talks
@ OSCON (Nick Gall's): http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=1675

So here's a logical flow I could see using in a standard public
school curriculum:

Begin:

Google Earth or similar service
-> lots of geography talk about lat/long, time zones etc.
-> lots of infrastructure talk including about container shipping
-> about the Internet (cartoons)
-> about tcp/ip (more cartoons)
-> moving to CP4E languages (e.g. Python) and xml-rpc i.e.
let's now interact with some web services (hands on, not just
talk)

Exhibit 1: A Perl version, for passing an address on the command line:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use XMLRPC::Lite;
use Data::Dumper;
use strict;
use warnings;

my $where = shift @ARGV
    or die "Usage: $0 \"111 Main St, Anytown, KS\"\n";

my $result = XMLRPC::Lite
  -> proxy( 'http://rpc.geocoder.us/service/xmlrpc' )
  -> geocode( $where )
  -> result;

print Dumper $result;

Exhibit 2:  And now in Python, just lazily interactively in IDLE for starters:

>>> from xmlrpclib import Server
>>> server = Server('http://rpc.geocoder.us/service/xmlrpc')
>>> result = server.geocode("1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC")
>>> result
[{'city': 'Washington', 'prefix': '', 'suffix': 'NW', 'zip': 20502,
'number': 1600, 'long': -77.037683999999999, 'state': 'DC', 'street':
'Pennsylvania', 'lat': 38.898747999999998, 'type': 'Ave'}]

or we might look at the actual XML that goes to the server:

>>> print xmlrpclib.dumps(("1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC",
), 'server.geocode')
<?xml version='1.0'?>
<methodCall>
<methodName>server.geocode</methodName>
<params>
<param>
<value><string>1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC</string></value>
</param>
</params>
</methodCall>

Kirby

From kirby.urner at gmail.com  Sun Jun 17 08:46:26 2007
From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner)
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2007 23:46:26 -0700
Subject: [Edu-sig] More re Imagery
In-Reply-To: <f604188c0706161346w74f8c5fs9ec22e608f5ddc15@mail.gmail.com>
References: <f604188c0706161346w74f8c5fs9ec22e608f5ddc15@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <f604188c0706162346x36abf18l9fa1df9ea9b33738@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/16/07, kirby urner <kirby.urner at gmail.com> wrote:
> I liked how Jerritt Collord (collord.net) started our Adventures in
> Open Source course for out three teen guinea pigs.  This was
> a pilot staged in West Precinct, Hillsboro Police Department,
> Saturday Academy providing the instructors (that'd be Jerritt
> and myself). Summer of 2004.
>

"...our three teen..."

Hey, was just Googling and came up with this fun souvenir from
that time.  Shows some pix of our HPD classroom (where Jerritt
and I taught -- this document describes a somewhat later event).

http://www.ci.hillsboro.or.us/Police/documents/VirtualGatheringPlace.pdf

Yeah, JoJo was me in disguise.

Kirby

From kirby.urner at gmail.com  Wed Jun 20 08:53:12 2007
From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner)
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 23:53:12 -0700
Subject: [Edu-sig] Choice quote re OLPC
Message-ID: <f604188c0706192353j1fe97303j232a2b9710bc3df8@mail.gmail.com>

Regarding a pilot OLPC project in South Africa:

"""
Q: How will the laptop be used in the formal context of the classroom?

There's no curriculum. There's no training programme. Teachers will
sink or swim. We can show them the e-Toys and other programmes
on the laptop, but when we leave, they're on their own.

 If the goal is to create a nation of scientists and engineers, I don't
think we've got 1% of that with this. Mark Shuttleworth with the
Kusasa.org programme is tackling that need. We're hoping that
workbooks and worksheets will come out of that. He's also putting
his money into Python and Smalltalk.
"""

http://allafrica.com/stories/200706180999.html?page=2

From kirby.urner at gmail.com  Sat Jun 23 20:12:47 2007
From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner)
Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2007 11:12:47 -0700
Subject: [Edu-sig] All quiet on the western front...
Message-ID: <f604188c0706231112x1a475cdex4200483a5277ae49@mail.gmail.com>

Mighty quiet around here...

