From bblais at bryant.edu Mon Feb 1 01:27:39 2010 From: bblais at bryant.edu (Brian Blais) Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:27:39 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] odd drawing problem with turtle.py Message-ID: I'm on Python 2.5, but using the updated turtle.py Version 1.0.1 - 24. 9. 2009. The following script draws 5 circles, which it is supposed to, but then doesn't draw the second turtle which is supposed to simply move forward. Any ideas? from turtle import * from numpy.random import randint resetscreen() class Circle(object): def __init__(self,x,y,r,color): self.x=x self.y=y self.r=r self.color=color self.turtle=Turtle(visible=False) self.turtle.tracer(False) self.draw() def draw(self): self.turtle.penup() self.turtle.setposition(self.x,self.y) self.turtle.setheading(0) self.turtle.backward(self.r) self.turtle.pendown() self.turtle.fill(True) self.turtle.pencolor("black") self.turtle.fillcolor(self.color) self.turtle.circle(self.r) self.turtle.fill(False) self.turtle.penup() for i in range(5): c=Circle(randint(-350,350),randint(-250,250),10,"red") T=Turtle() T.forward(100) T.forward(100) thanks, bb -- Brian Blais bblais at bryant.edu http://web.bryant.edu/~bblais http://bblais.blogspot.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kirby.urner at gmail.com Mon Feb 1 03:11:34 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2010 18:11:34 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] odd drawing problem with turtle.py In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I don't see where you've defined a Turtle class to instantiate sir. Perhaps rename Circle to Turtle and rewrite the circle-drawing expression as: > c=Turtle(randint(-350,350),randint(-250,250),10,"red") You are making progress with a wrapper class for the Standard Library turtle. That's a well-known design pattern and a good way to get extra features sometimes. Kirby On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 4:27 PM, Brian Blais wrote: > I'm on Python 2.5, but using the updated turtle.py?Version 1.0.1 - 24. 9. > 2009. ?The following script draws 5 circles, which it is supposed to, but > then doesn't draw the second turtle which is supposed to simply move > forward. ?Any ideas? > from turtle import * > from numpy.random import randint > resetscreen() > class Circle(object): > ?? ?def __init__(self,x,y,r,color): > ?? ? ? ?self.x=x > ?? ? ? ?self.y=y > ?? ? ? ?self.r=r > ?? ? ? ?self.color=color > > ?? ? ? ?self.turtle=Turtle(visible=False) > ?? ? ? ?self.turtle.tracer(False) > ?? ? ? ?self.draw() > > ?? ?def draw(self): > ?? ? ? ?self.turtle.penup() > ?? ? ? ?self.turtle.setposition(self.x,self.y) > ?? ? ? ?self.turtle.setheading(0) > ?? ? ? ?self.turtle.backward(self.r) > ?? ? ? ?self.turtle.pendown() > ?? ? ? ?self.turtle.fill(True) > ?? ? ? ?self.turtle.pencolor("black") > ?? ? ? ?self.turtle.fillcolor(self.color) > ?? ? ? ?self.turtle.circle(self.r) > ?? ? ? ?self.turtle.fill(False) > ?? ? ? ?self.turtle.penup() > > for i in range(5): > ?? ?c=Circle(randint(-350,350),randint(-250,250),10,"red") > > > T=Turtle() > T.forward(100) > T.forward(100) > > > > > > > > thanks, > > bb > -- > Brian Blais > bblais at bryant.edu > http://web.bryant.edu/~bblais > http://bblais.blogspot.com/ > > > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > > From kirby.urner at gmail.com Mon Feb 1 04:25:12 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:25:12 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] Math + Python: reviewing some themes (long) In-Reply-To: References: <4B5EC9C6.5040301@ece.arizona.edu> <4B632DCB.3010900@ece.arizona.edu> <40ea4eb01001291840w7c57a492o2fe17c5416ab6a31@mail.gmail.com> <4B64F9E5.4080604@ece.arizona.edu> <40ea4eb01001311005y3c66da77ybf6c0949250dd389@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 2:28 PM, kirby urner wrote: > On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 10:05 AM, michel paul wrote: > Per earlier remarks in this thread, it seems an uphill battle to have school > administrators accept coding in Python as having anything to do with a > math course. ?It doesn't look like textbook math. ?The notation is not > traditional. ?Where are all those greek letters? ?Science and engineering > maybe, but surely not math! > I should clarify here, that it was never my wild fantasy that traditional math notation was just going to evaporate into the ether. The idea here is concrete interaction with an interpreter adds another way of expressing the same concepts, so you get more like two opportunities that cross-check one another. Here's sigma notation (capital Sigma) on the one hand, here's a while loop (a do loop) on the other. Both have incrementing indexes that may be used to define successive terms. Both may result in a sum. By having them side by side, using one to explain the other, you don't double the difficulty, you halve it, is what I'm contending. All the advocates for incorporating computer languages have kept it a mix, The Art of Computer Programming giving a good sense of it, with MMX coming in as a new flavor, an ingredient, not as a replacement for anything. Just because we have Sage on the projector, are working through some integral, doesn't mean we can't show the Integral sign (Riemann Sum symbol) on the adjacent white board. Some GUIs give you that typesetting layer, atop a more rigorous machine-friendlier layer [1], whereas others do not. Sometimes you have a pretty simple shell, like iPython or IDLE or PLT Scheme, or just a bash terminal window -- and that's not such a terrible thing, if you've had some training in lexical subjects. > The bias we need to overcome, in my view, is that computer > programming is really hard, and that by adding some coding > language to the math curriculum is just making a difficult > subject more difficult. ?That point of view pushes Computational > Thinking into the "honors elective" category. > Botched the grammar there didn't I? Feeling again the need to add corrective thinking, reply to my own post. Computer programming *is* really hard sometimes. Denying that fact would sound easy-breezy cavalier plus is simply not true. The key word is "sometimes". Math gets really hard too (duh). The goal is to help develop an appetite for these challenges, not to be ultra intimidating. The point of yakking about "types of math object" their properties and operations, is *not* necessarily to shoot for high honors or advanced placement credit. That *might* be the point in some contexts. More to the point is wanting to render pre-existing well-established mathematics in a more accessible, hands-on, and intelligible format, without losing any backward compatibility. List comprehensions *illuminate* ideas about functions, do not detract from them. Creating a list of (domain, range) tuples using "zip" is kind of interesting, gives a hands on component to what's in the book. I'm not posing as some uber-mathematician or programmer god in any of these postings, or if it looks like I see myself that way, then my apologies. I'm all thumbs with bash. Getting Ubuntu and Win7 to work on the same laptop pushed me to the limit of my ability and without pointers from Ron, I'd surely have failed.** I'm thinking what might be useful to an average student. Add a computer language to make math seem easier, not more difficult. If that seems counter-intuitive, then maybe give it a try anyway? I've been doing empirical field work, actually doing this in my classes (few and far between, not a full timer, much as I'd like to be some days). I'm learning many things that work. Telling more lore is one of them (have meaningful stories on tap, not deliberately meaningless ones). Kirby ** the motherboard video on the Core i3 wasn't gonna work with Ubuntu, found the needle in a haystack post. Ron told me about VirtualBox from Sun Microsystems, actually hand-holded me through the download. Ubuntu 9.10 went on as a guest operating system, WIndows 7 a host. A few hours later, I figured out how to get wireless passed through, and hours after that, full screen Ubuntu instead of 800 x 600. So satisfying. Now its back to where I left off at the Django conference, trying to figure out about virtualenv again. Ian Bicking did the demo. I was "snake bearer" (token PSF guy, not some kind of Django expert by any stretch of the imagination). Now there's virtualenvwrapper too. Ron is lightyears ahead of me in so many ways. Like me, he's a Quaker, and reported that at meeting today (I skipped) we had a guy from Scotland who turned out to be some key guy with Canonical, with Kubuntu in particular. Ron just phoned as I was writing this and saying he's very likely moving to kubuntu now as another virtual OS, likes KDE over Gnome. He's already running OSX, WIndows, developing cross-platform for iPhone, Android, Nokia's thing.... I'm so not in that league. I'm more just the local high school math teacher, gray hair, obsessing about polyhedra too much or something. From vceder at canterburyschool.org Mon Feb 1 05:07:44 2010 From: vceder at canterburyschool.org (Vern Ceder) Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:07:44 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] odd drawing problem with turtle.py In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4B665390.4080602@canterburyschool.org> kirby urner wrote: > I don't see where you've defined a Turtle class to instantiate sir. The Turtle class is part of the turtle library, so that's not an issue. > On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 4:27 PM, Brian Blais wrote: >> I'm on Python 2.5, but using the updated turtle.py Version 1.0.1 - 24. 9. >> 2009. The following script draws 5 circles, which it is supposed to, but >> then doesn't draw the second turtle which is supposed to simply move >> forward. Any ideas? You mean you just want a turtle, but no line? If so, does instantiating T with T = Turtle(visible=True) help? Cheers, Vern >> from turtle import * >> from numpy.random import randint >> resetscreen() >> class Circle(object): >> def __init__(self,x,y,r,color): >> self.x=x >> self.y=y >> self.r=r >> self.color=color >> >> self.turtle=Turtle(visible=False) >> self.turtle.tracer(False) >> self.draw() >> >> def draw(self): >> self.turtle.penup() >> self.turtle.setposition(self.x,self.y) >> self.turtle.setheading(0) >> self.turtle.backward(self.r) >> self.turtle.pendown() >> self.turtle.fill(True) >> self.turtle.pencolor("black") >> self.turtle.fillcolor(self.color) >> self.turtle.circle(self.r) >> self.turtle.fill(False) >> self.turtle.penup() >> >> for i in range(5): >> c=Circle(randint(-350,350),randint(-250,250),10,"red") >> >> >> T=Turtle() >> T.forward(100) >> T.forward(100) >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> thanks, >> >> bb >> -- >> Brian Blais >> bblais at bryant.edu >> http://web.bryant.edu/~bblais >> http://bblais.blogspot.com/ >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Edu-sig mailing list >> Edu-sig at python.org >> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig >> >> > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig -- This time for sure! -Bullwinkle J. Moose ----------------------------- Vern Ceder, Director of Technology Canterbury School, 3210 Smith Road, Ft Wayne, IN 46804 vceder at canterburyschool.org; 260-436-0746; FAX: 260-436-5137 The Quick Python Book, 2nd Ed - http://bit.ly/bRsWDW From kirby.urner at gmail.com Mon Feb 1 05:44:35 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2010 20:44:35 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] odd drawing problem with turtle.py In-Reply-To: <4B665390.4080602@canterburyschool.org> References: <4B665390.4080602@canterburyschool.org> Message-ID: On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 8:07 PM, Vern Ceder wrote: > kirby urner wrote: >> >> I don't see where you've defined a Turtle class to instantiate sir. > > The Turtle class is part of the turtle library, so that's not an issue. > Hey, good point Vern, not firing on all cylinders over here. So I just commented out the Circle loop, went straight to the Turtle part at the end. It works OK for me, even without the visible=True. I'm on Python 2.6 on Win7 and I took out the numpy randint in favor of random randint. turtle.py in lib_tk: # Version 1.0.1 - 24. 9. 2009 I'm maybe not the right beta tester though, as after I uncomment the circle loop, I just get an hour-glass on my Tk canvas and no drawing, no error message either, even with visible=True in the init. Not sure what that's about yet... Hey, I just found out about piratepad.net, another shared white board solution. Was helping a dude in Indonesia debug a VPython script just a moment ago, with variable names in Indonesian (Latin-1 spellings at least). I've appended what we're working on. [ on second thought, I'll spare ya ] Kirby >>> ? ? ? ?self.turtle=Turtle(visible=False) Does visibility *and* pen need to be controlled? Sorry for the basic question, but seems if pen is up... From bblais at bryant.edu Mon Feb 1 12:27:27 2010 From: bblais at bryant.edu (Brian Blais) Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2010 06:27:27 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] odd drawing problem with turtle.py In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <953804BA-5723-427E-A316-9B16A94BAD17@bryant.edu> > On Jan 31, 2010, at 23:05 , John Posner wrote: > >> Try commenting out this statement: >> >> self.turtle.tracer(False) >> >> That helps on Python 2.6.4. interesting. It seems as if the tracer property is a global one: In [1]:t1=Turtle() In [2]:t1.tracer() Out[2]:1 In [3]:t1.tracer(False) In [4]:t1.tracer() Out[4]:0 In [5]:t2=Turtle() In [6]:t2.tracer() Out[6]:0 In [7]:t2.tracer(True) In [8]:t1.tracer() Out[8]:1 looks like I need to set the tracer manually. however, even if the tracer is off, shouldn't it still draw the line? when I put in the T.tracer(True) it works, but I shouldn't need to I think. On Jan 31, 2010, at 21:11 , kirby urner wrote: > I don't see where you've defined a Turtle class to instantiate sir. Turtle is given in turtle.py. I should have subclassed it, but I was being lazy. :) thanks for the fast replies! bb > On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 4:27 PM, Brian Blais > wrote: >> I'm on Python 2.5, but using the updated turtle.py Version 1.0.1 - >> 24. 9. >> 2009. The following script draws 5 circles, which it is supposed >> to, but >> then doesn't draw the second turtle which is supposed to simply move >> forward. Any ideas? >> from turtle import * >> from numpy.random import randint >> resetscreen() >> class Circle(object): >> def __init__(self,x,y,r,color): >> self.x=x >> self.y=y >> self.r=r >> self.color=color >> >> self.turtle=Turtle(visible=False) >> self.turtle.tracer(False) >> self.draw() >> >> def draw(self): >> self.turtle.penup() >> self.turtle.setposition(self.x,self.y) >> self.turtle.setheading(0) >> self.turtle.backward(self.r) >> self.turtle.pendown() >> self.turtle.fill(True) >> self.turtle.pencolor("black") >> self.turtle.fillcolor(self.color) >> self.turtle.circle(self.r) >> self.turtle.fill(False) >> self.turtle.penup() >> >> for i in range(5): >> c=Circle(randint(-350,350),randint(-250,250),10,"red") >> >> >> T=Turtle() >> T.forward(100) >> T.forward(100) >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> thanks, >> >> bb >> -- >> Brian Blais >> bblais at bryant.edu >> http://web.bryant.edu/~bblais >> http://bblais.blogspot.com/ >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Edu-sig mailing list >> Edu-sig at python.org >> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig >> >> -- Brian Blais bblais at bryant.edu http://web.bryant.edu/~bblais http://bblais.blogspot.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From macquigg at ece.arizona.edu Mon Feb 1 14:21:33 2010 From: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu (David MacQuigg) Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2010 06:21:33 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] Math + Python: reviewing some themes (long) Message-ID: <4B66D55D.5050902@ece.arizona.edu> kirby urner wrote: > More to the point is wanting to render pre-existing well-established > mathematics in a more accessible, hands-on, and intelligible > format, without losing any backward compatibility. > > List comprehensions *illuminate* ideas about functions, do not > detract from them. Creating a list of (domain, range) tuples > using "zip" is kind of interesting, gives a hands on component > to what's in the book. I learned about list comprehensions from Mark Lutz's "Learning Python". Like everything in that book, it was slowly, carefully explained in terms so easy, even a non-programmer like myself could follow every step. I never used them much, however, because it just seemed like a complex syntax that I could do more easily with a simple for loop. Then I read Michel Paul's "Manifesto", and it hit me like lightning. Of course, its just set notation - simple, elegant, and executable!! What could be simpler than saying the factors of N are all n <= N//2 such that N % n == 0. You don't need any "programming" to understand that. This is how we will get kids (and teachers) into computational thinking. Not a massive overhaul of the curriculum, but little things like this that are clearly useful or elegant, or that lead to insight, or that are just fun and relevant to the subject being taught. Introducing programming into our existing classes needs to be done in a way that does not push aside current topics, does not require a big commitment, and does not threaten teachers who have seen only the intimidating side of programming. -- Dave From vceder at canterburyschool.org Mon Feb 1 14:48:08 2010 From: vceder at canterburyschool.org (Vern Ceder) Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2010 08:48:08 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] odd drawing problem with turtle.py In-Reply-To: <953804BA-5723-427E-A316-9B16A94BAD17@bryant.edu> References: <953804BA-5723-427E-A316-9B16A94BAD17@bryant.edu> Message-ID: <4B66DB98.9030800@canterburyschool.org> Brian Blais wrote: >> On Jan 31, 2010, at 23:05 , John Posner wrote: >> >>> Try commenting out this statement: >>> >>> self.turtle.tracer(False) >>> >>> That helps on Python 2.6.4. > > > interesting. It seems as if the tracer property is a global one: Actually, the tracer method that does the work is part of the TurtleScreen class, and individual Turtle instances just access the tracer method of the TurtleScreen they inhabit... if that makes sense. So since your turtles are on the same screen, yes, in effect, tracer is sort of global. Cheers, Vern > > In [1]:t1=Turtle() > > In [2]:t1.tracer() > Out[2]:1 > > In [3]:t1.tracer(False) > > In [4]:t1.tracer() > Out[4]:0 > > In [5]:t2=Turtle() > > In [6]:t2.tracer() > Out[6]:0 > > In [7]:t2.tracer(True) > > In [8]:t1.tracer() > Out[8]:1 > > looks like I need to set the tracer manually. > > however, even if the tracer is off, shouldn't it still draw the line? > when I put in the T.tracer(True) it works, but I shouldn't need to I think. > > > On Jan 31, 2010, at 21:11 , kirby urner wrote: > >> I don't see where you've defined a Turtle class to instantiate sir. > > Turtle is given in turtle.py. I should have subclassed it, but I was > being lazy. :) > > thanks for the fast replies! > > > bb > > >> On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 4:27 PM, Brian Blais > > wrote: >>> I'm on Python 2.5, but using the updated turtle.py Version 1.0.1 - 24. 9. >>> 2009. The following script draws 5 circles, which it is supposed to, but >>> then doesn't draw the second turtle which is supposed to simply move >>> forward. Any ideas? >>> from turtle import * >>> from numpy.random import randint >>> resetscreen() >>> class Circle(object): >>> def __init__(self,x,y,r,color): >>> self.x=x >>> self.y=y >>> self.r=r >>> self.color=color >>> >>> self.turtle=Turtle(visible=False) >>> self.turtle.tracer(False) >>> self.draw() >>> >>> def draw(self): >>> self.turtle.penup() >>> self.turtle.setposition(self.x,self.y) >>> self.turtle.setheading(0) >>> self.turtle.backward(self.r) >>> self.turtle.pendown() >>> self.turtle.fill(True) >>> self.turtle.pencolor("black") >>> self.turtle.fillcolor(self.color) >>> self.turtle.circle(self.r) >>> self.turtle.fill(False) >>> self.turtle.penup() >>> >>> for i in range(5): >>> c=Circle(randint(-350,350),randint(-250,250),10,"red") >>> >>> >>> T=Turtle() >>> T.forward(100) >>> T.forward(100) >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> thanks, >>> >>> bb >>> -- >>> Brian Blais >>> bblais at bryant.edu >>> http://web.bryant.edu/~bblais >>> http://bblais.blogspot.com/ >>> >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Edu-sig mailing list >>> Edu-sig at python.org >>> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig >>> >>> > > -- > Brian Blais > bblais at bryant.edu > http://web.bryant.edu/~bblais > http://bblais.blogspot.com/ > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig -- This time for sure! -Bullwinkle J. Moose ----------------------------- Vern Ceder, Director of Technology Canterbury School, 3210 Smith Road, Ft Wayne, IN 46804 vceder at canterburyschool.org; 260-436-0746; FAX: 260-436-5137 The Quick Python Book, 2nd Ed - http://bit.ly/bRsWDW From kirby.urner at gmail.com Mon Feb 1 18:29:25 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 09:29:25 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] odd drawing problem with turtle.py In-Reply-To: <953804BA-5723-427E-A316-9B16A94BAD17@bryant.edu> References: <953804BA-5723-427E-A316-9B16A94BAD17@bryant.edu> Message-ID: On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 3:27 AM, Brian Blais wro > > I don't see where you've defined a Turtle class to instantiate sir. > > > Turtle is given in turtle.py. I should have subclassed it, but I was being > lazy. :) > > thanks for the fast replies! > > > > bb > > > No obvious need to subclass. You weren't being lazy, I was being sloppy. I'm glad Vern caught my error right away. Kirby -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From macquigg at ece.arizona.edu Mon Feb 1 18:45:37 2010 From: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu (David MacQuigg) Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:45:37 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] Sage, SciPy or continue with MatLab ??? In-Reply-To: References: <4B5EC9C6.5040301@ece.arizona.edu> <4B632DCB.3010900@ece.arizona.edu> <40ea4eb01001291840w7c57a492o2fe17c5416ab6a31@mail.gmail.com> <4B64F9E5.4080604@ece.arizona.edu> <40ea4eb01001311005y3c66da77ybf6c0949250dd389@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4B671341.2050601@ece.arizona.edu> kirby urner wrote: > On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 10:05 AM, michel paul wrote: > > > << SNIP >> > > >> Again, one of the things I truly love about Sage is that at its core, it is >> pure Python. I was delighted with something one of my FST students said. I >> had been using Sage as my blackboard in class, and then I started showing >> them pure Python. My student said that he liked having to think things >> through in pure Python better than using Sage directly, because Sage seemed >> so overwhelming. When I had them restricted to just the Python shell, he >> liked having to reason with just a small set of constructs. I was glad to >> hear him say that, as it showed he was really getting the message about what >> I was saying 'computational thinking' was all about. >> >> - Michel >> > > Thank you for sharing more about Sage, the above remark especially. > > Yes, like Mathematica, Sage may seem overwhelming given how the math > concepts come flooding in on top of Python. > > If Python is unfamiliar to begin with, then the learning curve may seem > vertical. > > If you read through parts of the tutorial below (as I've been doing), > you'll see that the introductory chapters read a lot like a standard > Python tutorial. > > This book is written (per introduction) for Sage users who have been > exposed to a computer language before, just maybe not Python.... > > http://sage.math.washington.edu/home/tkosan/newbies_book/sage_for_newbies_v1.23.pdf > Nice tutorial. I'm still having difficulty seeing an advantage of Sage over Python/SciPy, however. I'm putting together a proposal for a freshman-level course in CS. Currently we have three courses - one for CS majors (Java), one for computer engineers (C), and one for physics and astronomy (C). Matlab is also used in many of our science and engineering classes. Here it is just a tool, not a subject of study in itself. The course I will propose could serve all departments, and will cover the fundamentals common to all. It could also be an excellent high school preparation for college. The language will almost certainly be Python, although we may get as far as introducing a little Java or C. (This could perhaps be an option in the last three weeks - Java for CS majors, and C for engineers and scientists.) Graphics will be very important - everything from simple 2D plots to 3D animations. The focus will be on computing fundamentals, however, not the details of how these packages work. They are just tools to visualize an equation or process and aid in the understanding of concepts. Examples contributed by faculty in math, science and engineering will be an outstanding feature of this course. Here is where we need more than the standard library in Python. We need a Fourier transform that "just works" and produces beautiful spectra of various waveforms and images. We need the functionality of MatLab, without its drawbacks. I've been leaning toward Python/SciPy/MatPlotLib, but recent discussions of Sage have me interested in looking at alternatives. What are the factors we need to consider? 