From kirby.urner at gmail.com Thu Sep 1 17:59:05 2011 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2011 08:59:05 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] Yet another online Python... In-Reply-To: <80ae6b9d8fe3878b09b4bc90e2c7eeae@tjhsst.edu> References: <80ae6b9d8fe3878b09b4bc90e2c7eeae@tjhsst.edu> Message-ID: > This online version looks good for these classes. > learnpython.org ?has some turtle graphics, which we'd like to use. > I don't see a description of the turtle graphics syntax/capabilities on the > site, although the opening program has an example turtle program. > Randy Latimer > Python's Standard Library turtle module is just another Python module with no more docs than average for an SL mod. Then we have numerous 3rd party modules, some of which focus exclusively on turtle graphics and may involve special not-Python syntax (because they're imitating Logo perhaps). You likely know all this, just clearing it up for our readers. Gregor Lindl maintains the SL mod and has contributed lots of cool .py files to drive turtles. Kirby From kurner at oreillyschool.com Thu Sep 1 19:32:16 2011 From: kurner at oreillyschool.com (Kirby Urner) Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2011 10:32:16 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] Yet another online Python... In-Reply-To: References: <80ae6b9d8fe3878b09b4bc90e2c7eeae@tjhsst.edu> Message-ID: On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 8:59 AM, kirby urner wrote: > > Python's Standard Library turtle module is just another Python module > with no more docs than average for an SL mod. > > I suppose in the interests of completeness we should mention that Python's native turtle mod is in that subcategory of library modules that depend on Tk and tkinter. Not every Python installation comes with the Tk base. That's just a standard way to bundle widgets and GUI options. wxPython, wrapping wx, has it's alternative graphical scheme etc., other turtles. Python, unlike Java, does not attempt to build GUI widgets right into the language as "foundation classes". The Standard Library solution is a different style of architecture. Part of what keeps Python small, as a language, is its decoupling from any one GUI library. Python is not monogamous (plays well with others), but then that's not a feature unique to Python. Kirby -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From millbr02 at luther.edu Sun Sep 4 18:09:57 2011 From: millbr02 at luther.edu (Brad Miller) Date: Sun, 4 Sep 2011 11:09:57 -0500 Subject: [Edu-sig] Announcement: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist -- Interactive Edition In-Reply-To: References: <73A8A4AC1C03402C950C57B11B63E1BF@luther.edu> Message-ID: <95A8E4955F704EA4923896336B31F77C@luther.edu> Carl, I just added another sphinx extension that takes a step in the direction you are talking about. I created an exercise extension. At a minimum it creates an editor with controls to run, save and load. You can see these in place for chapters 1-3 now. Optionally you can provide the student with some scaffolding code. For example in a temperature conversion problem The exercise might open up with the following code already in place. def c2f(degC): # your code here assert c2f(0) == 32 assert c2f(100) == 212 You could also make use of the simple test function provided in the original book as well rather than rely on assert. It doesn't have the nice graphics of codebat for giving you feedback, but that could all be added down the road. Brad -- Brad Miller Associate Professor, Computer Science Luther College On Friday, August 26, 2011 at 9:07 PM, Carl Cerecke wrote: > Looks good. Nice work. > > How about exercises in a similar style to codingbat.com (http://codingbat.com)? That would be really valuable I think. > > Cheers, > Carl. > > On 27 August 2011 02:23, Brad Miller wrote: > > Hello, > > > > As part of my Sabbatical this past year I've been working on a new edition of How to Think Like a Computer Scientist (by Elkner et. al) with my colleague David Ranum. The idea behind this new edition is to make it interactive, to encourage students to learn by doing and to explore. The three main features we've added to previous editions are: > > Videos: Each section has (or will have) a 5-10 minute screencast explaining the written concepts verbally. > > Interactive Python interpreter. Using Skulpt -- an open source javascript implementation of Python. > > Codelens code visualizer -- Based on the Online Python Tutor by Philip Guo this element allows students to step forward and backward through the code and to see the values of variables > > > > To make it easy to add these features I wrote 3 new sphinx directives, so