How 'bout I toss up some percentage of the slides I've
been arranging, in some sort of sort (hopefully sequential),
for discussion purposes.[1]

Let me just do that now [elevator music...]

OK, special to the edu-sig inner circle then:

http://www.4dsolutions.net/presentations/connectingthedots.pdf  (1.48 Meg)

Comments?

Also note:  my plan is to showcase on Ubunta I hope
with Beryl working, as I'd like to swap cube faces for
demos, interspersed with the static stuff above.  That
sounds like a lot of CPU cycles (lots to go wrong) so
yeah, it'll be a workout.  But first the new Dell has to
show up to be dinked with.  Order tracking says it's
still in production.  But hey, this is Sunday and not
everyone works 24/7, not even we geeks.[2]

Happy summer solstice all,

Kirby

[1] like most road show veterans, I always have too many
slides, then have this task of whittling down, to make
something sharp and to the point, appropriate to my
audience.  Like, some versions of this would go more
into my remark that younger kids tend to welcome
scatology, now a sub-branch of grossology.  Question:
is squeak too squeaky clean?

[2] if you didn't see my 'Nightmare Alley' review, nor
have a clue as to its relevance, here's the blog link:
http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2007/06/nightmare-alley-movie-review.html
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From kirby.urner at gmail.com  Wed Jun 27 16:04:43 2007
From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner)
Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 07:04:43 -0700
Subject: [Edu-sig] More of Kirby talking to the water cooler...
Message-ID: <f604188c0706270704p71d587faqf4e7889d2d31b9e0@mail.gmail.com>

Okeedohkee... so I got that Dell Inspiron E1505 I was talking about,
ships with Ubuntu installed. I customized it to have the Nvidia 256M
graphics card, plus 1G RAM, only 80 GB storage (so not too heavy,
inexpensive but not cheap).  Turns out Nvidia was a good choice,
as you can just check a box in Restricted Driver Manager, apt-get
beryl, and voila, that rotating cube of desktops, VPython on one
face, slides on another... wiggly windows.

I've expanded my slides at
http://www.4dsolutions.net/presentations/
connectingthedots.pdf
adding in some of that grossology stuff I mentioned.  The idea
here is very simple, as I was just explaining to this philosopher
in Seattle I know.  Especially young kids have an interest in
scatalogical content and feel relieved when they have permission,
in an academic context, to indulge that interest.  The vehicle is
Mad Libs, a genre of fill in the blank stories, which you can just
make up yourself.  It's more just creative writing.  But it's also
a triple-quote segment of Python with $fill_in_the_blanks to
be later populated from a Python dictionary (another segment
provides promptings e.g. "Give me a verb please: " or whatever
raw_input).

That's all just a small part of the talk, although string.Template
has a continuing role when we turn to more mathy forms of
output, such as scene description language for POV-Ray or
X3D.  Which reminds me, I need to get an X3D plugin working,
or find a standalone application.

[ blub blub blub -- fills cup with water ]

OK time to get back to my cube and resume chatting with fellow
cube farmers.

Kirby
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From jbloodworth at sc.rr.com  Wed Jun 27 16:43:50 2007
From: jbloodworth at sc.rr.com (Jay Bloodworth)
Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 10:43:50 -0400
Subject: [Edu-sig] Wikis w. Math Support
Message-ID: <1182955430.4659.18.camel@localhost.localdomain>

Not necessarily python related, but perhaps:

Can anyone suggest some wiki software that includes support for math
markup for nicely formatted expressions, preferably with some simpler
and server-sider than MathML.  Bonus points if it also supports simple
syntax for generating graphs of equations.  Double bonus if it includes
good access control features.