1) Features. Does the package do everything we might want, now and in the future when students use it for later classes and on the job. 2) Simplicity. Is it easy to set up and use on student computers (Windows, Mac or Linux)? Is it easy to learn? Is it open-source, so students can dig into it as deep as they like? Is it available everywhere without legal complications, e.g. MatLab's license? 3) Universality. This is more than just popularity (counting users). We need a minimum level of community support (discussion groups, interest from employers, programs on SourceForge, books from Amazon, etc). Availability of textbooks is a special consideration in this category. Ruby, Prothon, Scala, etc. (one up from Python?) have nothing comparable to Litvin/Zelle/Goldwasser. 4) Conformity. Does it fit in well with existing curricula? Is there an easy transition to Java, C, MatLab, etc. Can it be used as just a tool in a course that has nothing to do with programming? This last factor is especially difficult for us idealists. We might like to toss out everything in the status quo, and start with a clean slate, but that approach will get us nowhere. We need options all the way from a one-hour demo to a whole course centered on the use of these tools. Before comparing these packages, let's discuss the factors above. Have I left out anything important? -- Dave ************************************************************ * * David MacQuigg, PhD email: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu * * * Research Associate phone: USA 520-721-4583 * * * * ECE Department, University of Arizona * * * * 9320 East Mikelyn Lane * * * * http://purl.net/macquigg Tucson, Arizona 85710 * ************************************************************ * From wdjoyner at gmail.com Mon Feb 1 20:57:44 2010 From: wdjoyner at gmail.com (David Joyner) Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 14:57:44 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] Sage, SciPy or continue with MatLab ??? In-Reply-To: <4B671341.2050601@ece.arizona.edu> References: <4B632DCB.3010900@ece.arizona.edu> <40ea4eb01001291840w7c57a492o2fe17c5416ab6a31@mail.gmail.com> <4B64F9E5.4080604@ece.arizona.edu> <40ea4eb01001311005y3c66da77ybf6c0949250dd389@mail.gmail.com> <4B671341.2050601@ece.arizona.edu> Message-ID: <8cf963451002011157t70bebb38if33ab089464b382c@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 12:45 PM, David MacQuigg wrote: > kirby urner wrote: >> ... > > I'm putting together a proposal for a freshman-level course in CS. > ?Currently we have three courses - one for CS majors (Java), one for > computer engineers (C), and one for physics and astronomy (C). ? Matlab is > also used in many of our science and engineering classes. ?Here it is just a > tool, not a subject of study in itself. > > The course I will propose could serve all departments, and will cover the > fundamentals common to all. ?It could also be an excellent high school > preparation for college. ?The language will almost certainly be Python, > although we may get as far as introducing a little Java or C. ?(This could > perhaps be an option in the last three weeks - Java for CS majors, and C for > engineers and scientists.) > > Graphics will be very important - everything from simple 2D plots to 3D > animations. ?The focus will be on computing fundamentals, however, not the > details of how these packages work. ?They are just tools to visualize an > equation or process and aid in the understanding of concepts. > > Examples contributed by faculty in math, science and engineering will be an > outstanding feature of this course. ?Here is where we need more than the > standard library in Python. ?We need a Fourier transform that "just works" > and produces beautiful spectra of various waveforms and images. ?We need the > functionality of MatLab, without its drawbacks. > > I've been leaning toward Python/SciPy/MatPlotLib, but recent discussions of > Sage have me interested in looking at alternatives. ?What are the factors we > need to consider? > > 1) Features. ?Does the package do everything we might want, now and in the > future when students use it for later classes and on the job. > 2) Simplicity. ?Is it easy to set up and use on student computers (Windows, > Mac or Linux)? ?Is it easy to learn? ?Is it open-source, so students can dig > into it as deep as they like? ? Is it available everywhere without legal > complications, e.g. MatLab's license? I think there are binaries for python/scipy at enthought.com for various platforms, but I'm not positive. You might want to check them out. IMHO Sage will do what you want but for the windows users (mac+linux installs are actually fairly easy - with binaries at sagemath.org or you can compile form source) you have 2 options: your students will run Sage from a virtual machine environment (virtualbox is used, I believe) or run sage from a server (such as at sagenb.org, but presumably local to your campus). I am teaching a python+math computation class now and allow students to either use pure python or sage via a local sage server. Sage includes scipy and sympy. I do not have a good argument against matlab. If you and your students can afford it and you think they need to learn matlab for their career-path then there is little I can say against that. However, if cost is an issue then octave may be an option, as it is apparently 90% matlab compatible. If you are going to teach students programming you should not start them out with matlab. (Sorry, had to get that out of my system.) I should add that Sage servers are supposed to be able to work with octave commands (in place of Sage) but I have not tried it. You might want to go to sagenb.org and sign up for an account and do a "test drive" before you make a final decision. > 3) Universality. ?This is more than just popularity (counting users). ? We > need a minimum level of community support (discussion groups, interest from > employers, programs on SourceForge, books from Amazon, etc). ?Availability > of textbooks is a special consideration in this category. ?Ruby, Prothon, > Scala, etc. (one up from Python?) have nothing comparable to > Litvin/Zelle/Goldwasser. > 4) Conformity. ?Does it fit in well with existing curricula? ?Is there an > easy transition to Java, C, MatLab, etc. ?Can it be used as just a tool in a > course that has nothing to do with programming? > > This last factor is especially difficult for us idealists. ?We might like to > toss out everything in the status quo, and start with a clean slate, but > that approach will get us nowhere. ?We need options all the way from a > one-hour demo to a whole course centered on the use of these tools. > > Before comparing these packages, let's discuss the factors above. ?Have I > left out anything important? You left out the sympy+octave option, which is cross-platform and might server your needs (sympy.org and octave.org). > > -- Dave > > ************************************************************ ? ? * > * David MacQuigg, PhD ? ?email: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu ? * ?* > * Research Associate ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?phone: USA 520-721-4583 ? * ?* ?* > * ECE Department, University of Arizona ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? * ?* ?* > * ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 9320 East Mikelyn Lane ? ? ? * * * > * http://purl.net/macquigg ? ? ? ?Tucson, Arizona 85710 ? ? ? ? ?* > ************************************************************ ? ? * > > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > From punch at cse.msu.edu Mon Feb 1 20:46:19 2010 From: punch at cse.msu.edu (Bill Punch) Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:46:19 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] Sage, SciPy or continue with MatLab ??? In-Reply-To: <4B671341.2050601@ece.arizona.edu> References: <4B5EC9C6.5040301@ece.arizona.edu> <4B632DCB.3010900@ece.arizona.edu> <40ea4eb01001291840w7c57a492o2fe17c5416ab6a31@mail.gmail.com> <4B64F9E5.4080604@ece.arizona.edu> <40ea4eb01001311005y3c66da77ybf6c0949250dd389@mail.gmail.com> <4B671341.2050601@ece.arizona.edu> Message-ID: <4B672F8B.9090503@cse.msu.edu> Regarding conformity. When we moved the introductory course (used by both CS majors and non-majors) to Python, one of the criteria was to ensure as little changes to the subsequent curricula as possible. This obviously made the change much more palatable to the faculty. Thus the following course, CS2, remained in C++. What was the effect of throwing Python students into a C++ class? My colleague Rich Enbody and I studied that question and reported on it last year at SIGCSE and Pycon. Bottom line, those that took a CS1 course in C++ and those that took a CS1 course in Python performed equally well in a CS2 course in C++. Furthermore, very little (if any) changes were required in topic coverage for the CS2 course. Basically, we assume that learning the concepts in Python translated well to C++, enabling those that carry on to learn C++ fairly easily. For those that quit at the CS1 stage, they were taught a language that was practical, useful, in their subsequent careers. We have ample anecdotal evidence to that. I can provide the paper(s) to those interested. >>>bill<<< "The Practice of Computing Using Python", available 3/1/10, Addison Wesley/Pearson David MacQuigg wrote: > kirby urner wrote: >> On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 10:05 AM, michel paul >> wrote: >> >> >> << SNIP >> >> >> >>> Again, one of the things I truly love about Sage is that at its >>> core, it is >>> pure Python. I was delighted with something one of my FST students >>> said. I >>> had been using Sage as my blackboard in class, and then I started >>> showing >>> them pure Python. My student said that he liked having to think things >>> through in pure Python better than using Sage directly, because Sage >>> seemed >>> so overwhelming. When I had them restricted to just the Python >>> shell, he >>> liked having to reason with just a small set of constructs. I was >>> glad to >>> hear him say that, as it showed he was really getting the message >>> about what >>> I was saying 'computational thinking' was all about. >>> >>> - Michel >>> >> >> Thank you for sharing more about Sage, the above remark especially. >> >> Yes, like Mathematica, Sage may seem overwhelming given how the math >> concepts come flooding in on top of Python. >> >> If Python is unfamiliar to begin with, then the learning curve may seem >> vertical. >> >> If you read through parts of the tutorial below (as I've been doing), >> you'll see that the introductory chapters read a lot like a standard >> Python tutorial. >> >> This book is written (per introduction) for Sage users who have been >> exposed to a computer language before, just maybe not Python.... >> >> http://sage.math.washington.edu/home/tkosan/newbies_book/sage_for_newbies_v1.23.pdf >> >> > > Nice tutorial. I'm still having difficulty seeing an advantage of > Sage over Python/SciPy, however. > > I'm putting together a proposal for a freshman-level course in CS. > Currently we have three courses - one for CS majors (Java), one for > computer engineers (C), and one for physics and astronomy (C). > Matlab is also used in many of our science and engineering classes. > Here it is just a tool, not a subject of study in itself. > > The course I will propose could serve all departments, and will cover > the fundamentals common to all. It could also be an excellent high > school preparation for college. The language will almost certainly be > Python, although we may get as far as introducing a little Java or C. > (This could perhaps be an option in the last three weeks - Java for CS > majors, and C for engineers and scientists.) > > Graphics will be very important - everything from simple 2D plots to > 3D animations. The focus will be on computing fundamentals, however, > not the details of how these packages work. They are just tools to > visualize an equation or process and aid in the understanding of > concepts. > > Examples contributed by faculty in math, science and engineering will > be an outstanding feature of this course. Here is where we need more > than the standard library in Python. We need a Fourier transform that > "just works" and produces beautiful spectra of various waveforms and > images. We need the functionality of MatLab, without its drawbacks. > > I've been leaning toward Python/SciPy/MatPlotLib, but recent > discussions of Sage have me interested in looking at alternatives. > What are the factors we need to consider? > > 1) Features. Does the package do everything we might want, now and in > the future when students use it for later classes and on the job. > 2) Simplicity. Is it easy to set up and use on student computers > (Windows, Mac or Linux)? Is it easy to learn? Is it open-source, so > students can dig into it as deep as they like? Is it available > everywhere without legal complications, e.g. MatLab's license? > 3) Universality. This is more than just popularity (counting > users). We need a minimum level of community support (discussion > groups, interest from employers, programs on SourceForge, books from > Amazon, etc). Availability of textbooks is a special consideration in > this category. Ruby, Prothon, Scala, etc. (one up from Python?) have > nothing comparable to Litvin/Zelle/Goldwasser. > 4) Conformity. Does it fit in well with existing curricula? Is there > an easy transition to Java, C, MatLab, etc. Can it be used as just a > tool in a course that has nothing to do with programming? > > This last factor is especially difficult for us idealists. We might > like to toss out everything in the status quo, and start with a clean > slate, but that approach will get us nowhere. We need options all the > way from a one-hour demo to a whole course centered on the use of > these tools. > > Before comparing these packages, let's discuss the factors above. > Have I left out anything important? > > -- Dave > > ************************************************************ * > * David MacQuigg, PhD email: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu * * > * Research Associate phone: USA 520-721-4583 * * * > * ECE Department, University of Arizona * * * > * 9320 East Mikelyn Lane * * * > * http://purl.net/macquigg Tucson, Arizona 85710 * > ************************************************************ * > > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig From vceder at canterburyschool.org Tue Feb 2 03:39:04 2010 From: vceder at canterburyschool.org (Vern Ceder) Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2010 21:39:04 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] No Virtual posters for PyCon Message-ID: <4B679048.8000600@canterburyschool.org> Hi everyone, I just wanted to let everyone know that the cool idea of having virtual posters on video at PyCon to encourage and recognize participation by students and teachers has proven to be a non-starter. We do have 17 very interesting live posters for PyCon (see http://us.pycon.org/2010/conference/posters/accepted/) including some that are education related, but no one has offered a virtual poster. At this point we're past the deadline and so close to the conference, that I'm pulling the plug and not ordering the monitor to show them. In a way, I understand the problem - I have a student doing an advanced project on genetic algorithms in Python, who loves to do video, and he couldn't find time (and I couldn't find time to nag him) to do one. And probably I didn't manage to get the word out to the right places at the right time. In any case, I'm not quite ready to give up on the idea completely. I've reworked the Google docs form to be more generic (as opposed to specific to PyCon) here - http://bit.ly/bbS8Ow . I'd be interested in everyone's opinion as to whether we should try to publicize it and gather submissions year round, rather than tying it specifically to PyCon. If we could get submissions we could have a page of links to them from the edu-sig page, perhaps, and then show them at a PyCon as a bonus. What do you think? Should we just let the idea go? Wait until the live posters are more established and then try again? Maybe we can bat this idea around a bit at PyCon. Cheers, Vern -- This time for sure! -Bullwinkle J. Moose ----------------------------- Vern Ceder, Director of Technology Canterbury School, 3210 Smith Road, Ft Wayne, IN 46804 vceder at canterburyschool.org; 260-436-0746; FAX: 260-436-5137 The Quick Python Book, 2nd Ed - http://bit.ly/bRsWDW From macquigg at ece.arizona.edu Tue Feb 2 16:00:11 2010 From: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu (David MacQuigg) Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:00:11 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] Sage, SciPy or continue with MatLab ??? In-Reply-To: <4B672F8B.9090503@cse.msu.edu> References: <4B5EC9C6.5040301@ece.arizona.edu> <4B632DCB.3010900@ece.arizona.edu> <40ea4eb01001291840w7c57a492o2fe17c5416ab6a31@mail.gmail.com> <4B64F9E5.4080604@ece.arizona.edu> <40ea4eb01001311005y3c66da77ybf6c0949250dd389@mail.gmail.com> <4B671341.2050601@ece.arizona.edu> <4B672F8B.9090503@cse.msu.edu> Message-ID: <4B683DFB.4060707@ece.arizona.edu> Hi Bill, Yes, I am interested. Please send copies or links of your papers and anecdotal evidence. Comments from former students would be especially interesting. It might be nice to compare the reactions of CS majors to majors in other departments. I'm a little surprised the Python students didn't actually do *better* than the C++ students. I guess it all depends on the way these courses are taught. I can imagine a CS2 class in C++ where anyone who isn't fluent on day one gets slammed. A more cooperative environment, in which CS1 students get an introduction to C++, and CS2 students get a little time to get fluent in the new language, might be just the opposite. In that situation, I would think the Python students might have an advantage because they spent more time on fundamentals. The transition from Python to Java seems especially easy. Students could just spend a few hours with JavaBat. Maybe we need a C++Whip website (or C++Bat if Nick Parlante does it first.) At UofA, our CS2-level is Java, and CS3 (at least in engineering) is C++. The choice of language at level 3 is entirely up to the professor, and can change each year. Most recently this has been Smalltalk, Java, now C++. -- Dave Bill Punch wrote: > Regarding conformity. When we moved the introductory course (used by > both CS majors and non-majors) to Python, one of the criteria was to > ensure as little changes to the subsequent curricula as possible. This > obviously made the change much more palatable to the faculty. Thus the > following course, CS2, remained in C++. > > What was the effect of throwing Python students into a C++ class? My > colleague Rich Enbody and I studied that question and reported on it > last year at SIGCSE and Pycon. Bottom line, those that took a CS1 course > in C++ and those that took a CS1 course in Python performed equally well > in a CS2 course in C++. Furthermore, very little (if any) changes were > required in topic coverage for the CS2 course. > > Basically, we assume that learning the concepts in Python translated > well to C++, enabling those that carry on to learn C++ fairly easily. > For those that quit at the CS1 stage, they were taught a language that > was practical, useful, in their subsequent careers. We have ample > anecdotal evidence to that. I can provide the paper(s) to those > interested. > > >>>bill<<< > "The Practice of Computing Using Python", available 3/1/10, > > From da.ajoy at gmail.com Wed Feb 3 03:54:54 2010 From: da.ajoy at gmail.com (Daniel Ajoy) Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:54:54 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] It IS about the technology: mathematics has computational objects Message-ID: http://republicofmath.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/it-is-about-the-technology-mathematics-has-computational-objects/ Daniel From bblais at bryant.edu Wed Feb 3 23:57:55 2010 From: bblais at bryant.edu (Brian Blais) Date: Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:57:55 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] mouse input in turtle module Message-ID: <146C3C50-CA41-4A38-B9F4-4633219B1E99@bryant.edu> Hello, I would like to find a way to pause, and get mouse input in the turtle module. Since it is built on tk, I thought perhaps there would be an easy way, but I am stumped. Specifically, I'd like something like: x,y,button=mouse_input() # pause in here until the mouse is clicked in the turtle window I know about the screenclick, where I can define a callback but I couldn't rig it to pause until a mouse clicked, even using global flags. Is there an example of this somewhere? For a bonus, I'd love to be able to out of it, either raising an exception or return a button=-1 or something. thanks, Brian Blais -- Brian Blais bblais at bryant.edu http://web.bryant.edu/~bblais http://bblais.blogspot.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kirby.urner at gmail.com Thu Feb 4 01:57:00 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 16:57:00 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] core versus superficial Python Message-ID: I've been offering some pointers to this gentleman in Indonesia wishing to learn Python. What's clear to me is he's chomping at the bit to get to the most impressive use case demonstrations, involving VPython, matplotlib, other 3rd party packages. He's not giving himself much time to just mess around in what we often call "core Python" (prevalent nomenclature, not my invention). This means he's deeply into issues such as re-scaling x-y axes for a plot, before ever writing his own class definition. All those tiny little examples involving Foo and Bar, giving simple step by step explanations, get skipped, in the rush to graph something sexy. I'm thinking a benefit of a curriculum such as Litvins' is you're allowed to stay within the core and not have to master many if any add-ons. That's kind of a cool luxury, to get a lot of face time with pure Python, before needing to encounter Sage, matplotlib, numpy or one of those. One might use other tools entirely for plots sometimes, say Java applets with easy GUI tools. It's a hybrid environment, with many technologies on display, a kind of a smorgasbord. Yes, Python is on the menu, but so is a lot of stuff, varies by teacher. My Saturday Academy courses have been slightly off this core Python path in that I use VPython from the start, because of it's high bang for the buck value. Being able to get some spatial geometry going pretty quickly is a strong enticement, a big win for low overhead. But I provide a lot of initial scaffolding and really spend a lot of time just sticking with core basics, using visual only sparingly in some meetups. Having visual output is one thing, but purely visual input is something else again. [ After a certain age or stage of readiness, I'd rather see learning a coding language as more of a left brain exercise, a lexical activity. Always dragging and dropping icons, working visually, provides lots of work for developers of such environments, yet always feeding those expectations, of "everything graphical" is too often a set up for future disappointment. Coding a video game, and playing one, are two different kinds of activity, we should not lie about this difference by always promising too much eye candy. Core Python includes importing from standard library, is not about denying ourselves access to sys, os, math and many more... including turtle. Programs like Sage on the other hand, take minor liberties with the syntax itself. That's "minor" in one sense, but in another sense you've removed a some boundaries, somewhat fuzzed the picture as to what Python is. If you have the luxury of being able to stay with core for awhile, that might be to your lasting benefit. A pre-college math course that's somewhat low pressure when it comes to whatever scripting language, not pushing too far or too fast, staying safely in a sandbox a lot of the time (not adventuring with add-ons too much), is going to be helping a diverse population. Why? Because a primary objective of this go-slow approach is to explicate broadly applicable mathematical concepts, not narrow concerns about syntax. Because the programming language is only part of the mix, not the only focus, some days the lessons have nothing at all to do with coding. Whole days go by when no whatsoever code is entered or evaluated. We might be making polyhedra with scissors and glue (or in my case, with snap-together identical parts, translucent plastic, no glue required): http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315 at N00/4328444871/ A great example of what a computer language might help demystify is Sigma notation. Math texts are full of capital greek Sigma symbols. However these may come across as highly mysterious on first pass -- the beginning of the end for some students, when they start to glaze over. With the semantics of do-loops (while loops, for