[Pythonedu-wg] Installation and deployment experience

[Stewart Watkiss]

Hi Laura,

It's great to hear from a teacher on this forum, my view of the 
classroom is based on a very limited exposure through my volunteer role 
so it's good to get a different view.

Agree with your point. I think a real problems is the amount of 
restrictions put in place on computers which make it very difficult to 
install new software / programming libraries onto the computers. 
Effectively you have a tool (the Windows computers) configured for using 
office tools that is then being used for teaching computing. It's like 
trying to teach woodwork without having a saw because they are too 
dangerous :-(

In the ideal world then when it comes to programming it would be nice 
for pupils to have their own dedicated computer or a virtual machine 
which would allow them administrator permission to install libraries as 
required (kind of how I can have admin access to a machine at my 
University in Atlanta but studying from the UK). In the real world I 
don't think this is practical (due to cost and infrastructure), but even 
without that there are ways that the computer environment can be setup 
that works better than others.

With regard to your blog post then I think some of that is what we are 
hoping to find a solution for. In particular the idea that you shouldn't 
have to manually install some of the libraries required, they should be 
a bundle or a simple install process that would make this all 
transparent to the teachers.

Your blog refers to PyGame which is quite frustrating, short answer is 
that is one of the things we are hoping to fix - long answer read on ...

I don't think that Pygame deliberately ignores Windows users. It's 
install process on Linux isn't particularly straight forward and in many 
cases no easier than the Windows install. The library is pre-installed 
on the Raspberry Pi which does make it easy, but that's because someone 
has already done the work in packaging it up and because the way that it 
is bundled with the image that the foundation puts together.

Regarding the documentation then what you see is quite common for 
libraries designed for programmers. The documentation is sometimes 
written for more experienced programmers and is not really designed for 
teaching children programming. You can see a similar thing when looking 
at libraries for other programming languages. Often you are better to 
look for specific educational documentation rather than the library 
description. If you are interested in pygame then I suggest you look at 
the online ebook at: http://inventwithpython.com/pygame/ - however 
there's now a simpler graphics library which is easier to use Pygame Zero.

Pygame Zero is much easier to program in and it's document is much 
easier to follow. It does provide installation instructions at: 
http://pygame-zero.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installation.html . The bad 
news is that it first needs pygame to be installed, but as long as you 
have Python 3.4 then it's as simple as following the link provided in 
the install guide and installing the latest windows install file. There 
are also versions of Pygame for earlier versions of Python, but it's not 
so easy if you have a new version of Python (eg. 3.5)

After installing pygame to install pygame zero on a computer you have 
administration permissions to it's simply a case of running
pip install pgzero
from the Windows command prompt (assuming Python is already installed 
and in your path).

There is a beginners guide at 
https://pygame-zero.readthedocs.io/en/latest/introduction.html which is 
better than the pygame one.

Pygame zero is still under development and there isn't much 
documentation beyond the link above, but what I've seen of it so far it 
makes graphical programming much easier for beginners. Over time it will 
hopefully become more popular and have more sources of documentation.

Unfortunately this still leaves you with the difficulty of getting it 
installed onto the school computers, and that is something we would very 
much like to fix and is the reason I revived this thread. The one thing 
we've worked out so far is that this is not a trivial thing and it's not 
so much the fault of Python or the libraries that have been created 
(although there is some element in that) but in the ways that school 
computers are configured and administered.

In summary we feel your pain and that example is exactly what we would 
like to help with. It doesn't sound like it will be a quick fix that can 
suddenly be applied to all computer in schools, but we do hope to find a 
solution that will help make this easier.


Stewart



*From:*Pythonedu-wg 
[mailto:pythonedu-wg-bounces+swatkiss=emea.att.com at python.org] *On 
Behalf Of *Laura Dixon
*Sent:* 11 May 2016 20:46
*To:* pythonedu-wg at python.org
*Subject:* [Pythonedu-wg] Installation and deployment experience

Hello,

(Long time digest lurker - I'm a teacher!)

Your emails prompted me to remember a blog post I wrote a while back 
whilst trying to install Pygame, but which I had not yet published (it 
is here http://wp.me/p24vku-ed ). No disrespect intended if anyone is 
involved with Pygame - I really *want* to use it, I just ran out of 
patience.

I completely agree with what you've said about being able to install 
things easily and quickly. However I don't agree with this bit:

"I think much of the problem is a hearts-and-minds issue though. 
Many teachers simply don't have the knowledge to see that 
shonky sub-contracted set-up is sub-standard and a terrible pedagogical 
platform."

Most teachers have absolutely no choice about how their network is 
configured :( Whether they know or don't know anything is irrelevant, 
because it's something they have no say in whatsoever. If you're going 
to go after anyone's hearts and minds it needs to be management as they 
are the ones who make the decisions.

Hope to lurk a bit more and reply soon! :)

Laura

--
Stewart Watkiss
@stewartwatkiss @penguintutor
http://www.penguintutor.com
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