[Tutor] Seattle PyCamp 2011

[Chris Calloway]

On 6/19/2011 3:53 PM, Noah Hall wrote:
>> 1984 was not to be taken literally, of course. ;)
>>
>>
>> Well, if you decide that in this day and age that asking whether
>> someone knows how to use a browser to download files, or if someone
>> knows how to install a program, then that's entirely up to you. I am
>> merely in disbelief that you could find someone these days interested
>> enough in computers to learn Python, and yet not know how to download
>> a file. Had they been in jest, I would have understood, you know,
>> something along the lines of "Want to learn Python? Well, there's only
>> one thing you need to know - how to read!". But when taking it in
>> seriousness, I must congratulate you on somehow finding these people;
>> I had no idea they still existed. ;)
>>
>> Regards,
>> Noah.
>
> I also realised how aggressive my first reply was, for which I'm
> sorry, I was merely trying to point out that perhaps they were out of
> date questions.

Mr. Hall,

It's not really entirely up to me, no. There are many people in several 
user groups behind these questions. And the questions have evolved over 
time to be perfectly up to date, yes. The first few PyCamps attempted to 
qualify participants by simply stating the syllabus. The casual observer 
might think that would be enough. But no, that is not the case in 
reality when you get experience from teaching many classes of any kind.

 From those first few camps there were outlier participants who either 
thought PyCamp was too easy or too hard and who demanded more 
information be placed on the PyCamp page about what qualifications are 
required. With each successive PyCamp, those qualifications were 
adjusted according to participant feedback until the suggested 
prerequisites are what they are now. I'm sure they will continue to 
evolve even more in the future.

No, it isn't enough to only need to know how to read to come to PyCamp. 
There are many ways to learn Python which might entail only knowing how 
to read or learning to use a computer at the same time. But PyCamp is 
one week and we don't teach people how to use a computer during that 
week. Whatever your disbelief, I can assure you in this day and age if 
it is not explicitly stated up front that you need to know how to 
download a file and run a program installer before coming to PyCamp, 
then there will be people who will be upset when lack of those skills 
hinders them in class and when class doesn't pause to teach them those 
skills.

And I can assure you those people are common enough to find, no 
congratulations necessary, especially when offering a week long training 
at the low PyCamp price point. You may not mean 1984. But PyCamp and any 
computer-based open training for that matter has to account for people 
from 1984. Python doesn't appeal only to computer nerds. Python has many 
domain-specific uses from geography to biology. When you have large 
numbers of people coming from such disparate backgrounds, you find that 
computer illiteracy is quite high in the general population, even among 
the educated, even among people who Facebook, or even among people from 
2011. :)

I accept your apology and yes, I was taken aback by the hostility of 
your replies in a public forum. However, in the interest of providing 
information about PyCamp and in the interest of what it takes to tutor 
Python, I hope this explains some things.

-- 
Sincerely,

Chris Calloway http://nccoos.org/Members/cbc
office: 3313 Venable Hall   phone: (919) 599-3530
mail: Campus Box #3300, UNC-CH, Chapel Hill, NC 27599