adding the interactive code features is not onerous. When we finish our last pass through the book, we'll make all the code available on bitbucket. > > > > We'll be using this book in our introductory course this fall at Luther, and adding more videos as we move through the semester. > > > > You can take a look at our work here: http://thinkcspy.appspot.com > > > > You'll need a gmail account to access the book. You'll also need a modern browser that supports html5, the interactive features rely heavily on Javascript and the canvas element. (Safari, Firefox 6, Chrome) The reason is that the interactive code allows you to save your changes and reload them again later. I've added an administrative back-end to the book so that we can have students do homework right in the browser. I'd love to hear your feedback and ideas for other interactive features. > > > > Brad > > > > -- > > Brad Miller > > Associate Professor, Computer Science > > Luther College > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Edu-sig mailing list > > Edu-sig at python.org (mailto: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 Sun Sep 11 17:58:12 2011 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2011 08:58:12 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] djangsta rap Message-ID: Greetings from Portlandia. DjangoCon 2011 has just ended. This is a pretty deep community with some excellent leadership, and the size of conference (under 400) is comfortable and intimate for many people. Here's a link to some fun pix from Yarko that I just got from "Chairman Steve" (as in Steve Holden): https://plus.google.com/photos/112974129603800923888/albums/5650503738306636689 My own folder has tended to focus on branding and ad agency kinds of stuff, perhaps thanks the W + K meeting re LimeSurvey (per Wikipedia), which was used for post-conference psychometrics by one Patrick Barton. http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315 at N00/sets/72157627512153141/ (ads etc.) http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2011/08/blue-house-news.html (mentions LimeSurvey) I had some good talks with the GeoDjango people especially. We had a geographer from Philly, several others drawn to this community via the GIS world. As someone who has presented twice at GIS in Action, once as a quasi-keynote, I had some interesting perspectives for them. http://www.4dsolutions.net/presentations/gis_2009_workshop.pdf (where is Pythonia = Python Nation?). Yarko and I talked more about my Radical Math curriculum, a combination of OO, group theory (elementary) and newfangled (fringe) geometry. He even started sounding upbeat about the idea of "demented cartoons" on Python.tv (one of Steve's domains). I'm big into getting more animated cartoon characters lined up to teach Python. Speaking of which, check out this "Djangsta" pony the PyLadies came up with: [ technical glitch, will post later to Diversity ] I did my usual chauffeuring and schlepping for this conference (same as last year), working for Open Bastion (a sponsor / producer). Quite a few people at the conference knew me from the Diversity list in particular. Kirby From calcpage at aol.com Sun Sep 11 22:29:31 2011 From: calcpage at aol.com (A. Jorge Garcia) Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2011 16:29:31 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Edu-sig] NEW: Blogs, Videos and SmartNotes and Code! In-Reply-To: <8CDF698E9AE446D-B30-36CAC@webmail-d048.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CDF698E9AE446D-B30-36CAC@webmail-d048.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <8CE3ED8A55D9536-A78-24C24@webmail-m132.sysops.aol.com> NEW: Blogs, Videos and SmartNotes and Code! Please enjoy my latest blogs about Learning and Teaching Math and Computing with technology! http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/09/week-1-screencasts-precalculus-and.html http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/09/week-1-smartnotes-precalclus-and.html http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/09/week-1-code-computer-math-computer.html http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/09/cistheta-2011-2012-introductory-meeting.html http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/08/flipping-classroom-to-flip-or-not-to.html http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/07/taking-show-on-road.html http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/07/o-space-race-space-race-wherefore-art.html http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/06/screencasting-101-to-be-or-not-to-be.html Thanx, A. Jorge Garcia Applied Math and CompSci http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com