loops) side-by-side, one explicating the other, the topic has not become doubly difficult. It's now only half as hard. Two views are better than one. This has been my finding at least, and the implications are far-reaching. Nor am I in any way alone in making this discovery i.e. this train left the station, had gathered steam, before I hopped aboard (I was recruited through APL, is how I tell the story today -- wouldn't have stuck around if it was all Fortran on punch cards... all because of REPL, still important i.e. the fun of immediate feedback, no need to compile and write lots of prompts for inputs to compensate). I'm going with Computational Thinking as a course name for trial balloon purposes. So far it seems to be gathering altitude. There's always the course description for getting wordy. That's where you might say something about discrete math, or a mix of traditional and more contemporary topics. Some curricula will dive into cellular automata, some into polyhedra, some into both, some into neither... My thanks to those who suggested Computational Thinking as a possible moniker. Kirby -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From csev at umich.edu Fri Feb 5 18:10:32 2010 From: csev at umich.edu (csev) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 11:10:32 -0600 Subject: [Edu-sig] Python for Informatics (based on Think Python) featured on the Creative Commons Blog Message-ID: <59218007-1F78-4FCC-BA3B-D58262556AA1@umich.edu> Here is the post about the book at Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/20559 "Chuck Severance, clinical professor at the University of Michigan?s School of Information, recently published a new textbook in 11 days because he was able to remix an existing textbook." Here is my Blog post: http://www.dr-chuck.com/csev-blog/000679.html "It is quite natural for academics who are continuously told to ?publish or perish? to want to always create something from scratch that is their own contribution. This book is an for me experiment in ?re-mixing? an book titled Think Python: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist written by Allen B. Downey, Jeff Elkner and others." Thanks to Jeff and Alan for making it possible and for letting me switch the copyright to CC-BY-Share Alike. /Chuck Severance -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kirby.urner at gmail.com Fri Feb 5 22:31:48 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 13:31:48 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] Python for Informatics (based on Think Python) featured on the Creative Commons Blog In-Reply-To: <59218007-1F78-4FCC-BA3B-D58262556AA1@umich.edu> References: <59218007-1F78-4FCC-BA3B-D58262556AA1@umich.edu> Message-ID: Another really excellent contribution! I've just been perusing these first 10 chapters. You're showing open source in action with respect to textbooks, not just source code. A copyleft ecosystem in which teachers are explicitly encouraged to build on the contributions of peers is going to accelerate the availability of curriculum materials. A few more comments off list... Kirby On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 9:10 AM, csev wrote: > Here is the post about the book at Creative Commons: > > http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/20559 > > "Chuck Severance, clinical professor at the University of Michigan?s > School of Information, recently published a new textbook in 11 days because > he was able to remix an existing textbook." > > Here is my Blog post: > > http://www.dr-chuck.com/csev-blog/000679.html > > "It is quite natural for academics who are continuously told to ?publish > or perish? to want to always create something from scratch that is their own > contribution. This book is an for me experiment in ?re-mixing? an book > titled Think Python: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist written by Allen > B. Downey, Jeff Elkner and others." > > Thanks to Jeff and Alan for making it possible and for letting me switch > the copyright to CC-BY-Share Alike. > > /Chuck Severance > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From csev at umich.edu Sat Feb 6 14:56:17 2010 From: csev at umich.edu (csev) Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 07:56:17 -0600 Subject: [Edu-sig] Python for Informatics (based on Think Python) featured on the Creative Commons Blog In-Reply-To: References: <59218007-1F78-4FCC-BA3B-D58262556AA1@umich.edu> Message-ID: <35966A4E-618F-4662-92B5-8C73C62E14C1@umich.edu> On Feb 5, 2010, at 9:31 PM, kirby urner wrote: > What I'm not seeing here is any plans to venture into user-defined types > i.e. rolling your own classes. I am indeed tempted into user-defined types. I actually teach OO Python in my App Engine course because it is necessary there. And Think Python has a nice chapter. But my problem is find a use case that drives me there in "exploring data" - I see using objects all over the place - but making your own does not yet feel part of the data narrative. > That's maybe a line you draw between professional programmers and > people who need to use computers a lot? Right - and the other fun idea is that if "Python for Informatics" is the first book, then "Think Python" is the second book. In a second book (which feels very similar to the first book) you learn how all this stuff "works". I see in my crazy brain - a whole series of "Think Python" based books that feed into one another, all open content, and CC-BY-SA licensed all sharing basic text where needed. Pure Intro books: Learning Math with Python Exploring Data with Python ... ??? The middle book: Think like a Computer Scientist in Python The More advanced books: Web Programming in Python Game Programming in Python Building Graphical Tools with Python The key is that the books could specialize on their topics and not over-teach in any of the books. I know for example that you like to bring OO in for math - I don't think that is necessary (we can debate this forever :) ). I would like to see a Python for math that actually taught Math - not teaching Python though math. They can learn Python in the second course with "Think Python" > The text reads like a gentle on-ramp to "core Python" at the moment, > i.e. it's a very clear step by step intro. So my prejudice as a reader > is to think defining classes is just around the corner. Yes - it would be the next chapter. > I think there's a big "aha!" in Python when you've been using > dot notation to access the methods of built-in types, e.g. strings, > and then start to see how you're just hitting against pre-supplied > class definitions. Yes - and I love this - but the timing in the narrative must be right. It cannot be a trap door - as much as we like it. I have found in my App Engine course if I teach OO one week too early, I lose the students. The pattern I now use successfully in my App Engine course is to make them use a real object with self and everything: class LogoutHandler(webapp.RequestHandler): def get(self): .... And the *next week* teach them classes - just using strings and dictionaries does not produce sufficient curiosity to learn classes. A rich extension example with good pictures is the right preparation for a intro to classes - particularly if I keep saying "This syntax is a little new and we will explain it next week - just use it for now." instead of saying - "You must learn this now even though it is painful because next week we will be assuming this as a pre-requisite skill". > Given how some of the library stuff involved with screen scraping > might involve subclassing, maybe you're thinking to work it in under > networked applications or one of those i.e. you have your wily ways. Really? Send me an example - I will work it in. My thought for that chapter was to hack it as strings - where should I look for a better example? I ma not an expert on this stuff and learn new things all the time. Part of the fun of remixing Thin Python was learning a few new tricks along the way from Allen and Jeff. /Chuck From jeff at elkner.net Sun Feb 7 13:57:37 2010 From: jeff at elkner.net (Jeff Elkner) Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 07:57:37 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] Edu-sig Digest, Vol 79, Issue 9 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <37fa1dfb1002070457x25ad6c55wfe0a66ae2ea8ccdf@mail.gmail.com> I have to just say that this whole discussion is a dream come true for me! When I began adapting Allen's "How to think like a computer scientist" from Java to Python 10 years ago, it occurred to me that text books shared things in common with software that would make text books benefit from free collaboration in the same way software does. I hoped then that someday I'd be reading a posting like this on edu-sig! jeff elkner open book project http://openbookproject.net > From: csev > To: edu-sig at python.org > Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] Python for Informatics (based on Think Python) > ? ? ? ?featured on the Creative Commons Blog > Message-ID: <35966A4E-618F-4662-92B5-8C73C62E14C1 at umich.edu> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > Right - and the other fun idea is that if "Python for Informatics" is the first book, then "Think Python" is the second book. ? In a second book (which feels very similar to the first book) you learn how all this stuff "works". > > I see in my crazy brain - a whole series of "Think Python" based books that feed into one another, all open content, and CC-BY-SA licensed all sharing basic text where needed. > > Pure Intro books: > Learning Math with Python > Exploring Data with Python > > The middle book: > > Think like a Computer Scientist in Python > > The More advanced books: > > Web Programming in Python > Game Programming in Python > Building Graphical Tools with Python > > The key is that the books could specialize on their topics and not over-teach in any of the books. ?I know for example that you like to bring OO in for math - I don't think that is necessary (we can debate this forever :) ). ?I would like to see a Python for math that actually taught Math - not teaching Python though math. ?They can learn Python in the second course with "Think Python" > > /Chuck From mpaul213 at gmail.com Sun Feb 7 18:09:57 2010 From: mpaul213 at gmail.com (michel paul) Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 09:09:57 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] It IS about the technology: mathematics has computational objects In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <40ea4eb01002070909i3daab532s61eff670fe118043@mail.gmail.com> Thanks very much for sending this. Besides this one, his other posts are also worth reading. This one is especially useful for pinpointing a fundamental reason for the disconnect between (relevant) technology and secondary mathematics: Maybe in language or English teaching the technology is ?only a tool?. I want to argue a point of view that, for certain parts of mathematics the technology, the practice and the pedagogy cannot sensibly be separated. Yeah, that is precisely the point. It is extremely difficult to have dialog with the attitude that the technology is 'simply a tool' that we use to help us solve math problems, that the math and the technology are two different things, and that different people like different tools. I might like programming, but someone else might like to use a graphing calculator, for example. And though that point of view is quite understandable, it presents an obstacle when advocating a serious look at computational thinking. 'Computational thinking' gets equated with simply some other way of 'using a tool', and we've already got these nifty hand-held tools that do what we need within our curriculum, so why complicate matters? When the APs and SATs endorse 'using hand-helds so long as they don't have a QWERTY keyboard' as some kind of status quo, talking about Python/Sage seems like an unnecessary addition. It seems like an overly complicated 'tool' that can't be used on high stakes tests, so why waste one's time? Seriously, that really is the best argument I've ever been provided. How to answer it? My tendency in response has been to emphasize the importance of language. (I tend to be an idealist.) I've been saying, "It's not about the 'tool' or the 'gadget'. It's about language! Technology is actually language! That's significant for education! Literacy is all about language!" But that doesn't go very far. Education, it seems, is really not about literacy. So this guy's point is perfect. You want technology? OK! Why not make it RELEVANT??? And in his other posts he discusses how in the real world you're not going to get a job where they hand you a sheet of problems to do! More than likely you'll be working on projects with groups of people, and though you won't get 'tested', you will have to prepare a report on your project. So he's advocating courses based on projects rather than tests. I like that - math courses as project-based. - Michel On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 6:54 PM, Daniel Ajoy wrote: > > http://republicofmath.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/it-is-about-the-technology-mathematics-has-computational-objects/ > > > > > Daniel > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > -- "Computer science is the new mathematics." -- Dr. Christos Papadimitriou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From philhwagner at gmail.com Sun Feb 7 20:25:45 2010 From: philhwagner at gmail.com (Phil Wagner) Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 11:25:45 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] Computational Math Wiki/Book Message-ID: Perhaps we might begin as Horton Miles says, "to make the road by walking". I would like to see if there would be interest in this community in contributing ideas, exercises, labs, projects to a Computational Math Wiki/Book. Something that a middle school/high school math teacher could use occasionally to illustrate a concept but eventually being capable of being a fully fledged curriculum that could encourage the 21st century mathematical thinking that so many of us want to encourage in our students. Having seen the incredible things that Michel, Kirby, and others have done, and wanting to share my own stuff, I really hope a project like this might gain some momentum. If you are interested in working on such a project, send me an email at philhwagner at gmail.com. After the initial setup is complete we can open it up to the larger Python community and even perhaps broaden the scope to include Geogebra and others. The information and materials are out there but spread out. Phil -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kirby.urner at gmail.com Sun Feb 7 22:11:28 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 13:11:28 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] Computational Math Wiki/Book In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 11:25 AM, Phil Wagner wrote: ... > If you are interested in working on such a project, send me an email at > philhwagner at gmail.com. After the initial setup is complete we can open it up > to the larger Python community and even perhaps broaden the scope to include > Geogebra and others. The information and materials are out there but spread > out. > > Phil > Hi Phil I'll say up front that this is the kind of project we're hoping to see a lot more of, i.e. groups of teachers spontaneously creating open source curriculum materials. I just wanted to suggest / mention Wikieducator as a possible outlet / platform for this work. The context is already established: teachers freely share material in a copyleft manner, welcoming collaboration. Teachers certify they have the necessary permissions to copyleft what they're sharing, which means browsers don't have to keep checking the licenses on every picture or paragraph. Lowering the red tape factor is a prerequisite for liberal arts culture (copyleft doesn't mean unattributed or uncredited as we all know -- citing sources is part of the drill). Python has a tiny footprint here Wikieducator, a page started by a faculty member in India and added to by moi. It's easy to get on, and when you're ready to get certified as a "wikibuddy" or one of those (they have a ranking system), that's not so hard either.[0] I wouldn't suggest expanding this page necessarily, but it'd be easy to do lots of internal links. FYI, I've already dumped a ton of Python-related math stuff on the web for free and have encouraged wide-spread copying. The stuff is somewhat esoteric, I like to think ahead of its time. Help yourself to what's there.[1] On the basis of these many math pages, the first using Python, I got to be a star of the show, was privileged to promulgate this material directly to assembled geeks at many a Pythonic event. Pycon and Europython going geeks aren't usually high school teachers though (Jeff Elkner an exception), and most attendees were too young to have high school aged kids of their own (or at least that used to be true -- Python itself is a fairly recent invention, it pays to remember). Are we entering a new chapter? Different parts of the world are responding differently. I'm hardly a know-it-all. We all have our anecdotal evidence for this and that. I'm up to comparing notes -- edu-sig has been good for that (lots of notes in the archives). This recent Educon in Philadelphia, with its ambitious use of networking tools, is at least keeping the flame alive.[2]. At the end of the day I see this as a student-driven trend. Having students work together on the content, with teacher supervision, is maybe where we should be going with this (thinking of Vern's question about not getting virtual posters to Pycon -- perhaps collaborating on curriculum materials is a more productive way to channel the same energy?). Having a whole class collaborate on an open source project on Wikieducator (or wherever), aimed at sharing about some topic, using Python turtle or whatever, would be an excellent way for a teacher to role model a shared workflow. Students would have something to look back on, as each build a portfolio. I hope we discuss this strategy here on edu-sig, think about how to consolidate efforts. We already have PyWhip and Crunchy Frog going, other experimental initiatives... Turtle Art... OLPC. Lots of great Python tutorials of a generic "learn the language" nature are already out there, starting with what's in the Python docs, some of them already translated into multiple languages. In starting some new project, we don't want to reinvent what's already out there. What would an outline look like? Kirby [0] http://wikieducator.org/PYTHON_TUTORIALS [1] http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/numeracy0.html is a good starting point -- an old page though, so I guarantee broken links at the bottom. This is one of four pages, touching on a variety of math topics (some of the same ones as in MFDA e.g. Fibonacci numbers). I give a lot of simple functions here, don't do any "objects first" or whatever (that thinking came later, after limited field testing, some successes). I'm big into "right brain" visuals (lots of geometry), trying to balance the very "left brain" lexical activity that is computer programming (it's not going to be all "point and click" -- we should be honest about that, even though Scratch is a great way to get into it). [2] http://educon22.org/conversations/Papert_Matters_Thinking_About_Children_Computers_and_Powerful_Ideas From aharrin at luc.edu Mon Feb 8 02:21:58 2010 From: aharrin at luc.edu (Andrew Harrington) Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 09:21:58 +0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] educators at Pycon, wiki page Message-ID: Pycon is getting close. The only ones signed on to the edu-sig pycon wiki page http://us.pycon.org/2010/openspace/edu-sig/ are Vern and me. Is anyone else going? Andy -- Andrew N. Harrington Director of Academic Programs Computer Science Department Loyola University Chicago 512B Lewis Towers (office) Snail mail to Lewis Towers 416 820 North Michigan Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60611 http://www.cs.luc.edu/~anh Phone: 312-915-7982 Fax: 312-915-7998 gpd at cs.luc.edu for graduate administration upd at cs.luc.edu for undergrad administration aharrin at luc.edu as professor -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From macquigg at ece.arizona.edu Tue Feb 9 00:33:43 2010 From: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu (David MacQuigg) Date: Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:33:43 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] Transition to OOP In-Reply-To: <35966A4E-618F-4662-92B5-8C73C62E14C1@umich.edu> References: <59218007-1F78-4FCC-BA3B-D58262556AA1@umich.edu> <35966A4E-618F-4662-92B5-8C73C62E14C1@umich.edu> Message-ID: <4B709F57.30808@ece.arizona.edu> csev wrote: > On Feb 5, 2010, at 9:31 PM, kirby urner wrote: > >> What I'm not seeing here is any plans to venture into user-defined types >> i.e. rolling your own classes. >> > > I am indeed tempted into user-defined types. I actually teach OO Python in my App Engine course because it is necessary there. And Think Python has a nice chapter. But my problem is find a use case that drives me there in "exploring data" - I see using objects all over the place - but making your own does not yet feel part of the data narrative. > Unless the course is *about* programming, I would delay user-defined classes until you really feel the need. Then there is no need to motivate the extra complexity. The benefits will be apparent. I see that Mathematics for the Digital Age does show an example of a class on page 88, but I note that this is anecdotal information, not something the students are expected to learn. Fast forward six years. I'm helping with a graduate course on cryptography, and for the first time this semester felt the need for a class definition. I wrote a function to model an LFSR. Then it became apparent that I need more that just this one function, so I wrote a class definition. You can see the two side-by-side at http://ece.arizona.edu/~edatools/ece596c/LFSR.html. Even if the class will now do everything the function does and more, it is still nice to study the function first, understand how the LFSR works, then look at the more complex class definition. ************************************************************ * * David MacQuigg, PhD email: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu * * * Research Associate phone: USA 520-721-4583 * * * * ECE Department, University of Arizona * * * * 9320 East Mikelyn Lane * * * * http://purl.net/macquigg Tucson, Arizona 85710 * ************************************************************ * From kirby.urner at gmail.com Tue Feb 9 04:02:34 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 19:02:34 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] Transition to OOP In-Reply-To: <4B709F57.30808@ece.arizona.edu> References: <59218007-1F78-4FCC-BA3B-D58262556AA1@umich.edu> <35966A4E-618F-4662-92B5-8C73C62E14C1@umich.edu> <4B709F57.30808@ece.arizona.edu> Message-ID: On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 3:33 PM, David MacQuigg wrote: > csev wrote: >> >> On Feb 5, 2010, at 9:31 PM, kirby urner wrote: >> >>> >>> What I'm not seeing here is any plans to venture into user-defined types >>> i.e. rolling your own classes. >>> >> >> I am indeed tempted into user-defined types. ?I actually teach OO Python >> in my App Engine course because it is necessary there. ?And Think Python has >> a nice chapter. ?But my problem is find a use case that drives me there in >> "exploring data" - I see using objects all over the place - but making your >> own does not yet feel part of the data narrative. >> > > Unless the course is *about* programming, I would delay user-defined classes > until you really feel the need. ?Then there is no need to motivate the extra > complexity. ?The benefits will be apparent. ?I see that Mathematics for the > Digital Age does show an example of a class on page 88, but I note that this > is anecdotal information, not something the students are expected to learn. > Yeah, I think I'm ready to throw in the towel on this one. I know there's this Standard Library class, an XML parser or something, that you subclass and run against an HTML file say. You write methods for if it's a
tag, a