Thanks,
Jay


From lac at openend.se  Wed Jun 27 17:42:33 2007
From: lac at openend.se (Laura Creighton)
Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 17:42:33 +0200
Subject: [Edu-sig] Wikis w. Math Support
In-Reply-To: Message from Jay Bloodworth <jbloodworth@sc.rr.com> of "Wed,
	27 Jun 2007 10:43:50 EDT."
	<1182955430.4659.18.camel@localhost.localdomain> 
References: <1182955430.4659.18.camel@localhost.localdomain> 
Message-ID: <200706271542.l5RFgXMT003918@theraft.openend.se>

Mediawiki -- what wikipedia uses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Formula

Laura

In a message of Wed, 27 Jun 2007 10:43:50 EDT, Jay Bloodworth writes:
>Not necessarily python related, but perhaps:
>
>Can anyone suggest some wiki software that includes support for math
>markup for nicely formatted expressions, preferably with some simpler
>and server-sider than MathML.  Bonus points if it also supports simple
>syntax for generating graphs of equations.  Double bonus if it includes
>good access control features.
>
>Thanks,
>Jay
>
>_______________________________________________
>Edu-sig mailing list
>Edu-sig at python.org
>http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig

From kirby.urner at gmail.com  Thu Jun 28 05:54:17 2007
From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner)
Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 20:54:17 -0700
Subject: [Edu-sig] More rambling about my new snake habitat
Message-ID: <f604188c0706272054p63501a98l96a1adc9b812a6ec@mail.gmail.com>

So demoing MVC the way I teach it for sa: requires an X3D viewer,
POV-Ray, and VPython, all for visualizations of the same core model,
implemented using stickworks components:  vertex-vectors +
connect-the-dots edges.  Faces get added at a more outer layer, in one
of the "toyz" modules (I don't use them at all in the VPython version,
in some ways the most primitive).  Faces are, however, core to the
basic data structure, whether or not they are shown (typical of
geometry formats, OFF in particular).

http://shape.cs.princeton.edu/benchmark/

Fortunately, Ubuntu's Synaptic Package Manager makes it really easy to
search and install packages over the Internet, including FreeWRL
1.19.5 (it does X3D in addition to VRML so my demo is working).

http://freewrl.sourceforge.net/

When I first opened the box, I ran the update manager, which seems to
appear periodically on the top horizontal bar (the period is a user
setting).

A massive upgrade ensued (which used to result in a crash on reboot
when these puppies first shipped -- problem fixed), including a
download/install of Python 2.5, abetting the two earlier Pythons
already housed.

But it's a minimal install.  Using Synaptic, I added IDLE with Tk,
which automatically added itself to the main Applications Menu under
Programming (little trowel icon, Python's double snake for IDLE
itself, which by default does *not* launch a subprocess (something to
change)).  VPython likewise came through Synaptic (version
3.2.1-4build1).

There's a site-packages at /usr/local/python2.5/site-packages, but by
default it belongs to root and staff (a group).  I don't find the
staff group when I go to administer users and groups.

As a lowly user, I'm feeling /home/kirby is where I'm encouraged to
keep my .py files.  Do .pth files work in Linux like in Windows?

Speaking of Windows, I noticed my connectingthedots.pdf looked kinda
crummy on Ubuntu, like the fonts weren't right.  Sure enough,
Microsoft's weirdo brands of Arial needed to go in the suitcase along
with the rest of the graphics, increasing the file size but improving
the view.

The ppt (not available at my ftp site) opened almost flawlessly in
OpenOffice impress.  I just needed to tweak a few of the slides a
little, and resave.  But that means it'll be hard to just swap the
file back and forth between platforms -- which adds to my sense that
it's frozen, at least for now.

Hypertoons also work great (see my Youtube examples).  I'll be able to
show VPython randomly drawing transforming polyhedra with two play
heads (two threads), while rotating the Beryl cube.