http://www.youtube.com/calcpage2009 From lac at openend.se Thu Sep 15 09:31:27 2011 From: lac at openend.se (Laura Creighton) Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2011 09:31:27 +0200 Subject: [Edu-sig] What do you use for making presentations of a scatterplot of data Message-ID: <201109150731.p8F7VRCP008446@theraft.openend.se> I'd like to make a presentation where I have a series of (informational) points to make, each of which is associated with a cartesian (x, y) coordinate in a scatter plot. (It's Charles Perrow's graph from 'Normal Accidents' that plots 'coupling (from loose to tight)' vs 'complexity of interactions'. In the graph 'loose' is -y, tight is +y, while complexity increases not from 0 to some maximum value but from -x to +x. This gives you a separation of data into 4 quadrants, which is how Perrow wants to talk about them. So, ideally I would like to show an empty x and y axis, then click the button of my mouse, have one point show up, which I talk about for a bit, and then with successive clicks I can add more and more points to the graph. I would have thought that software to do this was common, but either I am picking the wrong words to search for, or this is not the case. Are any of you doing this already? and in that case, what do you use? Laura From jrgray at gmail.com Thu Sep 15 13:17:15 2011 From: jrgray at gmail.com (Jeremy Gray) Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2011 07:17:15 -0400 Subject: [Edu-sig] What do you use for making presentations of a scatterplot of data In-Reply-To: <201109150731.p8F7VRCP008446@theraft.openend.se> References: <201109150731.p8F7VRCP008446@theraft.openend.se> Message-ID: matplotlib is pretty good, including documentation and examples, http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/ import matplotlib, pylab x = [...] # list or numpy.array y = [...] color = [...] pylab.scatter(x, y, s=40, c=colors) # s = size, c = color vector pylab.show() On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 3:31 AM, Laura Creighton wrote: > > I'd like to make a presentation where I have a series of > (informational) points to make, each of which is associated with a > cartesian (x, y) coordinate in a scatter plot. (It's Charles Perrow's > graph from 'Normal Accidents' that plots 'coupling (from loose to > tight)' vs 'complexity of interactions'. In the graph 'loose' is -y, > tight is +y, while complexity increases not from 0 to some maximum > value but from -x to +x. This gives you a separation of data into 4 > quadrants, which is how Perrow wants to talk about them. So, ideally > I would like to show an empty x and y axis, then click the button of > my mouse, have one point show up, which I talk about for a bit, and > then with successive clicks I can add more and more points to the > graph. > > I would have thought that software to do this was common, but either > I am picking the wrong words to search for, or this is not the case. > Are any of you doing this already? and in that case, what do you use? > > Laura > > _______________________________________________ > 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 ccosse at gmail.com Thu Sep 15 20:57:32 2011 From: ccosse at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Charles_Coss=E9?=) Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:57:32 -0600 Subject: [Edu-sig] What do you use for making presentations of a scatterplot of data In-Reply-To: <201109150731.p8F7VRCP008446@theraft.openend.se> References: <201109150731.p8F7VRCP008446@theraft.openend.se> Message-ID: NPlot from the nirvana project at Fermilab. On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 1:31 AM, Laura Creighton wrote: > > I'd like to make a presentation where I have a series of > (informational) points to make, each of which is associated with a > cartesian (x, y) coordinate in a scatter plot. (It's Charles Perrow's > graph from 'Normal Accidents' that plots 'coupling (from loose to > tight)' vs 'complexity of interactions'. In the graph 'loose' is -y, > tight is +y, while complexity increases not from 0 to some maximum > value but from -x to +x. This gives you a separation of data into 4 > quadrants, which is how Perrow wants to talk about them. So, ideally > I would like to show an empty x and y axis, then click the button of > my mouse, have one point show up, which I talk about for a bit, and > then with successive clicks I can add more and more points to the > graph. > > I would have thought that software to do this was common, but either > I am picking the wrong words to search for, or this is not the case. > Are any of you doing this already? and in that case, what do you use? > > Laura > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > -- AsymptopiaSoftware|Software at theLimit http://www.asymptopia.