tag or whatever (?). You basically script out this catcher's mitt, that listens on tags. OK, so I went looking for it in urllib2, and gave up. Why? Because in talking to my company president friend, who hacks a LAMP stack and filters through HTML (energy biz focus), I learned that people use Beautiful Soup, and you don't need to know subclassing for that. So for Dr. Chuck's specific book and application, I'm thinking he's right to be skeptical and you're right to back him up. Regarding Litvins pg. 88, yeah that's somewhat anecdotal in that there's a reduce function mentioned, but not provided. It'd normally involve GCD (we're reducing to lowest terms by factoring out the greatest common denominator) but that function doesn't come until the RSA section at the end of the book. So this is not necessarily the proper place to start in with the basics of OO. So I'd posit something more like the gentle introduction to Classes on Wikieducator, that simple intro at the end (PSF_Snake demo). This would be in a different book in a different course, probably with MFDA still on ahead for a lot of those taking it. A prime motivation for user defined types is of course operator overloading (what page 88 illustrates). This is a math course so when we add 3/4 and 5/8, we'd like to use syntax as natural and familiar as (3/4) + (5/8), as this reminds us we're working with ordinary Fractions (using an executable notation). Unlike many languages, Python makes this feature unusually easy (Ruby too), so we learn just enough about OO to get that working. We're not in MRO country, not doing multiple inheritance. We're just figuring out what makes Rational Numbers tick, which is why a skilled teacher might use Litvins page 88 as a fun touch stone. We get to it already knowing about GCD, as Euclid's Method came earlier, plus we've been through all that Dog, Monkey, Mammal stuff and don't find the notation that alien any more (yet we're not Python black belts, would still need more CS, then maybe Java, so many paths possible). Re MFDA 2nd edition pg 89: Note how f1 + f2 i.e. f1 .__add__(f2) is an argument to the format function and being fed to a string. The + sign is triggering the __add__ in other words (the only operator implemented on pg. 88, more a sketch than working code). Not complaining. MFDA is a perfectly legitimate slice through a vast topic space. Design decisions were made. Not much use of a turtle either, or polyhedra. Can't do everything in one slim tome. That's why we need (and have) lots of books, more on the way, some of 'em wikis. Anyway in this case it's not that it's a course about programming, so much as it's a course about "types of math object" and what makes them tick. Vectors, Polyhedra, Polynomials... those things that they teach you about with or without computers, on the scene long before OO. Some courses just take advantage of some newer tools. Mathematica? GameMaker? Depends on the catalog. A Computational Thinking class is not identically a Bioinformatics class, which latter might be more about filtering through reams of data (or a Shakespeare play), a perfectly valid and reasonable use of a scripting language, one of the best use cases out there. Python is very appropriate for this, as the text cleverly shows. So yeah (throwing in the towel) maybe there's no great use case for getting into user-defined types. Here's a valid reason to branch off an excellent beginning of How To Think Like a Computer Scientist, and to take it in some other direction. More with Regular Expressions perhaps, talking to databases. A tree of alternatives naturally grows here. That's what open source curriculum writing should encourage, not everyone rewriting the same book. We'll go off in our different directions and compare notes where paths cross. > Fast forward six years. ?I'm helping with a graduate course on cryptography, > and for the first time this semester felt the need for a class definition. > ?I wrote a function to model an LFSR. ?Then it became apparent that I need > more that just this one function, so I wrote a class definition. ?You can > see the two side-by-side at > http://ece.arizona.edu/~edatools/ece596c/LFSR.html. > > Even if the class will now do everything the function does and more, it is > still nice to study the function first, understand how the LFSR works, then > look at the more complex class definition. > Coolness. Fun to think about crypto some more. I did a bunch of pages on crypto, starting with an implementation of Blowfish, linking to Neal Stephenson's book Cryptonomicon. I went on to provide a gentle build up to RSA that's pretty comprehensible. http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/crypto0.html If you check, you'll see I stay at the function level in the first section, but have some Permutation class going already by section two. This isn't their first exposure to Python, lets assume. We're more like at the end of MFDA, when they're ready to tackle RSA -- which is what I get to as well, maybe by a different route. Lots of teachers with web sites like this, showing off different ways to parse out the topics. Not saying the way I'm providing is best or only, just another. I made lots of cool graphics, mostly with POV-Ray. Even embedded a Java applet or two (I take some pride in my work, as one would hope). Now Patrick, my company president friend, does roll his own classes i.e. he's found the programmer's need for them. He uses the unit testing framework. He likes to encapsulate. But when he paws through HTML files, I think he's basically just using beautifulsoup, why reinvent that wheel? Sounds like we're all in agreement? Conclusion: a lot depends on what use cases you're wanting to cover. Too many use cases to cover them all. So pick and choose, teach accordingly. Sounds like a plan. Kirby Urner 4D Solutions Portland, Oregon > ************************************************************ ? ? * > * David MacQuigg, PhD ? ?email: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu ? * ?* > * Research Associate ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?phone: USA 520-721-4583 ? * ?* ?* > * ECE Department, University of Arizona ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? * ?* ?* > * ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 9320 East Mikelyn Lane ? ? ? * * * > * http://purl.net/macquigg ? ? ? ?Tucson, Arizona 85710 ? ? ? ? ?* > ************************************************************ ? ? * From kirby.urner at gmail.com Wed Feb 10 07:58:55 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010 22:58:55 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] learning harness of choice? Message-ID: Per some thread in the Philippines I'm following, a guy teaching new users using 3.1 in pure IDLE is frustrating finding that frustrating, too much crashing. I've heard that before, but haven't encountered much yet, testing on Win7 and Ubuntu 9.10 these days. Wing101 and most other IDEs (e.g. iPython) with live shell are not sporting 3.x yet. I've got Eclipse + pydev but isn't that overblown for just getting one's feet wet? If I do that class at PSU in July, I'll need to give the lab assistant my preferred configuration. That's always been 2.x + IDLE + Vpython + POV-Ray, but I'm playing with doing straight 3.x and keeping it core Python, fewer bells and whistles? However, pure terminal seems too austere, and just a text editor with no shell is wasting the big advantage of REPL. What, you're running 3.1 inside emacs? How is that working out for ya? Enrollment up or down? Reassuring were those answers suggesting changing security settings, as half the time what's messing up IDLE is the firewall caring too much about the loop back. Anyway, I'd be interested to know what 3.x classrooms go with, especially if not with IDLE, ditto 2.x classrooms. Some have said Sage. Kirby ** http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2010/02/small-steps.html From andre.roberge at gmail.com Wed Feb 10 12:08:22 2010 From: andre.roberge at gmail.com (Andre Roberge) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:08:22 -0400 Subject: [Edu-sig] learning harness of choice? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <7528bcdd1002100308t68dc7ad1vc6f648cd205c0e2@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 2:58 AM, kirby urner wrote: > Per some thread in the Philippines I'm following, a guy teaching new > users using 3.1 in pure IDLE is frustrating finding that frustrating, > too much crashing. > > SNIP > However, pure terminal seems too austere, and just a text editor with > no shell is wasting the big advantage of REPL. > > Well, you can always have both using Firefox ... and Crunchy. ;-) It does work with Python 3.1. Andr? > > Kirby > > ** http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2010/02/small-steps.html > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kirby.urner at gmail.com Wed Feb 10 18:14:10 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 09:14:10 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] learning harness of choice? In-Reply-To: <7528bcdd1002100308t68dc7ad1vc6f648cd205c0e2@mail.gmail.com> References: <7528bcdd1002100308t68dc7ad1vc6f648cd205c0e2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 3:08 AM, Andre Roberge wrote: << snip >> > Well, you can always have both using Firefox ... and Crunchy. ;-)? It does > work with Python 3.1. > > > Thanks Andr?. I was impressed by your demo last year at Pycon and have played with Crunchy since. I haven't had any opportunity to try it in a classroom. I could jump in on that Philippines list and recommend teachers check it out. This tutorial looks friendly: http://tinyurl.com/yjj8tsh I value feedback from those who get more classroom experience than I do. Kirby (from Linus Pauling Campus) From philhwagner at gmail.com Wed Feb 10 19:48:17 2010 From: philhwagner at gmail.com (Phil Wagner) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:48:17 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] Computational Math Wiki Message-ID: Alright, based upon the advice of Kirby and the interest generated by the many emails I received I have set up a page on WikiEducator. http://wikieducator.org/Computational_Math. I hope that many of you will sign up for free accounts with WikiEducator and add pages to the Computational Math wiki. This was my first wiki and so my formatting doesn't yet look as nice as others out there but I will learn in the near future, I just wanted to get my content up there. Hopefully, you will all contribute large projects or even quick 5 minute demos to the wiki. As more people add to it, more ideas will be generated. It is really exciting to be working with all of you and I can't wait to see this take off! Phil P.S. if you have any suggestions or feedback please feel free to email me at philhwagner at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From droujkova at gmail.com Wed Feb 10 20:21:01 2010 From: droujkova at gmail.com (Maria Droujkova) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:21:01 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] Computational Math Wiki In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I just added "Names" item to this page, so if you are interested in contributing, say so there. Cheers, Maria Droujkova http://www.naturalmath.com Make math your own, to make your own math. On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 1:48 PM, Phil Wagner wrote: > Alright, based upon the advice of Kirby and the interest generated by the > many emails I received I have set up a page on WikiEducator. > http://wikieducator.org/Computational_Math. I hope that many of you will > sign up for free accounts with WikiEducator and add pages to the > Computational Math wiki. This was my first wiki and so my formatting doesn't > yet look as nice as others out there but I will learn in the near future, I > just wanted to get my content up there. > > Hopefully, you will all contribute large projects or even quick 5 minute > demos to the wiki. As more people add to it, more ideas will be generated. > It is really exciting to be working with all of you and I can't wait to see > this take off! > > Phil > > P.S. if you have any suggestions or feedback please feel free to email me > at philhwagner at gmail.com > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kirby.urner at gmail.com Wed Feb 10 20:24:36 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:24:36 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] Computational Math Wiki In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 11:21 AM, Maria Droujkova wrote: > I just added "Names" item to this page, so if you are interested in > contributing, say so there. > > Cheers, > Maria Droujkova > http://www.naturalmath.com > > Make math your own, to make your own math. Would a link to Digital Mathematics be apropos? I'd like to add one, as a related Wikieducator topic. http://wikieducator.org/Digital_Math Kirby From kirby.urner at gmail.com Wed Feb 10 20:58:06 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:58:06 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] Another "mind map" for planning Pythonic math Message-ID: The "Executable Mathematics" branch on in this web frame gives some sense of where the Math 2.0 group is going with Python. We've been discussing a possible conference, might double as an eduPycon. http://mind42.com/pub/mindmap?mid=dec0c458-c74e-4057-b041-c74d26b986e0 You'll see Python mentioned explicitly, next to Mathematica (what O'Reilly is using?). Nothing set in stone yet. Lots of overlap with Educon and NCTM, I may have already mentioned? Kirby From droujkova at gmail.com Wed Feb 10 20:05:14 2010 From: droujkova at gmail.com (Maria Droujkova) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:05:14 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] Math 2.0 Webinar tonight: CEET and other teacher projects Message-ID: In the Help a Teacher and Events tracks, this week's webinar host Sue Hellman will talk about a Canadian Math 2.0 online conference happening this week. Please note the webinar room is different from the one we usually use. Wednesday, February 10th we will meet in the LearnCentral public Elluminate room at 6:30pm Pacific / 9:30pm Eastern time: https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=M.438D554F4A450D77B901E14104C303 Sue Hellman will talk about her successes in teaching with technology (zero to hero in two years), and community building for teachers in British Columbia, Canada and globally. She will also give us a sneak preview of the CEET Math 2.0 Moodle event she is organizing in February. Here is the event description from its page: Are you wondering what blogs, wikis, and Web 2.0 have to do with teaching math? We are hosting a free and open Math Moodle week from Feb. 12 to 19th on Math 2.0: Tools & Resources for 21st Century Learners. The event is an opportunity for educators interested in teaching math to collaborate in the sharing of strategies, resources, ideas, questions and feedback about trying new technology tools in math class. Register at http://tinyurl.com/ylmvd7n. You can also take a look at the Doing the Math wiki (http://doing-the-math. wikispaces.com/) and add your information to the Meet & Greet page. This wiki is a work in progress, but will eventually become a cache for all resources shared during the event. Check out Community of Expertise in Educational Technology (CEET) Math 2.0 group organized by Sue: http://elgg.openschool.bc.ca/pg/groups/1623/math-20/ Cheers, Maria Droujkova http://www.naturalmath.com Make math your own, to make your own math. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From philhwagner at gmail.com Thu Feb 11 00:31:03 2010 From: philhwagner at gmail.com (Phil Wagner) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:31:03 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] Computational Math Wiki Message-ID: Some have been sending me emails asking if something is ok to put on the Wiki. While I started the page, I don't want to give the impression that I am in charge of it (I don't have the time to be a fulltime Wiki Editor). I really want to open this up so feel free to add anything awesome to the site! All I ask on the site is that you don't change the main page (unless you have a suggestion or a link to add) and other people's pages (without their permission). I am so excited that the community is rallying around this. I hope this will be come an incredible resource for educators and demonstrate the importance of what we are trying to accomplish. Thank you all for your enthusiasm and support, I am so excited to be a part of this. Phil philhwagner at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kirby.urner at gmail.com Thu Feb 11 01:02:19 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:02:19 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] Computational Math Wiki In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 3:31 PM, Phil Wagner wrote: << SNIP >> > Thank you all for your enthusiasm and support, I am so excited to be a part > of this. > > Phil > philhwagner at gmail.com > > Got it. Internet slow today per thread below: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator/browse_thread/thread/da2b3ba9f1c6888f?hl=en Director Mackintosh congratulates our community for over 1000 hits on Python Tutorials already (and counting). That's small potatoes if you're a major news site, but it's more than a lot of published journal articles might get. Hooray for open source curriculum materials. I've been sharing news of Think Python with an Indonesian technicon, thanks to students wanting more Python. State University of Surabaya. http://groups.google.com/group/freecomputerbooks/web/think-python-an-introduction-to-software-design-2008-2009-allen-b-downey Kirby -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kirby.urner at gmail.com Thu Feb 11 01:33:57 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:33:57 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] Crunch Frog mentioned on Philippines list Message-ID: Hi Andre -- So my blurb about Crunch Frog just made it through moderation: http://groups.google.com/group/pinoy-python-users/browse_thread/thread/64359b0e5f22f919?hl=en I hope this will get a few new users trying out your learning harness. I went to high school in Manila, while dad worked first in UN then in US State Department (he was a regional planner by training, then education planner, started his career here in Portland). I met lots of innovative spirit in the Philippines. Maybe Crunchy will spread! Kirby -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From vceder at canterburyschool.org Tue Feb 16 16:09:17 2010 From: vceder at canterburyschool.org (Vern Ceder) Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:09:17 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] [Tutor] PyCon anyone? In-Reply-To: <1c2a2c591002160626k6953dfb8u22c63493bd08d4b@mail.gmail.com> References: <1c2a2c591002160626k6953dfb8u22c63493bd08d4b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4B7AB51D.6090204@canterburyschool.org> Kent Johnson wrote: > Hi all, > > I'm going to PyCon this year for the first time (yeah!) and I would > love to meet other regular contributors to the tutor list. Is anyone > else going to be there? Any interest in a "Meet the tutors" Open Space > or dinner? > > Kent Hi Kent, I'm not a very regular contributor here, but we'd love have you (and anyone else who's on the tutor list) join the edu-sig group for dinner and open space, if you're so inclined... Our open space page is at http://us.pycon.org/2010/openspace/edu-sig/ Cheers, Vern Ceder > _______________________________________________ > Tutor maillist - Tutor at python.org > To unsubscribe or change subscription options: > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor -- This time for sure! -Bullwinkle J. Moose ----------------------------- Vern Ceder, Director of Technology Canterbury School, 3210 Smith Road, Ft Wayne, IN 46804 vceder at canterburyschool.org; 260-436-0746; FAX: 260-436-5137 The Quick Python Book, 2nd Ed - http://bit.ly/bRsWDW From vceder at canterburyschool.org Tue Feb 16 16:52:04 2010 From: vceder at canterburyschool.org (Vern Ceder) Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:52:04 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] [Tutor] PyCon anyone? In-Reply-To: <1c2a2c591002160740o492602ey1cc82955aa4a8fe2@mail.gmail.com> References: <1c2a2c591002160626k6953dfb8u22c63493bd08d4b@mail.gmail.com> <4B7AB51D.6090204@canterburyschool.org> <1c2a2c591002160740o492602ey1cc82955aa4a8fe2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4B7ABF24.9070202@canterburyschool.org> Kent Johnson wrote: > On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 10:09 AM, Vern Ceder >> >> I'm not a very regular contributor here, but we'd love have you (and anyone >> else who's on the tutor list) join the edu-sig group for dinner and open >> space, if you're so inclined... Our open space page is at >> http://us.pycon.org/2010/openspace/edu-sig/ > > Thanks, that sounds good. I'll add myself to that page with a note. > Any idea when the open space or dinner will be? > > Kent I believe we're aiming for Friday evening for dinner, but we're still working on where... The open space might be either after dinner on Friday or on Saturday evening... depending on interest. So go ahead and add your preferences. Vern -- This time for sure! -Bullwinkle J. Moose ----------------------------- Vern Ceder, Director of Technology Canterbury School, 3210 Smith Road, Ft Wayne, IN 46804 vceder at canterburyschool.org; 260-436-0746; FAX: 260-436-5137 The Quick Python Book, 2nd Ed - http://bit.ly/bRsWDW From jeff at elkner.net Wed Feb 24 00:17:45 2010 From: jeff at elkner.net (Jeff Elkner) Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:17:45 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] Renaming PyWhip... Message-ID: <37fa1dfb1002231517n3260690bnc972519d80e45bf@mail.gmail.com> Hi All, Andy Harrington and I will be working with group of students on PyWhip (http://pywhip.appspot.com). The 1st order of business is coming up with a new name for it, and I wanted to run it by the edu-sig list before making the final decision. I like tryPy, what do folks think? jeff elkner open book project http://openbookproject.net From andre.roberge at gmail.com Wed Feb 24 01:09:57 2010 From: andre.roberge at gmail.com (Andre Roberge) Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:09:57 -0400 Subject: [Edu-sig] Renaming PyWhip... In-Reply-To: <37fa1dfb1002231517n3260690bnc972519d80e45bf@mail.gmail.com> References: <37fa1dfb1002231517n3260690bnc972519d80e45bf@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7528bcdd1002231609t4978a698m3566d4e4a9229dd2@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 7:17 PM, Jeff Elkner wrote: > Hi All, > > Andy Harrington and I will be working with group of students on PyWhip > (http://pywhip.appspot.com). The 1st order of business is coming up > with a new name for it, and I wanted to run it by the edu-sig list > before making the final decision. > > I like tryPy, what do folks think? > Personally, I find tryPy a bit too similar to http://www.trypython.org/ in name and, furthermore, the name tryPy conjures the image of simply trying Python ... rather than a tool designed to help learning it. How about something along the lines of PyDrills or PyExercises or PyPractice ? Andr? > > jeff elkner > open book project > http://openbookproject.net > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jrgray at gmail.com Wed Feb 24 01:23:03 2010 From: jrgray at gmail.com (Jeremy Gray) Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:23:03 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] Renaming PyWhip... In-Reply-To: <7528bcdd1002231609t4978a698m3566d4e4a9229dd2@mail.gmail.com> References: <37fa1dfb1002231517n3260690bnc972519d80e45bf@mail.gmail.com> <7528bcdd1002231609t4978a698m3566d4e4a9229dd2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <844f07dc1002231623r14ae4af2lb2d711e1ed05e6f2@mail.gmail.com> or depending on the intended audience, maybe something small snackable and whimsical, like BiteIntoPy or ItsyBitsyBitesOfPy? --Jeremy On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 7:09 PM, Andre Roberge wrote: > > > On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 7:17 PM, Jeff Elkner wrote: > >> Hi All, >> >> Andy Harrington and I will be working with group of students on PyWhip >> (http://pywhip.appspot.com). The 1st order of business is coming up >> with a new name for it, and I wanted to run it by the edu-sig list >> before making the final decision. >> >> I like tryPy, what do folks think? >> > > Personally, I find tryPy a bit too similar to http://www.trypython.org/ in > name and, furthermore, the name tryPy conjures the image of simply trying > Python ... rather than a tool designed to help learning it. > > How about something along the lines of PyDrills or PyExercises or > PyPractice ? > > Andr? > > > >> >> jeff elkner >> open book project >> http://openbookproject.net >> _______________________________________________ >> Edu-sig mailing list >> Edu-sig at python.org >> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig >> > > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jeff at elkner.net Wed Feb 24 01:25:53 2010 From: jeff at elkner.net (Jeff Elkner) Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:25:53 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] Renaming PyWhip... In-Reply-To: <7528bcdd1002231609t4978a698m3566d4e4a9229dd2@mail.gmail.com> References: <37fa1dfb1002231517n3260690bnc972519d80e45bf@mail.gmail.com> <7528bcdd1002231609t4978a698m3566d4e4a9229dd2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <37fa1dfb1002231625p3a2b6732w8a7a474a7ccab620@mail.gmail.com> +1 on PyPractice Any other thoughts? If I don't hear any serious objections, I'll go with PyPractice. jeff elkner On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 7:09 PM, Andre Roberge wrote: > > > On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 7:17 PM, Jeff Elkner wrote: >> >> Hi All, >> >> Andy Harrington and I will be working with group of students on PyWhip >> (http://pywhip.appspot.com). ?The 1st order of business is coming up >> with a new name for it, and I wanted to run it by the edu-sig list >> before making the final decision. >> >> I like tryPy, what do folks think? > > Personally, I find tryPy a bit too similar to