One of my geek friends came by for lunch today and I was able to do
that thing Miguel de Icaza demoed at OSCON like two years ago:  a DVD
(in my case 'Idiocracy') playing in a window that folds around the
edge of the rotating cube, half a window in each of two desktops.

Meaningless eye candy I realize.

Very iPhone.

Miguel shows off many more recent xgl type effects in his blog:
http://tirania.org/blog/

xgl:
http://images.google.com/images?q=xgl&hl=en&um=1&sa=X&oi=images&ct=title

Kirby

From andre.roberge at gmail.com  Fri Jun 29 18:45:00 2007
From: andre.roberge at gmail.com (Andre Roberge)
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 13:45:00 -0300
Subject: [Edu-sig] CS0 course
Message-ID: <7528bcdd0706290945w13d13ea0lde88e8837fea3e25@mail.gmail.com>

Hi everyone,

As most people on this list are aware, I am very much interested in
promoting Python in education (think rur-ple and crunchy).  However, I
feel I could do more locally and want to do more but for this I need a
bit of help and guidance.

To explain things properly, I have to make a small digression (which,
I hope, won't be construed as spam ;-) to explain the background.

In my day job, I am President of a tiny but wonderful university
(Universit? Sainte-Anne, www.usainteanne.ca) in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Sainte-Anne is an undergraduate university (400 students,
Faculty/student ratio: 1:10) offering programs in French Immersion,
Education, Business Administration, Bachelors of Arts (majors:
English, French, History), as well as a general B.Sc.  (3 year degree,
no major).  While it is located in a primarily English Canadian
province, Sainte-Anne is arguably the *best* place in North America to
study French.  Our summer French immersion program (two 5-week terms)
attract a total of 550 students (more than during the regular year,
with every available bed in residence occupied!), about 125 of which
come from the U.S.  and the rest from elsewhere in Canada; we have the
longest waiting list of any other similar programs offered in Canada.
(enough bragging ...)

We do not offer a course in computer programming.  Business
administration student have a requirement to take two semester long
courses in "computer science"  ("informatique", in French) - the
courses offered are one introduction to some standard business
software (read MS word and eXcel primarily) and one course on creation
of web pages, etc.  Not exactly what I consider to be computer
science...

I'd like add a CS0  course (intro to computer science [read:
programming] for non cs students) that would introduce Python.  Since
the courses we offer are all in French, the number of available
resources is rather limited...  As I'm the only one that knows about
programming around, I'd have to teach it.  While our students are
usually fluent in English, we do strive to provide a completely French
learning environment; as President, I could not give a bad example by
assigning a textbook (or other main resource) written in English.
Since I've never taught a programming course in my life (and only took
one, a fortran course, some 30 years ago), I can't draw very much on
previous experience.

Because of the demands of my job (read:fairly frequent travelling), I
can't plan on teaching 2 1.5 hours (or 3 one-hour) lectures a week,
every week.  I'd like to have a course that could combine classroom
teaching combined with small projects that could be done in a
self-study mode (with me available to answer questions by email).
Something half-way between an independent study course and a
traditional lecture-based one.

Does anyone have experience with teaching a CS0 course structured like
this?  Are you aware of any resources that I could use, mostly in
terms of assignments idea? (note: they have to be either in French, or
things that are short enough that I could translate them without
having to invest too much time)

Thanks for your time reading this message, and I welcome any
suggestion you may have.

Andr? Roberge

From kirby.urner at gmail.com  Fri Jun 29 20:35:47 2007
From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner)
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 11:35:47 -0700
Subject: [Edu-sig] CS0 course
In-Reply-To: <7528bcdd0706290945w13d13ea0lde88e8837fea3e25@mail.gmail.com>
References: <7528bcdd0706290945w13d13ea0lde88e8837fea3e25@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <f604188c0706291135l3a5b1148safd14f660e9ac169@mail.gmail.com>

You ask really interesting questions Andre.

