[Edu-sig] Re: python for homeschoolers

[Christopher Isaac Larnder]

> Kirby said:

> ... envision a time when,

> at the college level, math teachers might take basic

> competence/familiarity with Python as an ability shared
> by the average incoming student
>
> The arena in which such an agenda has the greatest
> chance of being tested/implemented in this day and age
> is in the homeschooler sector, as this is where (a) kids
> already have computers and use them for self-tutoring
> and (b) innovation is happening of necessity.
>

We send our boy to school part-time, giving him a bit of space
to actually explore self-motivated learning the rest of the time.
He's started recently with a bit python to make nice print-outs
of what he'd earn cutting the grass for the neighbours
once per week, times 3 clients, times 3 months etc..
  Another output format fostering self-motivation is VPython.
A third, which I haven't tried yet is simple python-web page interactions.
( any suggestions for dead-easy python-web stuff?)

I'm much less interested in "getting python into the schools" than
in the opportunity of a CP4E vision bringing support to non-formal,
non-schooled decentralized learning models.
Kids are inside the schools, python is outside: The two can evolve together by
bringing the latter in, but it could go a lot further by getting the former out.

We would be happy to hear about any other independent youngpy
learners out there..

-Izk
( Christopher Isaac Larnder )