http://www.trypython.org/ in > name and, furthermore, the name tryPy conjures the image of simply trying > Python ... rather than a tool designed to help learning it. > > How about something along the lines of PyDrills or PyExercises or PyPractice > ? > > Andr? > > >> >> jeff elkner >> open book project >> http://openbookproject.net >> _______________________________________________ >> Edu-sig mailing list >> Edu-sig at python.org >> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > > From jeff at elkner.net Wed Feb 24 01:31:58 2010 From: jeff at elkner.net (Jeff Elkner) Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:31:58 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] Renaming PyWhip... In-Reply-To: <844f07dc1002231623r14ae4af2lb2d711e1ed05e6f2@mail.gmail.com> References: <37fa1dfb1002231517n3260690bnc972519d80e45bf@mail.gmail.com> <7528bcdd1002231609t4978a698m3566d4e4a9229dd2@mail.gmail.com> <844f07dc1002231623r14ae4af2lb2d711e1ed05e6f2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <37fa1dfb1002231631q17ace9e3na6d71afda57693b6@mail.gmail.com> A sense of humor is a great thing, Jeremy, but in this case I'm looking for a name which clearly communicates the purpose of the app / project to the uninitiated. Andr?'s suggestion of PyPractice hits the spot for me, but there may be other possibilities in a similar vain. jeff elkner On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 7:23 PM, Jeremy Gray wrote: > or depending on the intended audience, maybe something small snackable and > whimsical, like BiteIntoPy or ItsyBitsyBitesOfPy? > > --Jeremy From kirby.urner at gmail.com Wed Feb 24 01:37:42 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:37:42 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] Renaming PyWhip... In-Reply-To: <37fa1dfb1002231631q17ace9e3na6d71afda57693b6@mail.gmail.com> References: <37fa1dfb1002231517n3260690bnc972519d80e45bf@mail.gmail.com> <7528bcdd1002231609t4978a698m3566d4e4a9229dd2@mail.gmail.com> <844f07dc1002231623r14ae4af2lb2d711e1ed05e6f2@mail.gmail.com> <37fa1dfb1002231631q17ace9e3na6d71afda57693b6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: How about FlyPy as in taking her out for a test flight. Snake with little wings as a logo? Or maybe we're saving that for the airline. :) Kirby On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 4:31 PM, Jeff Elkner wrote: > A sense of humor is a great thing, Jeremy, but in this case I'm > looking for a name which clearly communicates the purpose of the app / > project to the uninitiated. ?Andr?'s suggestion of PyPractice hits the > spot for me, but there may be other possibilities in a similar vain. > > jeff elkner > > On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 7:23 PM, Jeremy Gray wrote: >> or depending on the intended audience, maybe something small snackable and >> whimsical, like BiteIntoPy or ItsyBitsyBitesOfPy? >> >> --Jeremy > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > From juhasecke at googlemail.com Wed Feb 24 09:19:54 2010 From: juhasecke at googlemail.com (Jan Ulrich Hasecke) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:19:54 +0100 Subject: [Edu-sig] Book about Grok Message-ID: Hi all, if you want to teach web development to students have a look at the new book "Grok 1.0 Web Development" by Carlos de la Guardia. The book covers the Zope Webframework Grok and nearly all questions concerning web development. Particular is that three IT-apprentices reviewed the book before printing. I think this improved the quality of the book concerning the target group students. The book is a straight forward tutorial of a todo-list web application covering nearly all questions of web development. It is a practical book, leading to early results. As Grok itself is very easy to learn Grok might be a good first web framework for students. So give it a try. More infos here: http://www.packtpub.com/grok-1-0-web-development/book juh From droujkova at gmail.com Wed Feb 24 16:43:12 2010 From: droujkova at gmail.com (Maria Droujkova) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:43:12 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] Math Thinking community, meet Math 2.0 network! February 24th webinar Message-ID: Wednesday, February 24th 2010 we will meet in the LearnCentral public Elluminate room at 6:30pm Pacific / 9:30pm Eastern time: https://sas.elluminate.com/d.jnlp?sid=lcevents&password=Webinar_Guest This event, in the Research, Grants and Publications Track, is devoted to the Math in Computer Science community. As a part of the introduction, Maria Droujkova will interview Peter Henderson, a co-founder of the community, about their history, goals and projects. We will then take a look at an active K-12 group within the community, The Teach Group, with Rex Page answering questions about it. We may touch on some of the currently "hot" controversies within the community, such as roles of procedural and functional programming in helping students understand mathematics. More information from the community's site http://www.math-in-cs.org/ What we are Mathematical reasoning is central to computer science. It should therefore be an integral part of the entire CS curriculum, with special emphasis in the early courses. This would be a deviation from current practice, requiring systemic change in CS education. We are a group of computer scientists, mathematicians, and others interested in fostering such change. The group "meets" (via e-mail), to discuss topics related to mathematical reasoning in CS and its teaching. An archive of these discussions is available on-line. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, which mathematical concepts are relevant, when and how they can/should be introduced and reinforced in the curriculum, how they relate to practice, pedagogical approaches to teaching math foundations, supporting laboratories, etc. We are undertaking concrete projects designed to raise awareness of mathematical reasoning in CS and of ways of teaching it. Events where community members meet - CCSC:MW , the 16th annual Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges Midwestern conference, Oct. 9- 10, 2009, St. Xavier University, Chicago, IL, USA. - CCSC:NW , the 11th annual Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges Northwestern conference, Oct. 9 - 10, 2009, Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, Washington, USA. - OOPSLA 2009 , the 2009 ACM/SIGPLAN Object Oriented Programming Languages Systems and Applications conference, Oct. 25 - 29, 2009, Orlando, Florida, USA. - CCSC:E , the 25th annual Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges Eastern Conference, Oct. 30 - 31, 2009, Villanova University, Villanova, Pennsylvania, USA. - SIGCSE 2010 , the 41st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, Mar. 10 - 13, 2010, Milwaukee, WI, USA. - CCSC:CP , the 16th Annual Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges Central Plains Conference, April 9 - 10, 2010, Park University, Parkville, Missouri, USA. - ACMSE , the 48th ACM Southeast Conference, April 15 - 17, 2010, Oxford, Mississippi, USA. - ICSE 2010 , the 32nd International Conference on Software Engineering, May 2 - 10, 2010, Cape Town, South Africa. - PLDI 2010 , the 2010 ACM/SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, June 5 - 10, 2010, Toronto, Canada. Cheers, Maria Droujkova http://www.naturalmath.com Make math your own, to make your own math. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aharrin at luc.edu Wed Feb 24 16:45:20 2010 From: aharrin at luc.edu (Andrew Harrington) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:45:20 -0600 Subject: [Edu-sig] Renaming PyWhip... In-Reply-To: <37fa1dfb1002231631q17ace9e3na6d71afda57693b6@mail.gmail.com> References: <37fa1dfb1002231517n3260690bnc972519d80e45bf@mail.gmail.com> <7528bcdd1002231609t4978a698m3566d4e4a9229dd2@mail.gmail.com> <844f07dc1002231623r14ae4af2lb2d711e1ed05e6f2@mail.gmail.com> <37fa1dfb1002231631q17ace9e3na6d71afda57693b6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: The URL is under appspot.com, so it does not *have* to be unique to the web, but reducing confusion is good. The URL PyPractice.com is taken, though it still just goes to the default page of a name registry place. If we can handle a longer name, PythonPractice, would be extra clear and shows up nowhere is a Google search. Andy On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 6:31 PM, Jeff Elkner wrote: > A sense of humor is a great thing, Jeremy, but in this case I'm > looking for a name which clearly communicates the purpose of the app / > project to the uninitiated. ?Andr?'s suggestion of PyPractice hits the > spot for me, but there may be other possibilities in a similar vain. > > jeff elkner > > On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 7:23 PM, Jeremy Gray wrote: >> or depending on the intended audience, maybe something small snackable and >> whimsical, like BiteIntoPy or ItsyBitsyBitesOfPy? >> >> --Jeremy > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > -- Andrew N. Harrington Director of Academic Programs Computer Science Department Loyola University Chicago 512B Lewis Towers (office) Snail mail to Lewis Towers 416 820 North Michigan Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60611 http://www.cs.luc.edu/~anh Phone: 312-915-7982 Fax: 312-915-7998 gpd at cs.luc.edu for graduate administration upd at cs.luc.edu for undergrad administration aharrin at luc.edu as professor From jeff at elkner.net Wed Feb 24 17:07:15 2010 From: jeff at elkner.net (Jeff Elkner) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:07:15 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] Renaming PyWhip In-Reply-To: <4B853AE0.1070001@ece.arizona.edu> References: <37fa1dfb1002231517n3260690bnc972519d80e45bf@mail.gmail.com> <4B853AE0.1070001@ece.arizona.edu> Message-ID: <37fa1dfb1002240807k6114b0f9t331e1bfcac04406d@mail.gmail.com> David, I understand the downsides to forking a project, and I do not take the renaming issue lightly. I usually just go along with whatever name people choose, and leave it at that. Unfortunately in this case, we have a name that for equity and inclusiveness reasons is unacceptable. The Python community is making serious efforts at reaching out to communities we don't traditionally reach, but it is still overwhelming white and male. Any name involving whips or nooses or the like is just unacceptable to me. I can't use it. It is not for me to tell you how to name your project. But as a teacher who wants to reach diverse students, I can't use the name you have chosen, leaving me no choice but to find another name. If this equity requirement is not too much of an imposition, perhaps we can all use a new and different name. Please let me know what you think. jeff elkner open book project http://openbookproject.net On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 9:42 AM, David MacQuigg wrote: > Jeff, > > Good to see your interest in PyWhip. ?I hope you will contribute to our > project, and not start yet another fork. ?The plan with PyWhip is to allow > each contributor to customize the site to exactly what is needed for their > own students. ?So, for example, your students would go to > http://pywhip.org/~elkner, and see the exercises and help files you have > written, or chosen from what already exists. ?Your name will be on every > help page or exercise you contribute. > > Perhaps in not being aggressive in pushing this project I have left the > impression that PyWhip is not moving forward. ?Our problem has been lack of > a volunteer web developer. ?We have plenty of content contributors, but I > have held off because I don't feel that our website is quite ready. ?I think > now that I need to re-consider that decision. > > I am also re-considering my decision to not do the web development myself. > ?For the long-term viability of the project, it will be better to have the > community involved and not be critically dependent on one individual. ?On > the other hand, there is simply too much frustrated need for this site to > tolerate any more delay. ?Our previous volunteer web developers have left > the project 90% finished. ?That often happens with students, since their > focus is learning, not sweating the details of finishing a project. > > Take a look at our vision statement at http://pywhip.appspot.com/vision. ?I > hope you will consider joining us. ?We have a discussion group at > http://groups.google.com/group/pywhip, which you are welcome to join. ?I > think you will find our community very supportive, very democratic, and not > the least hung up on sharing credit with whoever is making a contribution. > ?My own interest is in professionals who already know how to program, but > are new to Python. ?So you might find my helpfiles a little terse. ?I > encourage you to re-write them. > > As for the name PyWhip, we did discuss this quite thoroughly when we started > the project. ?It was originally PyBat, but Nick Parlante, the author of > JavaBat, wanted to use that name for his own Python practice site. ?I > offered to translate his JavaBat problems to Python, but I think he didn't > want to share any credit, so we had to start what amounts to a fork of > JavaBat. ?As far as I know, he is still struggling with the translations. ?I > do see that he has adopted some of our innovations. > > One of my disappointments with Python is that everyone seems to want to do > their own thing rather that contribute to an ongoing project. ?So we have > Ruby-on-Rails, instead of Web2Py, and at our local bookstore, more books on > Ruby than on Python!! ?Forking makes sense when there is a significant > improvement. ?Moving from Java to Python was significant. ?Python to Ruby is > not. ?Having three websites for Python practice will probably end in three > stalled efforts. ?Let's not let that happen. > > -- Dave > > ************************************************************ ? ? * > * David MacQuigg, PhD ? ?email: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu ? * ?* > * Research Associate ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?phone: USA 520-721-4583 ? * ?* ?* > * ECE Department, University of Arizona ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? * ?* ?* > * ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 9320 East Mikelyn Lane ? ? ? * * * > * http://purl.net/macquigg ? ? ? ?Tucson, Arizona 85710 ? ? ? ? ?* > ************************************************************ ? ? * > > Jeff Elkner wrote: >> >> Hi All, >> >> Andy Harrington and I will be working with group of students on PyWhip >> (http://pywhip.appspot.com). ?The 1st order of business is coming up >> with a new name for it, and I wanted to run it by the edu-sig list >> before making the final decision. >> >> I like tryPy, what do folks think? >> >> jeff elkner >> open book project >> http://openbookproject.net From kirby.urner at gmail.com Wed Feb 24 18:58:39 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:58:39 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] Renaming PyWhip In-Reply-To: <37fa1dfb1002240807k6114b0f9t331e1bfcac04406d@mail.gmail.com> References: <37fa1dfb1002231517n3260690bnc972519d80e45bf@mail.gmail.com> <4B853AE0.1070001@ece.arizona.edu> <37fa1dfb1002240807k6114b0f9t331e1bfcac04406d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 8:07 AM, Jeff Elkner wrote: << SNIP >> >> One of my disappointments with Python is that everyone seems to want to do >> their own thing rather that contribute to an ongoing project. ?So we have >> Ruby-on-Rails, instead of Web2Py, and at our local bookstore, more books on >> Ruby than on Python!! ?Forking makes sense when there is a significant >> improvement. ?Moving from Java to Python was significant. ?Python to Ruby is >> not. ?Having three websites for Python practice will probably end in three >> stalled efforts. ?Let's not let that happen. >> >> -- Dave I recall the Pycon at George Washington University where we got this excellent rundown of all the web frameworks in Python. Having such a flexible / agile language does encourage good ideas, a plethora, and that may be confusing to some. Out of this period of ferment, I think people learned a lot. Django is a good model for how things went. ORM is still very much in the picture. Powell's Technical in downtown Portland has about the same amount of shelf space for Python and Ruby books. I'm not especially alarmed by this. This isn't a game of putting other languages out of business so much as tending one's own garden. Both languages have their shortcomings and critics, and both have the potential to evolve further, in various directions. BTW, we've had a month's worth of lively debate on math-thinking-l while edu-sig has lain dormant. I recommend poking around. Gary Litvin of Skylit Publishing is an active contributor. You'll also find a bevy of functional programmers who would not be unhappy to see "object oriented programming" forever banned, or at least kept far away from any "math teaching" environment. This is an old debate. If you're up to using Math 2.0 web tools, there's a seminar on this very topic this evening you could attend. Here's Maria's blurb about it: """ ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Maria Droujkova Date: Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 7:29 AM Subject: Math Thinking meets Math 2.0 tonight, February 24th To: math-thinking-l at geneseo.edu I would like to invite you to an online event happening tonight at 9:30pm ET, in a public Elluminate webinar room provided by LearnCentral http://mathfuture.wikispaces.com/Math+in+computer+science It is a part of the Math 2.0 Interest Group weekly series. The goal of the event is to get an overview of the history of Math in CS community, its projects, and major ideas. I will interview Pete Henderson about the group's history, and ask Rex Page some questions about The Teach Group. The webinars are generally open-microphone, with interview parts and general conversation parts. If you would like to contribute to the overview of the community, and make your voice heard (or your chat messages read), please do come! Cheers, Maria Droujkova http://www.naturalmath.com Make math your own, to make your own math. """ I'm planning to lurk at least, not sure if I'll say anything. Kirby From macquigg at ece.arizona.edu Wed Feb 24 19:07:32 2010 From: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu (David MacQuigg) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:07:32 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] Renaming PyWhip... In-Reply-To: <37fa1dfb1002231625p3a2b6732w8a7a474a7ccab620@mail.gmail.com> References: <37fa1dfb1002231517n3260690bnc972519d80e45bf@mail.gmail.com> <7528bcdd1002231609t4978a698m3566d4e4a9229dd2@mail.gmail.com> <37fa1dfb1002231625p3a2b6732w8a7a474a7ccab620@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4B856AE4.7050205@ece.arizona.edu> This is the first time I have heard anyone object to the name PyWhip, and it comes as a complete surprise. I've been told that the name PyWhip has bad connotations, as in white males and nooses. This seems a bit of a stretch to me, but I would like to hear from anyone who might be using this site in their classes. I am especially interested in the opinions of those who have a different cultural background or native language. We want this site to appeal to all. If even one in ten would be offended by PyWhip, we should change the name. My preference for the name PyWhip is just looking for something short and memorable. I don't like PyPractice because it lacks those qualities. What about the name PyBat? Nick Paralante, the author of JavaBat wants that for his own Python practice site, so I would prefer something else. When I first heard about this website, I thought of batting practice, like in baseball. I suppose bats could be used against people also, but that seems like a stretch. When I think of PyWhip, I think of short, fast problems that the students can "whip through". Maybe my interpretation is a stretch. Anyway, my question is - Does PyWhip have bad connotations? -- Dave Editor in Chief, PyWhip ************************************************************ * * David MacQuigg, PhD email: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu * * * Research Associate phone: USA 520-721-4583 * * * * ECE Department, University of Arizona * * * * 9320 East Mikelyn Lane * * * * http://purl.net/macquigg Tucson, Arizona 85710 * ************************************************************ * Jeff Elkner wrote: > +1 on PyPractice > > Any other thoughts? If I don't hear any serious objections, I'll go > with PyPractice. > > jeff elkner > > On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 7:09 PM, Andre Roberge wrote: > >> On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 7:17 PM, Jeff Elkner wrote: >> >>> Hi All, >>> >>> Andy Harrington and I will be working with group of students on PyWhip >>> (http://pywhip.appspot.com). The 1st order of business is coming up >>> with a new name for it, and I wanted to run it by the edu-sig list >>> before making the final decision. >>> >>> I like tryPy, what do folks think? >>> >> Personally, I find tryPy a bit too similar to http://www.trypython.org/ in >> name and, furthermore, the name tryPy conjures the image of simply trying >> Python ... rather than a tool designed to help learning it. >> >> How about something along the lines of PyDrills or PyExercises or PyPractice >> ? >> >> Andr? >> From andre.roberge at gmail.com Wed Feb 24 19:31:02 2010 From: andre.roberge at gmail.com (Andre Roberge) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:31:02 -0400 Subject: [Edu-sig] Renaming PyWhip... In-Reply-To: <4B856AE4.7050205@ece.arizona.edu> References: <37fa1dfb1002231517n3260690bnc972519d80e45bf@mail.gmail.com> <7528bcdd1002231609t4978a698m3566d4e4a9229dd2@mail.gmail.com> <37fa1dfb1002231625p3a2b6732w8a7a474a7ccab620@mail.gmail.com> <4B856AE4.7050205@ece.arizona.edu> Message-ID: <7528bcdd1002241031m349ec8f6i9b15f0914d0e80cb@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 2:07 PM, David MacQuigg wrote: > This is the first time I have heard anyone object to the name PyWhip, and > it comes as a complete surprise. I've been told that the name PyWhip has > bad connotations, as in white males and nooses. This seems a bit of a > stretch to me, but I would like to hear from anyone who might be using this > site in their classes. I am especially interested in the opinions of those > who have a different cultural background or native language. While I do not (currently) am in a position to use it in a classroom situation, I can perhaps give my impression as someone with a different native language. More below. > We want this site to appeal to all. If even one in ten would be offended > by PyWhip, we should change the name. > > My preference for the name PyWhip is just looking for something short and > memorable. I don't like PyPractice because it lacks those qualities. > > What about the name PyBat? Nick Paralante, the author of JavaBat wants > that for his own Python practice site, so I would prefer something else. > When I first heard about this website, I thought of batting practice, like > in baseball. I suppose bats could be used against people also, but that > seems like a stretch. When I think of PyWhip, I think of short, fast > problems that the students can "whip through". Maybe my interpretation is a > stretch. > I never made the connection between the name PyWhip and the idiomatic expression of "whipping through". The only image that came to my mind was that of a slave driver, whipping students to do work ... not a very positive one. Having made the mistake of choosing two non-descriptive names for projects (rur-ple and crunchy), I would strongly support Jeff's idea of having a more descriptive name - especially one that is understandable by non native English speakers. In fact, while I stuck with the "Py" abbreviation when making suggestions that included PyPractice, I would suggest that PythonPractice might be an even better choice. Andr? > > Anyway, my question is - Does PyWhip have bad connotations? > > -- Dave > Editor in Chief, PyWhip > > ************************************************************ * > * David MacQuigg, PhD email: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu * * > * Research Associate phone: USA 520-721-4583 * * * > * ECE Department, University of Arizona * * * > * 9320 East Mikelyn Lane * * * > * http://purl.net/macquigg Tucson, Arizona 85710 * > ************************************************************ * > > > > > Jeff Elkner wrote: > >> +1 on PyPractice >> >> Any other thoughts? If I don't hear any serious objections, I'll go >> with PyPractice. >> >> jeff elkner >> >> On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 7:09 PM, Andre Roberge >> wrote: >> >> >>> On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 7:17 PM, Jeff Elkner wrote: >>> >>> >>>> Hi All, >>>> >>>> Andy Harrington and I will be working with group of students on PyWhip >>>> (http://pywhip.appspot.com). The 1st order of business is coming up >>>> with a new name for it, and I wanted to run it by the edu-sig list >>>> before making the final decision. >>>> >>>> I like tryPy, what do folks think? >>>> >>>> >>> Personally, I find tryPy a bit too similar to http://www.trypython.org/in >>> name and, furthermore, the name tryPy conjures the image of simply trying >>> Python ... rather than a tool designed to help learning