I see a huge market for niche authors wanting to specialize
in computer language X crossed with human language Y.

I think you'll agree that's a huge matrix of possibilities.

When you factor in the "Python for Perl junkies" genre
(i.e. assuming familiarity with computer language X0,
here's computer language X1), and the fact that this
bridging goes on with the human languages (e.g.
Lithuanian for Dzongkha speakers), you end up staring at
a really wide vista (of mostly deserted nothingness).

In my view, words like __add__ and __slots__ are special
to Python the language, like the list of keywords, but
variable names, function names, class names, have wide
latitude.  People will do their various experiments around
Unicode, still very new.  I look forward to the many hand-
crafted coding languages with those "made by elvynchyx"
decorations or whatever gets your pesos.

I bet you, a college president, using some free time, could
help write a dynamite chapter book ala Who Is Fourier? (LEX)
that mixed several languages but with heaviest emphasis
on French -- maybe using lots of graphic motifs even starting
it as an open source project, with graphic artists especially
welcome? Practical?

Just like maybe we could recruit aqua teens to someday
teach __python__, other cartoon friends.  Beloved characters
like Big Bird aren't designed to grow up with their cohort.  He'll
never teach us complex numbers.  Not a criticism -- BB is an
MVP.

Anyway, thank you for bringing up the whole question
of how CS gypsies want to wander, vis-a-vis unicode and
romanji, the various mixes and matches.

I say "onward into the vast wilderness" -- it's stil a small,
lonely planet, no matter how ya cut it.  Plus lets keep an
eye on maintaining useful code that already works, in
whatever language.  I'm not suggesting we gleefully
start from scratch at every opportunity.  Getting to the
current crop of VHLLs hasn't been whatch'd call easy.

Kirby

PS:  I think Daniel Ajoy writes beautiful Logo in Spanish,
even though I (a) don't know Logo that well any more,
if I ever did and (b) I'm really rusty with Spanish.

From kirby.urner at gmail.com  Sat Jun 30 00:29:40 2007
From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner)
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 15:29:40 -0700
Subject: [Edu-sig] More OLPC chatter
Message-ID: <f604188c0706291529v79f9786dpad94c8894bd7e9a2@mail.gmail.com>

Here's a floating email fragment

>Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 20:54:09 -0400
>From: "Walter Bender" <walter.bender at ...>
>Subject: OLPC software: our first release and beyond.
>To: "OLPC Devel" <devel at ...>, sugar at ...

>One important feature where we have made little progress is the View
>Source key. We decided to build the user experience?and the core
>Activity base?in Python, in large part, to facilitate the children's
>direct access to modifiable code. We are moving to the latest stable
>version of Python as part of our Fedora Core 7 migration; however, we
>have yet to put enough resources into building a suitable development
>environment for children. This remains an important goal, but not one
>we can reasonably meet for our first release. The incorporation of the
>context-sensitive spirit of "view source" into all Activities is
>another area where we lag. Bolstering these efforts is second only to
>stabilizing the current system. We look forward to the possibility of
>Guido van Rossum, Python's creator, leading these efforts in the fall.

Always interesting to see where some people are hoping to invest
some of our BDFL's precious clock cycles...

Stepping back for a moment, one has to realize this is a different
shop talk, as we typically look at source code as text files, modifiable
yes, but not while running as binaries, which are different files entirely,
derived from said text files by various processes.

Some of this text is expressed in pure Python, but a lot of what
*runs* under Python in modular form is actually written in something
else, as is Python itself.  A whole different text editor might be more
appropriate in that case, or at least different plug-ins (the Eclipse model).

The trend is to target a shared VM and play freely with other language
communities, swapping whatever works in inter-pluggable arrangements.

One way around this shortcoming of Sugar's is to suggest that once
kids are mature enough to eyeball the kind of convoluted source
code required to keep the likes of Sugar alive, it might be time to
transition to a more standard model laptop that doesn't push the
bleeding edge so hard.

