On Tue, Feb 2, 2016 at 10:45 AM, Juliano <julianofisc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry Mr. Kirby, I really did not notice the tilde. > Shame on me. > > Shame on me then for being too obscure. :-D BTW, I demonstrate overloading tilde ~ using __invert__ in px_class.py in the Accelerated folder in here: http://bit.ly/1TrSJFB (my stash of <guild /> course files) After some hours of Orientation we needed to face the issue of zero-to-white and yellow-to-orange belt trainees in the same room. We quickly decided, just yesterday, after three meetups, to fork the class and let me continue with the yellow-to-orange. The two folders in the above DropBox reflect this forking. This was not actually Orientation but pre boot camp, so those aspiring had fewer hours to prepare. Long story. Short version: this is just a six meetup course (M-W-Fri 6-9 PM) and we got a really wide mix of students (a good thing! -- that's life!). In a typical Orientation session, you'll have people are coming from construction, having sustained injuries and now looking for desk jobs, learning typing on the list of things to tackle, mixed with others who have maybe had significant experience as programmers but maybe over a decade ago having done other things in between, so needing a refresher in more contemporary tools. Having this range of diversity in one classroom is interesting and my approach was to tell a lot of stories, focus on lore, while being very gradualist about the install hurdle, which some had crossed already, others never. People enjoyed this part, but we must all buckle down and learn to actually read and write code, not just watch some instructor do it for us! The <guild /> is famous for hands-on. This is not music theory / appreciation only, one must bring one's violin! We must play notes! I've become a big fan of PythonAnywhere.com for its nothing-to-install environment and encouraged any student up for it to grab an account and make me their mentor. Now these students show up in my /home directory as co-workers and I can slide them .py files to chew on, in a bash shell using python3. The web-browser GUI is fairly intuitive and provides an easy way to upload / download. One does need to be on Wifi / Internet however, for PythonAnywhere to work, so *in addition* (it's not either/or) I recommend a native laptop install. I gave them two choices: Python.org or Anaconda.org, saying we'd be coding in Python 3.x exclusively but would talk a lot about the differences. Anyway, after some hours of demo, overview and fun stories, the hard reality of: (a) maybe not even having a laptop yet and/or (b) feeling confused where to actually start, began to set in. It's a whole different ballgame to do it oneself, right? Given the immanence of the next boot camp (coding dojo), we made the decision to fork and have a clinic for true beginners. This sorting out phase is normal, and in an Orientation period and gives people a lot of freedom to make their own decisions regarding what's best for their goals. Some need to get to white belt first. Others would be bored in white belt and are chomping at the bit for higher level training. A fellow instructor is working with that white belt group while the head instructor (not me, I'm a noob) has explained to students how they're free to wander back and forth as we're only a few doors apart. Get a sense of the next level, go back to square one. It's an iterative process. Tomorrow night, just to confuse them, we'll switch rooms (Accelerated Programming will be closer to the front door, depicted below): https://flic.kr/p/C1Ge6p Recap of my teaching experience: I've been teaching 100% asynchronously, not in real time, not seeing my students, for a few years with O'Reilly, great gig. That's finally ending this week, as in tomorrow. At OST, we would spin them up an "average desktop" i.e. Windows client for a Linux server, they'd remotely pilot using RDP. Eclipse was their IDE but not a really up-to-date one. Realism more than idealism was the goal. Now I'm back to real time with two separate contracts: this gig with <guild /> and an "Internet radio show" teaching Python to Californians who qualify, via saisoft.net. I have to actually go to a dedicated building (foreign concept!) to do the <guild /> job. So not only do I have to think on my feet and walk around more (gasp!), I need to contend with diverse install issues in multiple operating systems. Having a TA in the room (Chris) really helps. Like I take 'em to Python.org right away, but I also show them several IDEs such as Spyder, Pycharm, Eclipse and don't insist they all grab the same thing (some may have already made choices). For those least familiar with this terrain, we have fall-back choices e.g. Atom for a text editor. Or maybe Notepad++ for Windows users. Here are some more pictures of the code school and its environs: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kirbyurner/albums/72157664250599655 As I see it, your idea is very interesting. > In fact, I am thinking about a teaching project: "Programming Python Like > a Ninja!" > Maybe a competition: "Ultimate Python Championship". > > Yes, there's a lot of overlap in the namespaces. Words like "coding dojo" are common. 210K hits on Google for "coding dogo" This makes sense, partly in terms I'm fleshing out here i.e. we can stratify a computer language into usable chunks each with a degree of utility. Maybe using Python as a calculator really is just what you need. > As a school teacher, I always consider your insights, ideas, and opinions > very inspiring. > > Thank you very much, *sensei* Kirby. > I'm feel honored by a respected peer. :-D Kirby > > Juliano Fischer Naves > Informatics Professor - IFRO > D.Sc. Student - IC/UFF/Brazil > > Please do not send me Microsoft Office/Apple iWork documents. Send > OpenDocument instead! http://fsf.org/campaigns/opendocument/ > Liberate your documents! > >
_______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