it. >>> >>> How about something along the lines of PyDrills or PyExercises or >>> PyPractice >>> ? >>> >>> Andr? >>> >>> >> > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jeff at elkner.net Wed Feb 24 19:37:14 2010 From: jeff at elkner.net (Jeff Elkner) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:37:14 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] Renaming PyWhip In-Reply-To: <4B8565B9.4000005@ece.arizona.edu> References: <37fa1dfb1002231517n3260690bnc972519d80e45bf@mail.gmail.com> <4B853AE0.1070001@ece.arizona.edu> <37fa1dfb1002240807k6114b0f9t331e1bfcac04406d@mail.gmail.com> <4B8565B9.4000005@ece.arizona.edu> Message-ID: <37fa1dfb1002241037u4ccf5faeq7bda4fbee8dab7d0@mail.gmail.com> I have no objection to PyBat, Dave, and would gladly defer to you as project creator in using that name should you chose it. I'm honestly not trying to be difficult, only just ;-) Coming from a country that had system of chattel slavery for hundreds of years, and then terrorized the formerly enslaved population for a century after that, I just can't work with a name involving whips as an image. Thanks! jeff ellkner On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 12:45 PM, David MacQuigg wrote: > Hi Jeff, > > This is the first time I have heard anyone object to the name, and it comes > as a complete surprise. ?I'm still not sure I understand the problem, but > from your statement about white males and nooses, I assume it is something > racial. ?Anyway, my preference for the name is just looking for something > short and memorable. ?I don't like PyPractice because it lacks those > qualities. > > Would you have the same objection to PyBat? ?I assume you are familiar with > the JavaBat website. ?When I first heard about this website, I thought of > batting practice, like in baseball. ?I suppose bats could be used against > people also, but that seems like a stretch. ?When I think of PyWhip, I think > of short, fast problems that the students can "whip through". ?Maybe my > interpretation is a stretch. > > I think we should put this question to a wider audience, especially > foreigners. ?I will post the question to [edu-sig]. > > -- Dave From vceder at canterburyschool.org Wed Feb 24 19:38:09 2010 From: vceder at canterburyschool.org (Vern Ceder) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:38:09 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] Renaming PyWhip... In-Reply-To: <4B856AE4.7050205@ece.arizona.edu> References: <37fa1dfb1002231517n3260690bnc972519d80e45bf@mail.gmail.com> <7528bcdd1002231609t4978a698m3566d4e4a9229dd2@mail.gmail.com> <37fa1dfb1002231625p3a2b6732w8a7a474a7ccab620@mail.gmail.com> <4B856AE4.7050205@ece.arizona.edu> Message-ID: <4B857211.2020205@canterburyschool.org> David MacQuigg wrote: > Anyway, my question is - Does PyWhip have bad connotations? Disclaimer: I'm not using PyWhip at the moment, since my next Python class won't start until fall. That said, as I told Andy over the weekend, when I hear "PyWhip" I can't help but think of a) a dessert topping (fluffy and loaded with OOP goodness, to be sure) or b) an S&M site, no doubt related to the famously misleading porn site that unfortunately features "python" in its URL. I freely admit this may say more about me than anything else, but those are my involuntary associations... I would also add that the name itself would not keep me personally from using the site, but I might not mention it by name in materials sent home to parents. Cheers, Vern -- This time for sure! -Bullwinkle J. Moose ----------------------------- Vern Ceder, Director of Technology Canterbury School, 3210 Smith Road, Ft Wayne, IN 46804 vceder at canterburyschool.org; 260-436-0746; FAX: 260-436-5137 The Quick Python Book, 2nd Ed - http://bit.ly/bRsWDW From andreas.raab at gmx.de Wed Feb 24 19:54:42 2010 From: andreas.raab at gmx.de (Andreas Raab) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:54:42 +0100 Subject: [Edu-sig] Renaming PyWhip... In-Reply-To: <7528bcdd1002241031m349ec8f6i9b15f0914d0e80cb@mail.gmail.com> References: <37fa1dfb1002231517n3260690bnc972519d80e45bf@mail.gmail.com> <7528bcdd1002231609t4978a698m3566d4e4a9229dd2@mail.gmail.com> <37fa1dfb1002231625p3a2b6732w8a7a474a7ccab620@mail.gmail.com> <4B856AE4.7050205@ece.arizona.edu> <7528bcdd1002241031m349ec8f6i9b15f0914d0e80cb@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4B8575F2.3080207@gmx.de> Andre Roberge wrote: > I never made the connection between the name PyWhip and the idiomatic > expression of "whipping through". The only image that came to my mind > was that of a slave driver, whipping students to do work ... not a very > positive one. Exactly the same for me. > Having made the mistake of choosing two non-descriptive names for > projects (rur-ple and crunchy), I would strongly support Jeff's idea of > having a more descriptive name - especially one that is understandable > by non native English speakers. In fact, while I stuck with the "Py" > abbreviation when making suggestions that included PyPractice, I would > suggest that PythonPractice might be an even better choice. +1 for PythonPractice. Cheers, - Andreas From jrgray at gmail.com Wed Feb 24 20:03:11 2010 From: jrgray at gmail.com (Jeremy Gray) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:03:11 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] Renaming PyWhip... In-Reply-To: <4B856AE4.7050205@ece.arizona.edu> References: <37fa1dfb1002231517n3260690bnc972519d80e45bf@mail.gmail.com> <7528bcdd1002231609t4978a698m3566d4e4a9229dd2@mail.gmail.com> <37fa1dfb1002231625p3a2b6732w8a7a474a7ccab620@mail.gmail.com> <4B856AE4.7050205@ece.arizona.edu> Message-ID: <844f07dc1002241103o32b86477sc36568ade069a6ff@mail.gmail.com> this is a good conversation to have. my first though on hearing "whip" is Indiana Jones. I happen to be a white male (of a certain generation I guess.) I'm also an experimental psychologist / cognitive neuroscientist, with an interest in social psychology. there is overwhelming evidence that people are extremely sensitive to very subtle affective associations and social cues, and get disuaded very easily from exploring things further. moreover: it tends to be hard for people in a dominant group to appreciate how much these things matter to other people. they simply don't believe it can be real. being well-intentioned does not matter so much. so basically, if someone wants to appeal to a broad audience, they *have* to be conservative when it comes to stuff like this. ambiguity is not inviting. if anyone is interested I can provide links to studies, eg, by Valerie Purdie-Vaughns at Columbia (recently Yale), or Claude Steele also at Columbia (recently Stanford), or Mazarin Banaji of Harvard. +1 for PythonPractice --Jeremy On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 1:07 PM, David MacQuigg wrote: > This is the first time I have heard anyone object to the name PyWhip, and > it comes as a complete surprise. I've been told that the name PyWhip has > bad connotations, as in white males and nooses. This seems a bit of a > stretch to me, but I would like to hear from anyone who might be using this > site in their classes. I am especially interested in the opinions of those > who have a different cultural background or native language. We want this > site to appeal to all. If even one in ten would be offended by PyWhip, we > should change the name. > > My preference for the name PyWhip is just looking for something short and > memorable. I don't like PyPractice because it lacks those qualities. > > What about the name PyBat? Nick Paralante, the author of JavaBat wants > that for his own Python practice site, so I would prefer something else. > When I first heard about this website, I thought of batting practice, like > in baseball. I suppose bats could be used against people also, but that > seems like a stretch. When I think of PyWhip, I think of short, fast > problems that the students can "whip through". Maybe my interpretation is a > stretch. > > Anyway, my question is - Does PyWhip have bad connotations? > > -- Dave > Editor in Chief, PyWhip > > ************************************************************ * > * David MacQuigg, PhD email: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu * * > * Research Associate phone: USA 520-721-4583 * * * > * ECE Department, University of Arizona * * * > * 9320 East Mikelyn Lane * * * > * http://purl.net/macquigg Tucson, Arizona 85710 * > ************************************************************ * > > > > Jeff Elkner wrote: > >> +1 on PyPractice >> >> Any other thoughts? If I don't hear any serious objections, I'll go >> with PyPractice. >> >> jeff elkner >> >> On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 7:09 PM, Andre Roberge >> wrote: >> >> >>> On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 7:17 PM, Jeff Elkner wrote: >>> >>> >>>> Hi All, >>>> >>>> Andy Harrington and I will be working with group of students on PyWhip >>>> (http://pywhip.appspot.com). The 1st order of business is coming up >>>> with a new name for it, and I wanted to run it by the edu-sig list >>>> before making the final decision. >>>> >>>> I like tryPy, what do folks think? >>>> >>>> >>> Personally, I find tryPy a bit too similar to http://www.trypython.org/in >>> name and, furthermore, the name tryPy conjures the image of simply trying >>> Python ... rather than a tool designed to help learning it. >>> >>> How about something along the lines of PyDrills or PyExercises or >>> PyPractice >>> ? >>> >>> Andr? >>> >>> >> > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From macquigg at ece.arizona.edu Wed Feb 24 20:32:31 2010 From: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu (David MacQuigg) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:32:31 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] Renaming PyWhip Message-ID: <4B857ECF.3000700@ece.arizona.edu> OK, PyWhip is out. I'm still looking for something short and memorable. How about PyJet? Fits right in with its most likely home on App Engine. I can even imagine a logo with a jet engine strapped to a Python. I can't think of any S&M connotations, but then I'm not very familiar with that subculture. :>) I'm more interested in opinions with reasons than just votes. The decision will be made by those who are active on the project. -- Dave ************************************************************ * * David MacQuigg, PhD email: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu * * * Research Associate phone: USA 520-721-4583 * * * * ECE Department, University of Arizona * * * * 9320 East Mikelyn Lane * * * * http://purl.net/macquigg Tucson, Arizona 85710 * ************************************************************ * From kirby.urner at gmail.com Wed Feb 24 21:17:17 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:17:17 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] Renaming PyWhip In-Reply-To: <4B857ECF.3000700@ece.arizona.edu> References: <4B857ECF.3000700@ece.arizona.edu> Message-ID: On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 11:32 AM, David MacQuigg wrote: > OK, PyWhip is out. I'm still looking for something short and memorable. > > How about PyJet? Fits right in with its most likely home on App Engine. I > can even imagine a logo with a jet engine strapped to a Python. I can't > think of any S&M connotations, but then I'm not very familiar with that > subculture. :>) > > I'm more interested in opinions with reasons than just votes. The decision > will be made by those who are active on the project. > > -- Dave > Thanks for the clarifications. I had no idea why PyWhip was out. The connotation I'd gotten was like CoolWhip [tm] -- some kind of foamy sugary thing. Given the geometry-intensive curriculum I work with, I'm likely reliant on students having a local interpreter handy, along with 3rd party add-ons. I was doing more with VPython last night in fact, on the clock for one of our sponsors (Oregon Curriculum Network is over a decade old). More links on math-thinking-l (just posted): http://mail.geneseo.edu/pipermail/math-thinking-l/2010-February/000654.html Maybe I'll "see" some of you at tonight's the Math 2.0 event. Kirby -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From droujkova at gmail.com Thu Feb 25 02:02:19 2010 From: droujkova at gmail.com (Maria Droujkova) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:02:19 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] Math Thinking community, meet Math 2.0 network! February 24th webinar In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Correction: the webinar room is https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=M.D5176DFCA66A74E3F55867FA87018F Cheers, Maria Droujkova http://www.naturalmath.com Make math your own, to make your own math. On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 10:43 AM, Maria Droujkova wrote: > > Wednesday, February 24th 2010 we will meet in the LearnCentral public > Elluminate room at 6:30pm Pacific / 9:30pm Eastern time: > https://sas.elluminate.com/d.jnlp?sid=lcevents&password=Webinar_Guest > > This event, in the Research, Grants and Publications Track, is devoted to > the Math in Computer Science community. As a part of the introduction, Maria > Droujkova will interview Peter Henderson, a co-founder of the community, > about their history, goals and projects. We will then take a look at an > active K-12 group within the community, The Teach Group, with Rex Page > answering questions about it. We may touch on some of the currently "hot" > controversies within the community, such as roles of procedural and > functional programming in helping students understand mathematics. > > More information from the community's site http://www.math-in-cs.org/ What > we are Mathematical reasoning is central to computer science. It should > therefore be an integral part of the entire CS curriculum, with special > emphasis in the early courses. This would be a deviation from current > practice, requiring systemic change in CS education. We are a group of > computer scientists, mathematicians, and others interested in fostering such > change. > The group "meets" (via e-mail), > to discuss topics related to mathematical reasoning in CS and its teaching. > An archive of these > discussions is available on-line. Possible topics include, but are not > limited to, which mathematical concepts are relevant, when and how they > can/should be introduced and reinforced in the curriculum, how they relate > to practice, pedagogical approaches to teaching math foundations, supporting > laboratories, etc. We are undertaking concrete projects designed to raise > awareness of mathematical reasoning in CS and of ways of teaching it. > > Events where community members meet > > - CCSC:MW , the 16th annual > Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges Midwestern conference, Oct. 9- > 10, 2009, St. Xavier University, Chicago, IL, USA. > - CCSC:NW , the 11th annual Consortium > for Computing Sciences in Colleges Northwestern conference, Oct. 9 - 10, > 2009, Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, Washington, USA. > - OOPSLA 2009 , the 2009 ACM/SIGPLAN > Object Oriented Programming Languages Systems and Applications conference, > Oct. 25 - 29, 2009, Orlando, Florida, USA. > - CCSC:E , the 25th annual Consortium > for Computing Sciences in Colleges Eastern Conference, Oct. 30 - 31, 2009, > Villanova University, Villanova, Pennsylvania, USA. > - SIGCSE 2010 , the 41st ACM > Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, Mar. 10 - 13, 2010, > Milwaukee, WI, USA. > - CCSC:CP , the 16th Annual > Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges Central Plains Conference, > April 9 - 10, 2010, Park University, Parkville, Missouri, USA. > - ACMSE, > the 48th ACM Southeast Conference, April 15 - 17, 2010, Oxford, Mississippi, > USA. > - ICSE 2010 , the 32nd International > Conference on Software Engineering, May 2 - 10, 2010, Cape Town, South > Africa. > - PLDI 2010 , the 2010 ACM/SIGPLAN > Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, June 5 - 10, > 2010, Toronto, Canada. > > > Cheers, > Maria Droujkova > http://www.naturalmath.com > > Make math your own, to make your own math. > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From macquigg at ece.arizona.edu Thu Feb 25 02:52:49 2010 From: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu (David MacQuigg) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:52:49 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] Renaming PyWhip In-Reply-To: References: <4B857ECF.3000700@ece.arizona.edu> Message-ID: <4B85D7F1.5060108@ece.arizona.edu> PyKata ... YES!! Please don't tell me this means something awful in Korean. :>) According to Wikipedia: A kata can refer to any basic form, routine, or pattern of behavior that is practiced to various levels of mastery. In Japanese language, kata is a frequently-used word meaning ?way of doing things,? with emphasis on the form and order of the process. Other meanings are ?training method? and ?formal exercise.? The goal of a painter?s practicing, for example, is to merge his consciousness with his brush; the potter?s with his clay; the garden designer?s with the materials of the garden. Once such mastery is achieved, the theory goes, the doing of a thing perfectly is as easy as thinking it. Practice these problems until you can do them without thinking, at least not thinking about syntax. I used to practice Karate, and this fits perfectly. Comments? -- Dave DeanG wrote: > fwiw... > > I've seen a number of names pulled from the practice applications > martial arts used recently: > kata : http://codekata.pragprog.com/ - > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kata_(programming) > dojo : http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~gpollice/Dojo.html , > http://old.nabble.com/Code-Dojo---yesterday-and-next-year...-td26745289.html > (problematic due to popular javascript library with the same name) > > > > On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 1:32 PM, David MacQuigg > wrote: > >> OK, PyWhip is out. I'm still looking for something short and memorable. >> >> How about PyJet? Fits right in with its most likely home on App Engine. I >> can even imagine a logo with a jet engine strapped to a Python. I can't >> think of any S&M connotations, but then I'm not very familiar with that >> subculture. :>) >> >> I'm more interested in opinions with reasons than just votes. The decision >> will be made by those who are active on the project. >> >> -- Dave >> >> ************************************************************ * >> * David MacQuigg, PhD email: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu * * >> * Research Associate phone: USA 520-721-4583 * * * >> * ECE Department, University of Arizona * * * >> * 9320 East Mikelyn Lane * * * >> * http://purl.net/macquigg Tucson, Arizona 85710 * >> ************************************************************ * >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Edu-sig mailing list >> Edu-sig at python.org >> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig >> From echerlin at gmail.com Thu Feb 25 02:56:16 2010 From: echerlin at gmail.com (Edward Cherlin) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:56:16 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] [Math 2.0] Math Thinking community, meet Math 2.0 network! February 24th webinar In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I've been wishing for this. Thanks. I signed up for the mailing list. It turns out that the Java Web Start software is not available for Debian or Ubuntu Linux, so I can't join in tonight. *<{%{[}}}} On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 10:43, Maria Droujkova wrote: > > Wednesday, February 24th 2010 we will meet in the LearnCentral public > Elluminate room at 6:30pm Pacific / 9:30pm Eastern time: > https://sas.elluminate.com/d.jnlp?sid=lcevents&password=Webinar_Guest > > This event, in the Research, Grants and Publications Track, is devoted to > the Math in Computer Science community. As a part of the introduction, Maria > Droujkova will interview Peter Henderson, a co-founder of the community, > about their history, goals and projects. We will then take a look at an > active K-12 group within the community, The Teach Group, with Rex Page > answering questions about it. We may touch on some of the currently "hot" > controversies within the community, such as roles of procedural and > functional programming in helping students understand mathematics. > > More information from the community's site http://www.math-in-cs.org/ > > What we are > > Mathematical reasoning is central to computer science. It should therefore > be an integral part of the entire CS curriculum, with special emphasis in > the early courses. This would be a deviation from current practice, > requiring systemic change in CS education. We are a group of computer > scientists, mathematicians, and others interested in fostering such change. > The group "meets" (via e-mail), to discuss topics related to mathematical > reasoning in CS and its teaching. An archive of these discussions is > available on-line. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, which > mathematical concepts are relevant, when and how they can/should be > introduced and reinforced in the curriculum, how they relate to practice, > pedagogical approaches to teaching math foundations, supporting > laboratories, etc. We are undertaking concrete projects designed to raise > awareness of mathematical reasoning in CS and of ways of teaching it. > > Events where community members meet > > CCSC:MW, the 16th annual Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges > Midwestern conference, Oct. 9- 10, 2009, St. Xavier University, Chicago, IL, > USA. > CCSC:NW, the 11th annual Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges > Northwestern conference, Oct. 9 - 10, 2009, Pacific Lutheran University, > Tacoma, Washington, USA. > OOPSLA 2009, the 2009 ACM/SIGPLAN Object Oriented Programming Languages > Systems and Applications conference, Oct. 25 - 29, 2009, Orlando, Florida, > USA. > CCSC:E, the 25th annual Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges > Eastern Conference, Oct. 30 - 31, 2009, Villanova University, Villanova, > Pennsylvania, USA. > SIGCSE 2010, the 41st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, > Mar. 10 - 13, 2010, Milwaukee, WI, USA. > CCSC:CP, the 16th Annual Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges > Central Plains Conference, April 9 - 10, 2010, Park University, Parkville, > Missouri, USA. > ACMSE, the 48th ACM Southeast Conference, April 15 - 17, 2010, Oxford, > Mississippi, USA. > ICSE 2010, the 32nd International Conference on Software Engineering, May 2 > - 10, 2010, Cape Town, South Africa. > PLDI 2010, the 2010 ACM/SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design > and Implementation, June 5 - 10, 2010, Toronto, Canada. > > Cheers, > Maria Droujkova > http://www.naturalmath.com > > Make math your own, to make your own math. > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MathFuture" group. > To post to this group, send email to mathfuture at googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > mathfuture+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/mathfuture?hl=en. > -- Edward Mokurai (??/???????????????/????????????? ?) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://www.earthtreasury.org/ From droujkova at gmail.com Thu Feb 25 03:21:02 2010 From: droujkova at gmail.com (Maria Droujkova) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:21:02 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] Math Thinking community, meet Math 2.0 network! February 24th webinar In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Ok, the real correct link is https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=M.438D554F4A450D77B901E14104C303 Sorry! Cheers, Maria Droujkova http://www.naturalmath.com Make math your own, to make your own math. On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 10:43 AM, Maria Droujkova wrote: > > Wednesday, February 24th 2010 we will meet in the LearnCentral public > Elluminate room at 6:30pm Pacific / 9:30pm Eastern time: > https://sas.elluminate.com/d.jnlp?sid=lcevents&password=Webinar_Guest > > This event, in the Research, Grants and Publications Track, is devoted to > the Math in Computer Science community. As a part of the introduction, Maria > Droujkova will interview Peter Henderson, a co-founder of the community, > about their history, goals and projects. We will then take a look at an > active K-12 group within the community, The Teach Group, with Rex Page > answering questions about it. We may touch on some of the currently "hot" > controversies within the community, such as roles of procedural and > functional programming in helping students understand mathematics. > > More information from the community's site http://www.math-in-cs.org/ What > we are Mathematical reasoning is central to computer science. It should > therefore be an integral part of the entire CS curriculum, with special > emphasis in the early courses. This would be a deviation from current > practice, requiring systemic change in CS education. We are a group of > computer scientists, mathematicians, and others interested in fostering such > change. > The group "meets" (via e-mail), > to discuss topics related to mathematical reasoning in CS and its teaching. > An archive of these > discussions is available on-line. Possible topics include, but are not > limited to, which mathematical concepts are relevant, when and how they > can/should be introduced and reinforced in the curriculum, how they relate > to practice, pedagogical approaches to teaching math foundations, supporting > laboratories, etc. We are undertaking concrete projects designed to raise > awareness of mathematical reasoning in CS and of ways of teaching it. > > Events where community members meet > > - CCSC:MW , the 16th annual > Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges Midwestern conference, Oct. 9- > 10, 2009, St. Xavier University, Chicago, IL, USA. > - CCSC:NW , the 11th annual Consortium > for Computing Sciences in Colleges Northwestern conference, Oct. 9 - 10, > 2009, Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, Washington, USA. > - OOPSLA 2009 , the 2009 ACM/SIGPLAN > Object Oriented Programming Languages Systems and Applications conference, > Oct. 25 - 29, 2009, Orlando, Florida, USA. > - CCSC:E , the 25th annual Consortium > for Computing Sciences in Colleges Eastern Conference, Oct. 30 - 31, 2009, > Villanova University, Villanova, Pennsylvania, USA. > - SIGCSE 2010 , the 41st ACM > Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, Mar. 10 - 13, 2010, > Milwaukee, WI, USA. > - CCSC:CP , the 16th Annual > Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges Central Plains Conference, > April 9 - 10, 2010, Park University, Parkville, Missouri, USA. > - ACMSE, > the 48th ACM Southeast Conference, April 15 - 17, 2010, Oxford, Mississippi, > USA. > - ICSE 2010 , the 32nd International > Conference on Software Engineering, May 2 - 10, 2010, Cape Town, South > Africa. > - PLDI 2010 , the 2010 ACM/SIGPLAN > Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, June 5 - 10, > 2010, Toronto, Canada. > > > Cheers, > Maria Droujkova > http://www.naturalmath.com > > Make math your own, to make your own math. > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kirby.urner at gmail.com Thu Feb 25 04:46:01 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:46:01 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] Renaming PyWhip In-Reply-To: <4B85D7F1.5060108@ece.arizona.edu> References: <4B857ECF.3000700@ece.arizona.edu> <4B85D7F1.5060108@ece.arizona.edu> Message-ID: On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 5:52 PM, David MacQuigg wrote: > PyKata ... YES!! Please don't tell me this means something awful in Korean. > :>) According to Wikipedia: > > A kata can refer to any basic form, routine, or pattern of behavior > that is practiced to various levels of mastery. In Japanese > language, kata is a frequently-used word meaning ?way of doing > things,? with emphasis on the form and order of the process. Other > meanings are ?training method? and ?formal exercise.? The goal of a > painter?s practicing, for example, is to merge his consciousness > with his brush; the potter?s with his clay; the garden designer?s > with the materials of the garden. Once such mastery is achieved, the > theory goes, the doing of a thing perfectly is as easy as thinking it. > > Practice these problems until you can do them without thinking, at least > not thinking about syntax. I used to practice Karate, and this fits > perfectly. > > Comments? > > -- Dave > > Seems creative and multi-cultural to boot. Such a name might get the attention of Sara Ford of Microsoft Codeplex (aka "open source DNA") -- she's really big into Karate. http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford/default.aspx Python has always been about bridging multiple ethnicities. Snake charmers + [ fill in the blank ] = coolness. Kirby -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From macquigg at ece.arizona.edu Thu Feb 25 21:17:56 2010 From: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu (David MacQuigg) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:17:56 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] Django or Web2Py for PyWhip Message-ID: <4B86DAF4.8090109@ece.arizona.edu> Since we are changing the name of the project from PyWhip to (PyKata, PyPractice, PyJet, ???), now might be a good time to reconsider some other basic choices. App Engine seems to be the right choice for the server foundation. Anyone who has tried to develop a web app with modpython will appreciate not having to worry about details like keeping track of user logins. The one major choice I'm still not comfortable with is the framework Django vs. Web2Py. We are currently using Django, because that was the default providcd by App Engine. Web2Py is also supported by App Engine, but perhaps not yet as well integrated (I don't know). The main issue seems to be versatility vs simplicity. My initial impression is that Django is more versatile and Web2Py is simpler. Django has the bigger community of users, more published books, etc., but Web2Py is still early in its growth. We need a framework which will provide all the features needed for a website like JavaBat.com, but will be simple enough that we have no trouble finding web programmers to take over when our current developers move on. I'll let the folks who are ready to step up and do the work make the decision, but if anyone has any experience, comments or suggestions, now is the time. -- Dave ************************************************************ * * David MacQuigg, PhD email: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu * * * Research Associate phone: USA 520-721-4583 * * * * ECE Department, University of Arizona * * * * 9320 East Mikelyn Lane * * * * http://purl.net/macquigg Tucson, Arizona 85710 * ************************************************************ * From kirby.urner at gmail.com Thu Feb 25 23:34:55 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:34:55 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] Django or Web2Py for PyWhip In-Reply-To: <4B86DAF4.8090109@ece.arizona.edu> References: <4B86DAF4.8090109@ece.arizona.edu> Message-ID: On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 12:17 PM, David MacQuigg wrote: > Since we are changing the name of the project from PyWhip to (PyKata, > PyPractice, PyJet, ???), now might be a good time to reconsider some other > basic choices. ?App Engine seems to be the right choice for the server > foundation. ?Anyone who has tried to develop a web app with modpython will > appreciate not having to worry about details like keeping track of user > logins. > Word on the street is mod_wsgi is superior to mod_python. Just reporting what I hear. > The one major choice I'm still not comfortable with is the framework Django > vs. Web2Py. ?We are currently using Django, because that was the default > providcd by App Engine. ?Web2Py is also supported by App Engine, but perhaps > not yet as well integrated (I don't know). ?The main issue seems to be > versatility vs simplicity. ?My initial impression is that Django is more > versatile and Web2Py is simpler. ?Django has the bigger community of users, > more published books, etc., but Web2Py is still early in its growth. > App Engine is what's obscure in this picture. Google didn't take the world by storm with it, adding Java not helping that much. Not saying it's not a good product, have written an appengine myself (osgarden.appspot.com), plus was a tech reviewer for the book by Dr. Chuck. > We need a framework which will provide all the features needed for a website > like JavaBat.com, but will be simple enough that we have no trouble finding > web programmers to take over when our current developers move on. ?I'll let > the folks who are ready to step up and do the work make the decision, but if > anyone has any experience, comments or suggestions, now is the time. > > -- Dave At issue is whether try-over-the-web is a way you need to go, granted other language communities are trying it. You've got Python out of the box if you're a Linux user, and so the question is, if you're not a Linux user, do you even matter? When it comes to server side architectures, probably not. That being said, Google Appengine is still a contender, so best wishes with PyKata or whatever you elect. Kirby From macquigg at ece.arizona.edu Fri Feb 26 01:23:09 2010 From: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu (David MacQuigg) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:23:09 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] Django or Web2Py for PyWhip In-Reply-To: References: <4B86DAF4.8090109@ece.arizona.edu> Message-ID: <4B87146D.3020800@ece.arizona.edu> kirby urner wrote: > At issue is whether try-over-the-web is a way you need to go, granted > other language communities are trying it. > > You've got Python out of the box if you're a Linux user, and so the > question is, if you're not a Linux user, do you even matter? When it > comes to server side architectures, probably not. > The big difference between doing it "in the cloud" and doing it with a downloadable app on the student's computer is teacher interaction. Sure, you could do even that with the right kind of networking, but we will still need a central server if we want instructors to have a "wide and deep" view of the students work in progress, not just a clipping sent in an email. The immediate problem might be difficulties with recursion, but if the teacher drills down into the lesson on for-loops and sees some misunderstanding there, she might suggest that the student do a few more problems in that area first. Here's another scenario. Imagine a diverse set of students, with an equally diverse collection of laptops, desktops, OS's, whatever. When a student has some difficulty with his homework, he presses the HELP button, and within minutes a "black belt" PyKata instructor is looking at the student's work, and offering advice. These instructors could be former students making a little money as tutors, or just doing it as a favor for their younger classmates, or maybe helping the sophomore team get ready for a competition. I'm not seeing much downside to doing this as a web app, so I haven't given much thought to making it a self-contained downloadable app. -- Dave ************************************************************ * * David MacQuigg, PhD email: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu * * * Research Associate phone: USA 520-721-4583 * * * * ECE Department, University of Arizona * * * * 9320 East Mikelyn Lane * * * * http://purl.net/macquigg Tucson, Arizona 85710 * ************************************************************ * From kirby.urner at gmail.com Fri Feb 26 01:33:41 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:33:41 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] Feb 24 cs-in-math Elluminate meeting (Math 2.0) Message-ID: I briefly blogged about our meeting last night. http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2010/02/learning-on-line.html I posted Ed Cherlin's Chinese + Arabic sig as a test of the unicode interface, even though he couldn't find Elluminate for his distro, so had to bail. Maria D. did a good job of hosting, and we were graced with the presence of one of the Great Lambda heavyweights, Peter Henderson. http://www.math-in-cs.org/ The Great Lambda worshipers are a tribe to our north, inherit through LISP, LOGO and Scheme, although that middle language donated its turtle to the OO camp, also working in Ruby right? http://www.rubyquiz.com/quiz104.html http://blog.notahat.com/posts/4 Re: "Great Lambda worshipers": talking about the functional programming camp, not wanting to pollute thinking like a mathematician with the "mutable variables" of the computer scientists. Python has "little lambda" (a token lambda). We seemed pretty much in agreement during this meeting that Computer Science is going away as a high school discipline, leaving only Mathematics (cite: death of CS AP test, only a pale shadow of its former self). The only question seems to be whether folding CS into Math means keeping some programming, or going with the New Zealand unplugged route (CS on paper). I'm not sure even New Zealand is going the NZ unplugged route. Nat Torkington has a say: http://nathan.torkington.com/ Lets see how students "vote with their feet" on that one, i.e. it's not entirely up to the teachers. Kirby From kirby.urner at gmail.com Fri Feb 26 02:09:46 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:09:46 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] Django or Web2Py for PyWhip In-Reply-To: <4B87146D.3020800@ece.arizona.edu> References: <4B86DAF4.8090109@ece.arizona.edu> <4B87146D.3020800@ece.arizona.edu> Message-ID: On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 4:23 PM, David MacQuigg wrote: > kirby urner wrote: >> >> At issue is whether try-over-the-web is a way you need to go, granted >> other language communities are trying it. >> >> You've got Python out of the box if you're a Linux user, and so the >> question is, if you're not a Linux user, do you even matter? ?When it >> comes to server side architectures, probably not. >> > > The big difference between doing it "in the cloud" and doing it with a > downloadable app on the student's computer is teacher interaction. ?Sure, > you could do even that with the right kind of networking, but we will still > need a central server if we want instructors to have a "wide and deep" view > of the students work in progress, not just a clipping sent in an email. ?The > immediate problem might be difficulties with recursion, but if the teacher > drills down into the lesson on for-loops and sees some misunderstanding > there, she might suggest that the student do a few more problems in that > area first. > No argument there, that having a centralized study center will provide better overview stats. I'm just skeptical that a web site with the premise "we think you don't have Python installed, so try it here first" is getting off on the right foot. If you're a Morlock, working server-side, you've got Python installed. If you're Eloi, wallowing in Windows, it's easy enough to get it, and if you aspire to get into programming, that's a worthwhile first step. I consider OS X a server side technology even if many OS X users know next to nothing about programming. In other words, lets not assume that people come to FlyPy or PyJet because they don't have a running Python, as that's likely not your demographic. They'll have it. On the other hand, if the message is more like: "do it here on our cloud or you won't get academic credit for your work", well, that's something else and might represent a reasonable instructor demand (getting everything as email snippets for checking is too much work). Based on my experiences helping international students, like this guy in Indonesia (a Facebook friend), it's not that easy sharing source code, especially when all the variable names are in Indonesian (for me, that's hard to read). There's this shared whiteboard we can use, with built in chat, but we each run our Pythons locally. Having a shared server in the cloud that we could both observe and work with, might be just the ticket. > Here's another scenario. ?Imagine a diverse set of students, with an equally > diverse collection of laptops, desktops, OS's, whatever. ?When a student has > some difficulty with his homework, he presses the HELP button, and within > minutes a "black belt" PyKata instructor is looking at the student's work, > and offering advice. ?These instructors could be former students making a > little money as tutors, or just doing it as a favor for their younger > classmates, or maybe helping the sophomore team get ready for a competition. > Finding someone to pair up with so that you don't get lost in some solo project that no one understands but you is a worthy goal. If doing your Python in the cloud helps you get expert attention, so much the better. > I'm not seeing much downside to doing this as a web app, so I haven't given > much thought to making it a self-contained downloadable app. > > -- Dave > >From a student centric point of view, if I'm having trouble with my Python, where will I go? Newgroups, user groups, Youtubes, Showmedo, a ton of other places. Friends. Associates... However, if I'm in a class with my peers and we share some over-the-web infrastructure, maybe that's another good way to get some help. Having classmates help one another, not just compete, seems very XP (extreme programming compatible) and should be encouraged. If they're already paying tuition, so that your Kata black belt has somewhere to collect, that's different from anonymous over-the-web students who've not signed up for any specific course. Right? I'm sure you've already considered the angles. Kirby From kirby.urner at gmail.com Fri Feb 26 02:14:55 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:14:55 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] barbie's next career: computer engineer Message-ID: http://www.barbiemedia.com/admin/uploads/ComputerEngineerBarbie.pdf No comment. Kirby From MDiPierro at cs.depaul.edu Fri Feb 26 03:00:38 2010 From: MDiPierro at cs.depaul.edu (DiPierro, Massimo) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:00:38 -0600 Subject: [Edu-sig] Django or Web2Py for PyWhip In-Reply-To: <4B86DAF4.8090109@ece.arizona.edu> References: <4B86DAF4.8090109@ece.arizona.edu> Message-ID: Mind that my opinion is biased since I am the author of web2py. mod_python is now considered deprecated. WSGI is "the standard" for communication between web server and we app. Django was using mod_python and them moved to WSGI for example. mod_wsgi is the WSGI adapter for apache. All major python web frameworks today support WSGI. web2py works on Google App Engine (GAE) better than Django. The reason is that the web2py Database Abstraction Layer works out of the box on GAE so you wrote your application once (with some care) and you can run the same app without modifications on GAE or a PC with relational database (we support 10 different ones). If you use Django you have to use the native GAE database API on GAE and therefore your code has to be different whether you run on GAE or on a relational database. It is possible that there is a database abstraction layer that works on GAE for Django but, if so, it does not come with it. In the case of web2py this is out of the box. GAE does not have joins but has ListProperty. If you want to use this you need some GAE specific code but you can still access this using GAE DAL API. The Django admin (the strength of Django) used not to work on GAE. I do not know if that has changed. The web2py appadmin (loosely equivalent to Django's admin) does work on GAE. Currently web2py has ~1750 registered users and more than 50 contributors. We estimate the total market share to be about 10% of Django's. The book is now free online at http://web2py.com/book I am currently working on two projects using web2py funded by the Department of Energy. The SahanaPy project (disaster management system for Haiti) is also based on web2py. I will be happy to answer more specific questions on the topic but I am in India for a physics conference and have limited connectivity. I have to be concise and canno check emails often until Monday. You may want to consider asking for some user experience on the web2py list http://groups.google.com/group/web2py. Massimo ________________________________________ From: edu-sig-bounces+mdipierro=cs.depaul.edu at python.org [edu-sig-bounces+mdipierro=cs.depaul.edu at python.org] On Behalf Of David MacQuigg [macquigg at ece.arizona.edu] Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2010 2:17 PM To: edu-sig at python.org Subject: [Edu-sig] Django or Web2Py for PyWhip Since we are changing the name of the project from PyWhip to (PyKata, PyPractice, PyJet, ???), now might be a good time to reconsider some other basic choices. App Engine seems to be the right choice for the server foundation. Anyone who has tried to develop a web app with modpython will appreciate not having to worry about details like keeping track of user logins. The one major choice I'm still not comfortable with is the framework Django vs. Web2Py. We are currently using Django, because that was the default providcd by App Engine. Web2Py is also supported by App Engine, but perhaps not yet as well integrated (I don't know). The main issue seems to be versatility vs simplicity. My initial impression is that Django is more versatile and Web2Py is simpler. Django has the bigger community of users, more published books, etc., but Web2Py is still early in its growth. We need a framework which will provide all the features needed for a website like JavaBat.com, but will be simple enough that we have no trouble finding web programmers to take over when our current developers move on. I'll let the folks who are ready to step up and do the work make the decision, but if anyone has any experience, comments or suggestions, now is the time. -- Dave ************************************************************ * * David MacQuigg, PhD email: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu * * * Research Associate phone: USA 520-721-4583 * * * * ECE Department, University of Arizona * * * * 9320 East Mikelyn Lane * * * * http://purl.net/macquigg Tucson, Arizona 85710 * ************************************************************ * _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig at python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig From kirby.urner at gmail.com Fri Feb 26 05:04:22 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:04:22 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] Django or Web2Py for PyWhip In-Reply-To: References: <4B86DAF4.8090109@ece.arizona.edu> Message-ID: On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 6:00 PM, DiPierro, Massimo wrote: > Mind that my opinion is biased since I am the author of web2py. << snip >> > I will be happy to answer more specific questions on the topic but I am in India for a physics conference and have limited connectivity. I have to be concise and canno check emails often until Monday. You may want to consider asking for some user experience on the web2py list http://groups.google.com/group/web2py. > > Massimo > Hi Massimo -- Thank you for jumping in here. I've seen a web2py demo (by yourself) at a Pycon, impressive. Note that I'm not involved in this particular GAE project, am only commenting from a distance. I don't think the Python community is at a disadvantage just because there's nothing quite as dominant as Rails has been in Ruby world. RUBY ===== I did a quick scan for Ruby web frameworks that are *not* Rails and came up with Sinatra, Ramaze and Merb. I'm sure I missed some. SCHEME ======= In Scheme world we have Flapjax (client side), Lylux (pipeline, controller), Snooze (DBI) http://www.flapjax-lang.org/ http://blog.plt-scheme.org/2007/08/experience-report-scheme-in-commercial.html I mentioned Scheme in particular because I've been hanging out with functional programmers on math-thinking-l recently. Some of those folks have been reminding me of their low opinion of anything object oriented, whereas I've been exulting about Python as a math-learning tool, in part because of its strong concept of types (dynamic, but not weak): http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2010/02/new-essays.html (see essay (b) linked from this blog post if keen to read more) Scheme and LISP are famously typeless. Hey, I didn't realize GIMP came with a dialect of Scheme for scripting, called Script-Fu. http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-concepts-script-fu.html That's like using LISP to control emacs... ...or like using Ruby to control Google Sketchup. http://sketchup.google.com/download/rubyscripts.html AND SO ON... =========== PHP and J2EE still dominate don't they? I don't have any numbers handy. Then there's .NET, which might include Python again.... On and on it goes, eh? Kirby From echerlin at gmail.com Fri Feb 26 05:27:22 2010 From: echerlin at gmail.com (Edward Cherlin) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 23:27:22 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] Feb 24 cs-in-math Elluminate meeting (Math 2.0) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 19:33, kirby urner wrote: > I briefly blogged about our meeting last night. > > http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2010/02/learning-on-line.html Thank you. > I posted Ed Cherlin's Chinese + Arabic sig Japanese/Urdu in language, but you are correct as to writing system. > as a test of the unicode > interface, even though he couldn't find Elluminate for his distro, so > had to bail. > > Maria D. did a good job of hosting, and we were graced with the > presence of one of the Great Lambda heavyweights, Peter Henderson. > > http://www.math-in-cs.org/ I am a great admirer of the tribe and the languages, although I also enjoy the UnLambda language. > The Great Lambda worshipers are a tribe to our north, inherit through > LISP, LOGO and Scheme, although that middle language donated its > turtle to the OO camp, also working in Ruby right? And in Turtle Art, written in Python, on Sugar. > http://www.rubyquiz.com/quiz104.html > http://blog.notahat.com/posts/4 > > Re: ?"Great Lambda worshipers": ?talking about the functional > programming camp, not wanting to pollute thinking like a mathematician > with the "mutable variables" of the computer scientists. There are many kinds of mathematician. I worked a bit with Ken Iverson of APL and J fame on how to add combinatory logic abstraction to J and other languages, and published a paper on it. J supports several flavors of Computer Science and math, including FP, OO, and traditional APL. > Python has "little lambda" (a token lambda). > > We seemed pretty much in agreement during this meeting that Computer > Science is going away as a high school discipline, leaving only > Mathematics (cite: ?death of CS AP test, only a pale shadow of its > former self). I am working on Third Grade CS, in Turtle Art and Smalltalk. > The only question seems to be whether folding CS into Math means > keeping some programming, or going with the New Zealand unplugged > route (CS on paper). > > I'm not sure even New Zealand is going the NZ unplugged route. ?Nat > Torkington has a say: > > http://nathan.torkington.com/ > > Lets see how students "vote with their feet" on that one, i.e. it's > not entirely up to the teachers. Amen, brothers and sisters. That's my greatest hope for giving children Internet access on XOs, that we will be able to hear from them, and they will be able to hear from each other in numbers for the first time. > Kirby > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > -- Edward Mokurai (??