Adults need to focus on stable developer environments like Wing's
or whatever (or like IDLE for starters).  So at your bat mitzvah or
other ceremony, you maybe trade in your much loved OLPC XO
(and your teddy bear), and move up to something more expensive,
with a more traditional source code treatment (anyone ready for
C yet?).

Or just start using more of those legacy TuxLab desktops, running
a variety of distros (Ubuntu Studio might draw some kids, more
because they want to study graphical arts than they want to do
lexical programming).

Basically, I'm somewhat Kusasian in outlook:  go with immersive up
to a point, then take a break and study some classic combos e.g.
emacs + bash + gcc.  Drop all the way down to machine language
even, coming up through MMIX enroute to Python Part Deux (or
"snake guts revisited").[1]  At some Coming of Age level, we no longer
want to shield kids from the messy reality of *no* single governing
paradigm at all levels and the old immersive environment turns out
to be one fish tank among many.

In retrospect, those early experiences with special namespaces
for children will remain a comfort (we hope), and some will elect
to professionally teach them to a next generation, and/or invent
new ones (already the case, so a next iteration).

Kirby

[1]  http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2007/06/techie-chatter.html

From Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org  Sat Jun 30 15:24:25 2007
From: Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org (Scott David Daniels)
Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 06:24:25 -0700
Subject: [Edu-sig] CS0 course
In-Reply-To: <7528bcdd0706290945w13d13ea0lde88e8837fea3e25@mail.gmail.com>
References: <7528bcdd0706290945w13d13ea0lde88e8837fea3e25@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <f65lh0$trh$1@sea.gmane.org>

Andre Roberge wrote:

> Does anyone have experience with teaching a CS0 course structured like
> this?  Are you aware of any resources that I could use, mostly in
> terms of assignments idea? (note: they have to be either in French, or
> things that are short enough that I could translate them without
> having to invest too much time)
> 
> Thanks for your time reading this message, and I welcome any
> suggestion you may have.

Check in newsgroup fr.comp.lang.python.  It is fairly active (nowhere
near comp.lang.python), but I'm certain there are resources.

-- 
-- Scott David Daniels
Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org


From andre.roberge at gmail.com  Sat Jun 30 15:36:43 2007
From: andre.roberge at gmail.com (Andre Roberge)
Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 10:36:43 -0300
Subject: [Edu-sig] CS0 course
In-Reply-To: <f65lh0$trh$1@sea.gmane.org>
References: <7528bcdd0706290945w13d13ea0lde88e8837fea3e25@mail.gmail.com>
	<f65lh0$trh$1@sea.gmane.org>
Message-ID: <7528bcdd0706300636s68499701ub918c89163984be2@mail.gmail.com>

On 6/30/07, Scott David Daniels <Scott.Daniels at acm.org> wrote:
> Andre Roberge wrote:
>
> > Does anyone have experience with teaching a CS0 course structured like
> > this?  Are you aware of any resources that I could use, mostly in
> > terms of assignments idea? (note: they have to be either in French, or
> > things that are short enough that I could translate them without
> > having to invest too much time)
> >
> > Thanks for your time reading this message, and I welcome any
> > suggestion you may have.
>
> Check in newsgroup fr.comp.lang.python.  It is fairly active (nowhere
> near comp.lang.python), but I'm certain there are resources.
>
> --

Thanks for the suggestion; I have been perusing fr.com.lang.python
occasionally and should probably ask a similar question there.

However, I am also well aware that the French education system is very
different than the North American one.  The Canadian and American
education, while fairly different one from another, can be considered
nearly identical when compared with the French system.  French
students generally have a much more rigorous mathematical background
at a given age; the educational approach/style is very much "formal"
rather than "informal". Also, there seems to be a lot more early
specialization - so I don't think that courses like CS0 are very
likely to exist within the French system.   However, I will check...