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From missive at hotmail.com Thu Sep 22 03:35:44 2011 From: missive at hotmail.com (Lee Harr) Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2011 06:05:44 +0430 Subject: [Edu-sig] [ANNC] pynguin-0.12 (fixes problems running on Windows) 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 release fixes problems which prevented the program ??? from working properly on Windows systems. Pynguin is tested with Python 2.7.1 and PyQt 4.8.3 and ??? will use Pygments syntax highlighting if available. Pynguin is released under GPLv3. Changes in pynguin-0.12: ??? Important fixes ??????? - Fixed menu items and dialogs not working on Windows ??????? - Fixed error on Windows when trying to write backup files ??? Pynguin API ??????? - bgcolor() ??????? - raise exception if using color component outside of 0-255 ??????? - make util.nudge_color() API match util.choose_color() ??? Canvas ??????? - allow setting background color ??????? - fix custom svg avatars to allow any size avatar ??? Integrated Editor ??????? - comment / uncomment line / region ??? Integrated Console ??????? - added command to clear history ??????? - clears line before writing commands selected in menu ??? Examples ??????? - added fractals example file From blakeelias at gmail.com Thu Sep 22 05:56:57 2011 From: blakeelias at gmail.com (Blake Elias) Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2011 23:56:57 -0400 Subject: [Edu-sig] Inexpensive robot teaching platforms In-Reply-To: <4E05DF48.6070701@verizon.net> References: <4E05DF48.6070701@verizon.net> Message-ID: Andy thanks so much for recommending the Finch bot. We just bought 5 and are going to use them this year. Looks like it's going to be very fun to teach with them! Blake Elias On Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 9:14 AM, Andy Judkis wrote: > Here's another possibility, 100 bucks, programmable in Jython along with > several other languages: > > http://www.finchrobot.com/ > > Temp sensor, accelerometer, two IR sensors, two photodetectors. ?No > batteries, it's powered off it's 15 foot USB cable, not sure if that's a bug > or a feature. > I haven't actually seen or used one. > > Cheers, > Andy > > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > From daniele.gianni at gmail.com Fri Sep 23 21:21:28 2011 From: daniele.gianni at gmail.com (Daniele Gianni) Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2011 21:21:28 +0200 Subject: [Edu-sig] CfP: 2nd Workshop on Model-driven Approaches for Simulation Engineering (Mod4Sim), in Symposium on Theory of Modeling and Simulation, SCS Spring Sim 2012 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ##################################################################### CALL FOR PAPERS 2nd International Workshop on Model-driven Approaches for Simulation Engineering part of the Symposium on Theory of Modeling and Simulation (SCS SpringSim 2012) ##################################################################### March 26-29, 2012, Orlando, FL (USA) http://www.sel.uniroma2.it/Mod4Sim12 ##################################################################### # Papers Due: *** November 15, 2011 *** # Accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings and archived # in the ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplorer and IEEE CS Digital Library. # The Symposium is co-sponsored by IEEE. ##################################################################### The workshop aims to bring together experts in model-based, model-driven and software engineering with experts in simulation methods and simulation practitioners, with the objective to advance the state of the art in model-driven simulation engineering. Model-driven engineering approaches provide considerable advantages to software systems engineering activities through the provision of consistent and coherent models at different abstraction levels. As these models are in a machine readable form, model-driven engineering approaches can also support the exploitation of computing capabilities for model reuse, programming code generation, and model checking, for example. The definition of a simulation model, its software implementation and its execution platform form what is known as simulation engineering. As simulation systems are mainly based on software, these systems can similarly benefit from model-driven approaches to support automatic software generation, enhance software quality, and reduce costs, development effort and time-to-market. Similarly to systems and software engineering, simulation engineering can exploit the