[Tutor] Recommended Resurce or strategy for beginning students

Wed Feb 20 22:47:44 EST 2019

Congratulations!!

When going through PySimpleGUI….
There are some tutorial videos if your students like to learn that way.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/9nvdmw/tutorial_beginning_as_in_your_first_time_gui/

And be sure and check out the new PySimpleGUIWeb implementation.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/ar3x3b/embedding_entire_python_guis_in_webpages_with/

The latest Cookbook takes advantage of this early port of PySimpleGUIWeb running in the repl.it environment.

It uses repl.it to show how to implement various cookbook Recipes.

The PySimpleGUI account for Repl.it is https://repl.it/@PySimpleGUI which is where you’ll find a number of example programs that run using PySimpleGUIWeb.

Repl.it is AMAZING!  They’re even doing AI contests on there.  Imagine doing Python AI programs without Python even being installed on your computer.

Now your students can program PySimpleGUI code on an iPad if they really wanted.  Any browser window will work with repl.it.

You can write your PySimpleGUI code one time and run it on the web, tkinter, Qt, or WxPython all by just changing the import statement (in theory).

The downside is that each port is a little bit further along than the others.  Tkinter is pretty much done.  Qt is in Alpha.  Wx is Pre-Alpha.  Web is Engineering release.

For doing the basics, PySimpleGUIWeb does remarkably well.  I’m able to use it to demonstrate PySimpleGUI concepts in a way that any reader can understand and execute without  even needing Python installed on their computer.

It’s Remi<https://github.com/dddomodossola/remi>, by the way, that is the magic behind PySimpleGUIWeb.

@mike<mailto:mike_barnett at hotmail.com>

From: Matthew Polack <matthew.polack at htlc.vic.edu.au>
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2019 10:35 PM
To: David <bouncingcats at gmail.com>; Mike Barnett <mike_barnett at hotmail.com>; Alan Gauld <alan.gauld at yahoo.co.uk>
Cc: tutor at python.org
Subject: Re: [Tutor] Recommended Resurce or strategy for beginning students

Hi All,

Just wanted to update this thread regarding a resource for beginning students. We are now 4 weeks into the course and have found an excellent youtube series that goes from absolute basics.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLAZ4kZ9dFpMMs5lskzBApYXn0bl7emsW<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fplaylist%3Flist%3DPLLAZ4kZ9dFpMMs5lskzBApYXn0bl7emsW&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cb9d9a4d30a4542f68a5708d697ada125%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636863169316775701&sdata=gCftFiMvcghFeAcNeXmeZaT426VsV2Enb5UnfbowfUw%3D&reserved=0>

The big advantage for us in a classroom context is that students can work through this at their own pace using an Ipad to watch videos and then a computer to code..

I have some students who are flying through the course and are ready for more advanced topics..others are working more slowly...but all of them are enthusiastic and engaged...and the beauty of using a series like this is they can just go onto the harder topics when they are ready.

After we finish this series my plan is then to go onto Mike's excellent PySimpleGUI resource...https://pysimplegui.readthedocs.io/tutorial/<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpysimplegui.readthedocs.io%2Ftutorial%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cb9d9a4d30a4542f68a5708d697ada125%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636863169316785707&sdata=3bpI7rXaMWfLh06x5wZV6wVlS8yFM5hui2cipegkLro%3D&reserved=0>

I'm sure the students will then enjoy the GUI elements of the code.

We'll also use the Turtle import option to add some graphics interactions

We then might look to use a robotics  resource which is GoPiGo https://www.dexterindustries.com/gopigo-in-python-tutorials/<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dexterindustries.com%2Fgopigo-in-python-tutorials%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cb9d9a4d30a4542f68a5708d697ada125%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636863169316795718&sdata=DbcV4Auj9wYyFZGu7AcKlSWxFPiIdzhbNkW5%2BHKIOcQ%3D&reserved=0> which gives us a chance to explore robotics with Python.

The pleasing thing is how keen the students are to keep learning and asking questions....

Thanks again for all your support and ideas!

Matthew Polack

On Tue, Feb 5, 2019 at 3:05 PM David <bouncingcats at gmail.com<mailto:bouncingcats at gmail.com>> wrote:
On Tue, 22 Jan 2019 at 20:30, Matthew Polack
<matthew.polack at htlc.vic.edu.au<mailto:matthew.polack at htlc.vic.edu.au>> wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> In our growing school we're teaching Python programming for the first time
> as an elective subject with Year 9 and 10 students. (Had a dabble at this
> last year with 3 students in Year 11)

Hi Matthew and other readers,

I wonder if you and any others here involved in classroom/group teaching
might be interested in this recent presentation that I stumbled across:
https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9800-how_to_teach_programming_to_your_loved_ones<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.ccc.de%2Fv%2F35c3-9800-how_to_teach_programming_to_your_loved_ones&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cb9d9a4d30a4542f68a5708d697ada125%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636863169316805729&sdata=wKSTBNo3pu6C8aEh9nDIrsTEoTWIxnKrp%2Fc8LD4XHRY%3D&reserved=0>

The section of this video which motivates me to write here is the two minutes
from 19:00 to 21:00.

What I find most interesting is his motivation mentioned there: he claims his
procedure solves the problem of any students becoming "lost", feeling "stuck"
at any particular step, not knowing what to do next, and unable to proceed
without guidance.

Quoting from the synopsis:
The talk is based on many years of research by the Program by Design,
DeinProgramm, and Bootstrap educational projects, as well as over 30 years
of personal teaching experience in school, university and industrial contexts.
A word of warning: The resulting approach is radically different from most
teaching approaches used in universities and schools. In particular, it avoids
teaching purely through examples and expecting students to develop the
skills to arrive at the solutions on their own. Instead, it teaches explicit
methodology that enables students to solve problems of surprising complexity
on their own, whether they are 11 or 55, whether in a classroom, a training
facility, or your home. Extensive documentation, material, and software to
support this methodology is available for free.

For anyone considering watching the whole presentation, I expect that there
are many other aspects of this presentation to which people here could react
negatively, for example:

1) The given title is misleading, in my opinion its subtitle would be much more
representative: "Enabling students [by] example-driven teaching".

2) It recommends against Python, about this I have no opinion (except
to respect the presenter's experience) and that is not why I am posting it here.

3) It emphasises functional programming style.

4) Despite possibly having an audience including skilled programmers, in the
second half of the presentation the presenter does not skip quickly over the
concept, but instead he chooses to demonstrate his concept by reproducing
the same deliberate steps that he would use in a classroom of students
with low ability.

Despite all these possibly alienating aspects, and possibly others, I'm not
really interested in those aspects, because they're not useful to me and so
I choose to ignore them, instead focussing on what might be useful.

Years ago I spent about a decade teaching undergraduate engineering
students, from that context I consider this interesting and relevant.
This presenter mentions that he has 30 years of of experience
and commitment to teaching this subject, and considers most of his
efforts a "failure" (at 02:00). Learning from such a person can save other
practitioners a great deal of effort.

So I felt that this was worth sharing here, I hope negative reactions
or distractions don't distract from possibly useful information.
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