Andr?

> -- Scott David Daniels
> Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Edu-sig mailing list
> Edu-sig at python.org
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
>

From kirby.urner at gmail.com  Sat Jun 30 20:16:35 2007
From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner)
Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 11:16:35 -0700
Subject: [Edu-sig] CS0 course
In-Reply-To: <7528bcdd0706300636s68499701ub918c89163984be2@mail.gmail.com>
References: <7528bcdd0706290945w13d13ea0lde88e8837fea3e25@mail.gmail.com>
	<f65lh0$trh$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<7528bcdd0706300636s68499701ub918c89163984be2@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <f604188c0706301116o27e095d4pe5ed3bff26074e6a@mail.gmail.com>

> However, I am also well aware that the French education system is very
> different than the North American one.  The Canadian and American
> education, while fairly different one from another, can be considered
> nearly identical when compared with the French system.  French
> students generally have a much more rigorous mathematical background
> at a given age; the educational approach/style is very much "formal"
> rather than "informal". Also, there seems to be a lot more early
> specialization - so I don't think that courses like CS0 are very
> likely to exist within the French system.   However, I will check...
>
> Andr?

Lots of moving targets in this picture.

Given your idyllic circumstances, I'd think you'd want to customize and
localize around your geographical context and expected student
demographics, right down to the screen saver and local web server
level.  Plone has ways to customize all the menus and interface
controls per whatever language.  How about an inhouse Plone site,
with CS0 spending at least a few hours dissecting it, in terms of
MVC and the underlying Zope machinery.  Zope is very big in Europe,
I can say from personal experience.

If you were a larger research university, I'd think developing Python
bindings to some French-English phrase book database and translation
service, ala Google's, would become a part of your infrastructure.  Maybe
such bindings already exist, in the sense of Python hacks (e.g. xml-rpc
"translate this into French" requests to the server farm in The Dalles).

As a curriculum writer, I have to assume increasing familiarity with Python
among the pre-college set, at least in some parts of North America. CS0
will be easier if the ambient culture gets back on the track we were on
with BASIC, per that Salon article 'Why Johnny Can't Code'.

But a good CS0 has ways of not penalizing those who're just sampling.
There're always more languages, or one could do that "leveling the playing
field" thing and do it all in Scheme for a couple weeks, then switching to
Python.  This idea of "immersion" works well for computer languages, not
just human ones (at least for students in the "good at languages" category
-- which it sounds like your school attracts).

Anyway, the challenges would be much the same in any language I would
think.  It's more finding the writers who'll commit to doing the work.

Kirby

From krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu  Sat Jun 30 23:17:51 2007
From: krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu (=?UTF-8?Q?Ivan_Krsti=C4=87?=)
Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 17:17:51 -0400
Subject: [Edu-sig] More OLPC chatter
In-Reply-To: <f604188c0706291529v79f9786dpad94c8894bd7e9a2@mail.gmail.com>
References: <f604188c0706291529v79f9786dpad94c8894bd7e9a2@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <552E9E91-250A-41B9-9961-881A1B70C106@solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu>

On Jun 29, 2007, at 6:29 PM, kirby urner wrote:
> One way around this shortcoming of Sugar's is to suggest that once
> kids are mature enough to eyeball the kind of convoluted source
> code

Yes, and we tend to think that's not the right way.

> Adults need to focus on stable developer environments like Wing's
> or whatever (or like IDLE for starters).  So at your bat mitzvah or
> other ceremony, you maybe trade in your much loved OLPC XO
> (and your teddy bear), and move up to something more expensive,
> with a more traditional source code treatment (anyone ready for
> C yet?).

Is there a reason you think you can't happily run a normal editor,  
compiler and shell on an XO? You seem to be strangely conflating  
software that's shipped with the XO by default with both its hardware  
and the limits of purposes for which it can be used.

--
Ivan Krsti? <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D