capabilities of model-driven approaches by increasing the abstraction level in simulation model specifications and by automating the derivation of simulator code. Further advantages can be gained by using modeling languages, such as UML and SysML ? but not exclusively those. For example, modeling languages can be used for descriptive modeling (to describe the system to be simulated), for analytical modeling (to specify analytically the simulation of the same system), and for implementation modeling (to define the respective simulator). A partial list of topics of interest includes: * model-driven simulation engineering processes * requirements modeling for simulation * domain specific languages for modeling and simulation * model transformations for simulation model building * model transformations for simulation model implementation * model-driven engineering of distributed simulation systems * relationship between metamodeling standards (e.g., MOF, Ecore) and distributed simulation standards (e.g., HLA, DIS) * metamodels for simulation reuse and interoperability * model-driven technologies for different simulation paradigms (discrete event simulation, multi-agent simulation, sketch-based * simulation, etc.) * model-driven methods and tools for performance engineering of simulation systems * simulation tools for model-driven software performance engineering * model-driven technologies for simulation verification and validation * model-driven technologies for data collection and analysis * model-driven technologies for simulation visualization * Executable UML * Executable Architectures * SysML / Modelica integration * Simulation Model Portability and reuse * model-based systems verification and validation * simulation for model-based systems engineering To stimulate creativity, however, the workshop maintains a wider scope and welcomes contributions offering original perspectives on model-driven engineering of simulation systems. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ On-Line Submissions and Publication +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ We invite paper submissions in three forms: 1. Full paper (max 8 pages), describing innovative research results. These papers are eligible for the best paper award and may be invited for an extended version in a special issue of the SCS SIMULATION journal. 2. Work-in-progress paper (max 6 pages), describing novel research ideas and promising work that have not yet been fully evaluated. 3. Short paper (max 6 pages), describing industrial and hands-on experience on any relevant area (i.e. military, government, space, etc.). All the papers must be submitted through the SCS conference management systems (http://www.softconf.com/scs/DEVS12/), selecting the Mod4Sim track in the "Submission Categories" section. All the submitted papers must be in PDF format and must conform to the SCS conference template (Word template is available at http://www.scs.org/upload/documents/templates/ConferenceSubmissionWORDTemplate.doc, guidelines are available at http://www.scs.org/PDFs/formattingkit.pdf). All the submitted papers must be original and not submitted else where. Submitted papers will be peer reviewed with respect to their quality, originality and relevance. The authors of the accepted papers must register in advance for inclusion of their paper in the conference proceedings. Authors of accepted papers will be invited to update their papers basing on the reviews, before providing the camera ready. All accepted papers will be included in the conference proceedings and archived in the ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplorer and IEEE CS Digital Library. However, **only** accepted **full papers** will be printed in hard copy. Authors may contact the organizers for expression of interest and content appropriateness at any time. +++++++++++++++ Important Dates +++++++++++++++ * Submission deadline: November 15, 2011 * Acceptance notification: January 1, 2012 * Camera ready due: January 15, 2012 * Conference dates: March 26 - 29, 2012 ++++++++++++++++++++ Organizing Committee ++++++++++++++++++++ * Daniele Gianni - European Space Agency, The Netherlands * Nicolas Rouquette - NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA +++++++++++++++++ Program Committee +++++++++++++++++ * Steffen Becker - University of Paderborn, Germany * David Chen - Univeristy of Bordeaux I, France * Andrea D'Ambrogio - University of Rome TorVergata, Italy * Juan De Lara - Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain * Hans-Peter De Koning - European Space Agency, The Netherlands * Christopher Delp - NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA * Dov Dori - Israel