/???????????????/????????????? ?) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://www.earthtreasury.org/ From kirby.urner at gmail.com Fri Feb 26 07:07:35 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:07:35 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] Feb 24 cs-in-math Elluminate meeting (Math 2.0) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 8:27 PM, Edward Cherlin wrote: > On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 19:33, kirby urner wrote: >> I briefly blogged about our meeting last night. >> >> http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2010/02/learning-on-line.html > > Thank you. > >> I posted Ed Cherlin's Chinese + Arabic sig > > Japanese/Urdu in language, but you are correct as to writing system. > UNICODE ======= Got it, was wondering about that. Those unicode strings showed up fine in the chat window when I cut and pasted them, with independent confirmation from a distant reader. In contrast, my recent unicode tests to the Math Forum show Drexel's system remembers the entities (the surd and phi symbols in this case) but doesn't display them. http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=2046042&tstart=0 (fyi) << hi Carl >> > I am a great admirer of the tribe and the languages, although I also > enjoy the UnLambda language. > Yeah, I'm not eager to feud with the Great Lambda tribe, find them somewhat intimidating. I get the sense they've been waiting for a place in the sun a long time, especially when it comes to math teaching. All these so-called imperative / procedural languages (Python among them) just getting in the way, hogging the road. >From that point of view, my OOish type stuff is like a bad dream, because I'm aiming to perpetuate what's supposed to be shriveling on the vine around now. Rex Page really doesn't want people using for-loops to explain Sigma notation (the greek letter thing), says it takes really advanced mathematics to intelligently discuss for-loops, so we just shouldn't do it at the pre-college level. Maria D., somewhat new to this debate, courageously invited those present at the meeting last night to dive in on these issues, but we seemed too preoccupied getting a handle on this form of synchronous communication (the fancy control panel, the division of roles...). Rex was at our meeting last night as well. NUDGING PHILOSOPHERS ===================== I've recently gone banging on doors in the philosophy department suggesting long-simmering debates of this nature should be getting a hearing in those chambers. Lets get these ostensibly articulate, widely-read individuals to take a big picture view and play air traffic controller more successfully. We need to stop squabbling and give a next generation a better ride. Better to bring these debates to a head, under expert managers, than to let them simmer and fester decade after decade. That just leads to nothing happening. In recruiting for this cause, I'm hearkening back to when philosophy was still proudly a source of overview, was at the apex of the trivium / quadrivium (co-piloting with theology), its avatars confidant they could render their diplomatic services across disciplines where needed. I'm overtly nostalgic for those liberal arts values, associated with the Italian Renaissance in some degree. In my readings, the great bugaboo we all need to counter is "over-specialization". Whereas narrowing one's focus is usually considered a "good thing" (how one becomes "a professional"), I was signaled to read 'Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth' at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs (where I enrolled in some courses). Now I'm seeing a big need for "glue languages" performing a role analogous to Python's in a computerized ecosystem (Python plays well with others, talks to lots of different software). Philosophers should consider it a part of their job description to come up with better glue languages (ones humans might use). Douglas Hofstadter has done valuable of work in this direction, with 'Godel Escher Bach' etc. And what about Wolfram? >> The Great Lambda worshipers are a tribe to our north, inherit through >> LISP, LOGO and Scheme, although that middle language donated its >> turtle to the OO camp, also working in Ruby right? > > And in Turtle Art, written in Python, on Sugar. > We have this sort of punk grunge techno-anarchist coffee shop called Duke's Landing on SE Belmont that's like a HQS for XO activity. Michael D. is always upgrading his, is now running that Xtra Ordinary system on one of them. I contributed an XO to the mix just the other night in fact, in the context of one of our 'Vegans not Pigs' events (bands get together and play, then eat vegan food cooked on the premises and marvel at how affordable that is, only $2 a plate -- but then Evelyn fries up her chicken as an option, for extra $). http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315 at N00/4317536243/ (event poster) http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315 at N00/4374854038/in/photostream/ (XO at Duke's) http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2010/02/doing-math.html (event writeup) My journals and Photostream are full of pro-XO propaganda. I've done some of the better pictures I think. http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2009/01/saving-children.html I love that they go to the trouble at the XO website to talk about the skull-and-bones motif, i.e. the O could be a skull, the X some crossed bones. They're not saying that's right, but at least they address the issue. http://www.olpcnews.com/prototypes/xo/olpc_xo_icon_say.html The bias in this conversation is that a skull-and-bones would be bad, but then part of kid culture is to romanticize pirates so I really don't see a need to get defensive about that particular connotation. That would be my spin in case anyone asks. >> http://www.rubyquiz.com/quiz104.html >> http://blog.notahat.com/posts/4 >> >> Re: ?"Great Lambda worshipers": ?talking about the functional >> programming camp, not wanting to pollute thinking like a mathematician >> with the "mutable variables" of the computer scientists. > > There are many kinds of mathematician. I worked a bit with Ken Iverson > of APL and J fame on how to add combinatory logic abstraction to J and > other languages, and published a paper on it. J supports several > flavors of Computer Science and math, including FP, OO, and > traditional APL. > Yes, Kenneth helped me fix a couple typos on my beginner-level web page called 'Jiving in J'. Way back to the beginning of this edu-sig archive, you'll find me bringing up J and APL, just as you do. I admire them both. I brought up J over on math-thinking-l as well, but didn't get any takers. I don't get the feeling anyone frequenting that list is actually familiar with J, even if calling themselves a functional programmer. """ One needs more than one paradigm to know what "paradigm" means, so I would at least advocate for a minimum of two paradigms in any subject claiming to teach about paradigms. Whether K-12 should is an open question, however, Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions has been around long enough to have made these concepts rather universal. So I'm all for OO and FP as a minimal combo, though others will think of others. I like the J language, and wonder if that's embraced as functional programming by anyone. Inherits from APL. """ [ http://mail.geneseo.edu/pipermail/math-thinking-l/2010-February/000616.html ] >> Python has "little lambda" (a token lambda). >> >> We seemed pretty much in agreement during this meeting that Computer >> Science is going away as a high school discipline, leaving only >> Mathematics (cite: ?death of CS AP test, only a pale shadow of its >> former self). > > I am working on Third Grade CS, in Turtle Art and Smalltalk. > Yeah, we're not all in the same namespace here. The politics in Oregon is to eliminate CS with an eye towards freeing CS teachers to finally teach something for credit (high school math) not just an elective, for which too many people, especially young women, just don't have the time. Per my Great Bugaboo above (over-specialization), my bias is to question specialization getting in too early. At our meeting in London hosted by Shuttleworth Foundation (Alan Kay present), a South African math teacher, really good at her job, kept saying "I teach students, not subjects" by which she meant whole individual human beings were her focus, not academic turfdoms that, at the end of the day, all need to co-exist inside each individual mind. Maybe we should just have one subject through age 15 called "language games for children" that's all-encompassing, includes outdoor sports, other activities. Or call it "philosophy" if you like. Then we specialize later, become computer scientists, mathematicians, pirates, clowns or whatever. But we start out with something more integrated and whole. >> The only question seems to be whether folding CS into Math means >> keeping some programming, or going with the New Zealand unplugged >> route (CS on paper). >> >> I'm not sure even New Zealand is going the NZ unplugged route. ?Nat >> Torkington has a say: >> >> http://nathan.torkington.com/ >> >> Lets see how students "vote with their feet" on that one, i.e. it's >> not entirely up to the teachers. > > Amen, brothers and sisters. That's my greatest hope for giving > children Internet access on XOs, that we will be able to hear from > them, and they will be able to hear from each other in numbers for the > first time. > Per blog, I went to the wrong virtual Elluminate session at first, owing to some last minute changes. The session I sat in on was more about generic collaboration tools and their role in distance education these days, the big difference they're making. One of the participants made the good point that these technologies were changing interpersonal dynamics, as you can't so easily shout down, dominate, monopolize discussions in these tools, even those designed to bring people together synchronously. She said in the actual classroom she'd always been the shy wallflower type, never got a word in edgewise, but since moving to these alternative Internet tools, she'd found her voice, her ability to get into the game and stay there. Loud guys with strong opinions were no longer part of her obstacle course, praise Allah. I bring that up to underline your hopes, for children getting to speak up for themselves more. If our cyber-environment serves children better, then probably more adults will feel better served as well. Many hitherto marginalized and/or semi-voiceless players have new reasons for hope, given the spread of collaborative technologies. Kirby > -- > Edward Mokurai (??/???????????????/????????????? ?) Cherlin > Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. > The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. > http://www.earthtreasury.org/ > From aharrin at luc.edu Fri Feb 26 17:25:50 2010 From: aharrin at luc.edu (Andrew Harrington) Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 10:25:50 -0600 Subject: [Edu-sig] Renaming PyWhip In-Reply-To: References: <4B857ECF.3000700@ece.arizona.edu> <4B85D7F1.5060108@ece.arizona.edu> Message-ID: PyKata sounds great. I think we will need a bit on the home page to explain the derivation. It fits beautiful with the flexible ideas we have of this having parts useful to people at multiple levels with many different backgrounds. Andy On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 9:46 PM, kirby urner wrote: > On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 5:52 PM, David MacQuigg wrote: > >> PyKata ... YES!! Please don't tell me this means something awful in >> Korean. :>) According to Wikipedia: >> >> A kata can refer to any basic form, routine, or pattern of behavior >> that is practiced to various levels of mastery. In Japanese >> language, kata is a frequently-used word meaning ?way of doing >> things,? with emphasis on the form and order of the process. Other >> meanings are ?training method? and ?formal exercise.? The goal of a >> painter?s practicing, for example, is to merge his consciousness >> with his brush; the potter?s with his clay; the garden designer?s >> with the materials of the garden. Once such mastery is achieved, the >> theory goes, the doing of a thing perfectly is as easy as thinking it. >> >> Practice these problems until you can do them without thinking, at least >> not thinking about syntax. I used to practice Karate, and this fits >> perfectly. >> >> Comments? >> >> -- Dave >> >> > Seems creative and multi-cultural to boot. > > Such a name might get the attention of Sara Ford of Microsoft Codeplex (aka > "open source DNA") -- she's really big into Karate. > http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford/default.aspx > > Python has always been about bridging multiple ethnicities. Snake charmers > + [ fill in the blank ] = coolness. > > Kirby > > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > > -- Andrew N. Harrington Director of Academic Programs Computer Science Department Loyola University Chicago 512B Lewis Towers (office) Snail mail to Lewis Towers 416 820 North Michigan Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60611 http://www.cs.luc.edu/~anh Phone: 312-915-7982 Fax: 312-915-7998 gpd at cs.luc.edu for graduate administration upd at cs.luc.edu for undergrad administration aharrin at luc.edu as professor -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mpaul213 at gmail.com Fri Feb 26 21:34:20 2010 From: mpaul213 at gmail.com (michel paul) Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:34:20 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] Fwd: From one of your old students!! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <40ea4eb01002261234j17c368ebyd2caceb71cd470b5@mail.gmail.com> Just received this email from a former student earlier this week, and it really made my day. It's an excellent falsification of an argument I was being given last year that Python in math classes MIGHT be OK for really motivated math students likely to major in some STEM discipline but that it would be tangential otherwise. HA! No so! This girl was an artist, a good student, but definitely not going to be a math major. However, having learned some Python in her math class was a plus for her in her college animation course! Since Python is a general purpose language, it opens up all kinds of other doors, not just mathematical ones. And let's be realistic - is she ever going to have to remember or use any of the things we studied in FST? I doubt it. More than likely the most useful thing she got from that course was how to think in Python. - Michel ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Dear Mr Paul, I had your FST class last year. I am going to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and guess what, my scripting for Animation course is in PYTHON!! I thought that would be fun for you to hear, and now I have the advantage in the class for already having some experience with it! Anyway, I hope things are looking up for you and your innovative intentions for upgrading my old high school. -- "Computer science is the new mathematics." -- Dr. Christos Papadimitriou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From macquigg at ece.arizona.edu Fri Feb 26 22:02:33 2010 From: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu (David MacQuigg) Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:02:33 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] Fwd: From one of your old students!! In-Reply-To: <40ea4eb01002261234j17c368ebyd2caceb71cd470b5@mail.gmail.com> References: <40ea4eb01002261234j17c368ebyd2caceb71cd470b5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4B8836E9.2020804@ece.arizona.edu> Hi Michel, We need a webpage with testimonials like this from former students. If you don't have a good place for it, I'll start a page on PyKata. (Yes, we are pretty well settled on that name now.) And here I was thinking PyKata was for math and science students only. Bosh!! We can have lesson plans tailored for anyone. I'll be that teacher at Pratt can come up with some really good exercises for his animation course. -- Dave michel paul wrote: > Just received this email from a former student earlier this week, and > it really made my day. It's an excellent falsification of an argument > I was being given last year that Python in math classes MIGHT be OK > for really motivated math students likely to major in some STEM > discipline but that it would be tangential otherwise. HA! No so! > This girl was an artist, a good student, but definitely not going to > be a math major. However, having learned some Python in her math > class was a plus for her in her college animation course! > > Since Python is a general purpose language, it opens up all kinds of > other doors, not just mathematical ones. > > And let's be realistic - is she ever going to have to remember or use > any of the things we studied in FST? I doubt it. More than likely > the most useful thing she got from that course was how to think in Python. > > - Michel > > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > > > Dear Mr Paul, > > I had your FST class last year. I am going to the Pratt Institute in > Brooklyn, and guess what, my scripting for Animation course is in > PYTHON!! I thought that would be fun for you to hear, and now I have > the advantage in the class for already having some experience with it! > Anyway, I hope things are looking up for you and your innovative > intentions for upgrading my old high school. -- ************************************************************ * * David MacQuigg, PhD email: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu * * * Research Associate phone: USA 520-721-4583 * * * * ECE Department, University of Arizona * * * * 9320 East Mikelyn Lane * * * * http://purl.net/macquigg Tucson, Arizona 85710 * ************************************************************ * From aharrin at luc.edu Fri Feb 26 23:38:16 2010 From: aharrin at luc.edu (Andrew Harrington) Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:38:16 -0600 Subject: [Edu-sig] Renaming PyWhip In-Reply-To: References: <4B857ECF.3000700@ece.arizona.edu> <4B85D7F1.5060108@ece.arizona.edu> Message-ID: >From my googling, pykata means build in Finnish. Not bad. Andy On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 10:25 AM, Andrew Harrington wrote: > PyKata sounds great. I think we will need a bit on the home page to explain > the derivation. It fits beautiful with the flexible ideas we have of this > having parts useful to people at multiple levels with many different > backgrounds. > > Andy > > On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 9:46 PM, kirby urner wrote: > >> On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 5:52 PM, David MacQuigg > > wrote: >> >>> PyKata ... YES!! Please don't tell me this means something awful in >>> Korean. :>) According to Wikipedia: >>> >>> A kata can refer to any basic form, routine, or pattern of behavior >>> that is practiced to various levels of mastery. In Japanese >>> language, kata is a frequently-used word meaning ?way of doing >>> things,? with emphasis on the form and order of the process. Other >>> meanings are ?training method? and ?formal exercise.? The goal of a >>> painter?s practicing, for example, is to merge his consciousness >>> with his brush; the potter?s with his clay; the garden designer?s >>> with the materials of the garden. Once such mastery is achieved, the >>> theory goes, the doing of a thing perfectly is as easy as thinking it. >>> >>> Practice these problems until you can do them without thinking, at least >>> not thinking about syntax. I used to practice Karate, and this fits >>> perfectly. >>> >>> Comments? >>> >>> -- Dave >>> >>> >> Seems creative and multi-cultural to boot. >> >> Such a name might get the attention of Sara Ford of Microsoft Codeplex >> (aka "open source DNA") -- she's really big into Karate. >> http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford/default.aspx >> >> Python has always been about bridging multiple ethnicities. Snake >> charmers + [ fill in the blank ] = coolness. >> >> Kirby >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Edu-sig mailing list >> Edu-sig at python.org >> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig >> >> > > > -- > Andrew N. Harrington > Director of Academic Programs > Computer Science Department > Loyola University Chicago > 512B Lewis Towers (office) > Snail mail to Lewis Towers 416 > 820 North Michigan Avenue > Chicago, Illinois 60611 > > http://www.cs.luc.edu/~anh > Phone: 312-915-7982 > Fax: 312-915-7998 > gpd at cs.luc.edu for graduate administration > upd at cs.luc.edu for undergrad administration > aharrin at luc.edu as professor > -- Andrew N. Harrington Director of Academic Programs Computer Science Department Loyola University Chicago 512B Lewis Towers (office) Snail mail to Lewis Towers 416 820 North Michigan Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60611 http://www.cs.luc.edu/~anh Phone: 312-915-7982 Fax: 312-915-7998 gpd at cs.luc.edu for graduate administration upd at cs.luc.edu for undergrad administration aharrin at luc.edu as professor -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jeff at elkner.net Sun Feb 28 16:42:32 2010 From: jeff at elkner.net (Jeff Elkner) Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 10:42:32 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] Pilot testing the new AP CS definition Message-ID: <37fa1dfb1002280742h37f543f2iddda22d7965f9283@mail.gmail.com> Potentially important news for Python in education: http://computinged.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/pilot-testing-the-new-ap-cs-definition/ I wonder if Larry (http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/snyder/) would like help in either developing or testing his new course? jeff elkner From lognaturel at gmail.com Sun Feb 28 18:38:42 2010 From: lognaturel at gmail.com (Helene Martin) Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 09:38:42 -0800 Subject: [Edu-sig] Pilot testing the new AP CS definition In-Reply-To: <37fa1dfb1002280742h37f543f2iddda22d7965f9283@mail.gmail.com> References: <37fa1dfb1002280742h37f543f2iddda22d7965f9283@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: I'm a UW graduate teaching high school CS in the Seattle area. Larry and I are trying to schedule a meeting this week to discuss how we can collaborate. I teach a Python-based course called Creative Computing. Let me know if there are any messages you would like relayed in person. I'll definitely let him know that there's active interest in helping out in this community. If you're on here, hi Larry. =) H?l?ne. http://garfieldcs.com On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 7:42 AM, Jeff Elkner wrote: > Potentially important news for Python in education: > > http://computinged.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/pilot-testing-the-new-ap-cs-definition/ > > I wonder if Larry (http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/snyder/) would > like help in either developing or testing his new course? > > jeff elkner > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > From missive at hotmail.com Sun Feb 28 22:17:30 2010 From: missive at hotmail.com (Lee Harr) Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2010 01:47:30 +0430 Subject: [Edu-sig] [ANNC] pynguin-0.1 (python-based turtle graphics application) Message-ID: pynguin is a python-based turtle graphics application. ??? It combines an editor, interactive interpreter, and ??? graphics display area. It is meant to be an easy environment for introducing ??? some programming concepts to beginning programmers. http://pynguin.googlecode.com/ This is the initial release, with many optimizations ??? and finer details yet to come. Please check it out ??? and let me know what you think. pynguin is tested with Python 2.6.4 and uses PyQt (4.6) ??? for its GUI elements. pynguin is released under GPLv3. Changes in pynguin-0.1: ??? - initial public release _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft. https://signup.live.com/signup.aspx?id=60969