Institute of Technology, Israel, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA * Howard Eisen - NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA * Huascar Espinoza - European Software Institute and Tecnalia, Spain * Paul A. Fishwick - University of Florida, USA * Joachim Fuchs - European Space Agency, The Netherlands * Carlos Juiz - University of Balearic Islands, Spain * Cristiano Leorato - Rhea, The Netherlands * Steve McKeever - University of Oxford, UK * Halit O?uzt?z?n - Middle East Technical University, Turkey * Chris Paredis - Georgia Institute of Technology, USA * Andreas Tolk - Old Dominion University, USA * Hans Vangheluwe - University of Antwerp, Belgium and McGill University, Canada * Anthony Walsh - European Space Agency, Germany * Heming Zhang - Tsinghua University, China *** Contact Information *** Daniele Gianni and Nicolas Rouquette (workshop co-chairs) Emails: daniele.gianni at esa.int and nicolas.f.rouquette at jpl.nasa.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wescpy at gmail.com Tue Sep 27 16:04:53 2011 From: wescpy at gmail.com (wesley chun) Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2011 11:04:53 -0300 Subject: [Edu-sig] ANN: Intro+Intermediate Python course, SF, Oct 18-20 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ** FINAL CALL ** http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/cls/2495963854.html significant discount for primary/secondary teachers. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: wesley chun Date: Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 12:32 PM Subject: ANN: Intro+Intermediate Python course, SF, Oct 18-20 Need to get up-to-speed with Python as quickly and as in-depth as possible? Already coding Python but still have areas of uncertainty you need to fill? Then come join me, Wesley Chun, author of Prentice-Hall's bestseller "Core Python" for a comprehensive intro/intermediate course coming up this May in Northern California, then enjoy a beautiful Fall weekend afterwards in San Francisco, the beautiful city by the bay. Please pass on this note to whomever you think may be interested. I look forward to meeting you and your colleagues! Feel free to pass around the PDF flyer linked down below. Write if you have questions. Since I hate spam, I'll only send out one reminder as the date gets closer. (Comprehensive) Intro+Intermediate Python Tue-Thu, 2011 Oct 18-20, 9am-5pm Hope to meet you soon! -Wesley - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - (COMPREHENSIVE) INTRO+INTERMEDIATE PYTHON Although this course may appear to those new to Python, it is also perfect for those who have tinkered with it and want to "fill in the gaps" and/or want to get more in-depth formal training. ?It combines the best of both an introduction to the language as well as a "Python Internals" training course. We will immerse you in the world of Python in only a few days, showing you more than just its syntax (which you don't really need a book to learn, right?). Knowing more about how Python works under the covers, including the relationship between data objects and memory management, will make you a much more effective Python programmer coming out of the gate. 3 hands-on labs each day will help hammer the concepts home. Come find out why Google, Yahoo!, Disney, ILM/LucasFilm, VMware, NASA, Ubuntu, YouTube, and Red Hat all use Python. Users supporting or jumping to Plone, Zope, TurboGears, Pylons, Django, Google App Engine, Jython, IronPython, and Mailman will also benefit! PREVIEW 1: you will find (and can download) a video clip of a class session recorded live to get an idea of my lecture style and the interactive classroom environment (as well as sign-up) at: http://cyberwebconsulting.com PREVIEW 2: Partnering with O'Reilly and Pearson, Safari Books Online has asked me to deliver a 1-hour webcast a couple of years ago called "What is Python?". This was an online seminar based on a session that I've delivered at numerous conferences in the past. It will give you an idea of lecture style as well as an overview of the material covered in the course. info:http://www.safaribooksonline.com/events/WhatIsPython.html download (reg req'd): http://www.safaribooksonline.com/Corporate/DownloadAndResources/webcastInfo.php?page=WhatIsPython - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - WHERE: near the San Francisco Airport (SFO/San Bruno), CA, USA WEB: ? http://cyberwebconsulting.com FLYER: http://cyberwebconsulting.com/flyerPP1.pdf LOCALS: easy freeway (101/280/380) with lots of parking plus public transit (BART and CalTrain) access via the San Bruno stations, easily accessible from all parts of the Bay Area VISITORS: free shuttle to/from the airport, free high-speed internet, free breakfast and regular evening receptions; fully-equipped suites See website for costs, venue info, and registration. There is a significant discounts available for full-time students, secondary teachers, and others. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "Core Python Programming", Prentice Hall, (c)2007,2001 "Python Fundamentals", Prentice Hall, (c)2009 ? ? http://corepython.com wesley.chun : wescpy-gmail.com : @wescpy python training and technical consulting cyberweb.consulting : silicon valley, ca http://cyberwebconsulting.com From kirby.urner at gmail.com Tue Sep 27 18:01:23 2011 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2011 09:01:23 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] notes from a User Group meeting... (Urner in Portland) Message-ID: I've been enjoying repartee with the math-teach irregulars over on Math Forum, an old haunt of mine, approaching 6K postings over the years, maybe more if we count lost dialogs (had a good one with J.H. Conway when MF was still with Swarthmore). The thread includes some commentary on OLPC and some early mistakes. I should have more links to back me up on some of this stuff. Wikipedia would likely sweep it out the door in its present form, but then I wasn't intending to write the veridical history. Our recent PPUG meeting at Produce Row included Michelle Rowley's proposal to do a Pycon talk centered around posture, ergonomics, yoga, all those tricks you need to know to stay buff in your cubicle. Reasonably, she was concerned this topic would be deemed too froo froo by the ambient serious-minded engineering culture, however she had solutions for that, namely software services, written in Python, that would encourage self-awareness while working. Your phone might have a few words to say about your posture occasionally, thanks to a tickler file you threw together in some DIY hack job, latter ported to github and turned into a community service enterprise, complete with forking branches. We talked about the self quantification movement springing from athletics mixing with cloud services. This'd make work in a cubicle a little more like a gym class. The next generation of cubicle may have more "monkey bar" features, letting you hang upside down while coding. I could see a whole office doing that, maybe at Marvel Comics. Urban Airship. Michelle is an accomplished Djangsta and systems architect, with an earlier background in PHP. She's working on a yoga-related web site for teachers, a kind of Khan Academy for yogis, minus most of those Youtubes (that's not how she describes it, and I'm not doing her business model justice, just giving some more background on our User Group leader). I brought a laptop to the meeting and showcased some of my Tractor Graphics, simple Python generators ploughing in 2D fields of ASCII. I've written a lot about that here before. I've got some sample slides in my Photostream, clearly early draft in that the spellchecker is turned on and giving wavy lines in Powerpoint. I've pointed math-thinking-l to the thread, so far without sparking any commentary. That's a sleepy-head list these days. Kirby Thread on Math Forum: http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=2299146&tstart=0 From kurner at oreillyschool.com Thu Sep 29 00:51:27 2011 From: kurner at oreillyschool.com (Kirby Urner) Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2011 15:51:27 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] notes from a User Group meeting... (Urner in Portland) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > Our recent PPUG meeting at Produce Row included Michelle Rowley's > proposal to do a Pycon talk centered around posture, ergonomics, yoga, > all those tricks you need to know to stay buff in your cubicle. > > Something like: class Kundalini: def __chakra1__(self): "Muladhara" def __chakra2__(self): "Swadhisthana" def __chakra3__(self): "Manipura" def __chakra4__(self): "Anahata" def __chakra5__(self): "Vishuddha" def __chakra6__(self): "Ajna" def __chakra7__(self): "Sahasrara" comes to mind as a good mnemonic, acknowledging up front this isn't a real magic name (so it'd mangle, not crash -- the above is legal Python, OK to have docstring instead of pass). The point of using underunder (dunder) is to remind us of ribs (__ribs__) which is what a snake has (a backbone) and what a kundalini is. Anyway, I'm supposed to be working. Enough water cooler mumbo jumbo. Back to the cube (somewhat figurative in my case, though I've been an indigenous cube farmer in my day).** Kirby ** http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2007/05/qyoobin.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: