| | 1 | = Minutes 2010/06/05 = |
| | 2 | |
| | 3 | |
| | 4 | == Python in Schools == |
| | 5 | |
| | 6 | Notes from Robert's talk on the recent proposal to the Western Cape education to consider Python as the primary language for use in high school IT studies. |
| | 7 | |
| | 8 | * Robert and Marco know Western Cape IT curriculum advisor, Mr Brock. |
| | 9 | * Current curriculum: |
| | 10 | * Western Cape and 3 others use Delphi |
| | 11 | * Other five use Java |
| | 12 | * Have to set two exams, two sets of examples |
| | 13 | * Interaction with Delphi very GUI orientated |
| | 14 | * Tension between the two groups |
| | 15 | * Language flamewars |
| | 16 | * New proposal: |
| | 17 | * Everyone switches to Python |
| | 18 | * Disadvantages all students equally. :) |
| | 19 | * Different cases: |
| | 20 | * Students continuing on to other languages. |
| | 21 | * Students who will only do school computer studies. |
| | 22 | * Teachers need / want an IDE for students. |
| | 23 | * Current status after meeting: |
| | 24 | * Western Cape people seem fairly convinced that Python is a good choice. |
| | 25 | * Western Cape IT people will now try convince Delphi users. |
| | 26 | * Need final proposal early September. |
| | 27 | * Will make decision in early November and start training teachers. |
| | 28 | * Curriculum to be deployed in 2012. |
| | 29 | * Should curriculum be moving to web GUIs? |
| | 30 | * Django? |
| | 31 | * Teachers themselves don't agree about what should be taught. |
| | 32 | * Specific skills become rapidly outdated. |
| | 33 | * Need to select skills that won't become outdated easily. |
| | 34 | * Lots of things are scriptable with Python: |
| | 35 | * Mayavi |
| | 36 | * VPython |
| | 37 | * !PyGame |
| | 38 | * Turtle |
| | 39 | * Learning by exploration? |
| | 40 | * How many students would actually do this? |
| | 41 | * How can CTPUG help out? |
| | 42 | * Robert will ask Mr Brock how CTPUG can contribute. |
| | 43 | * Marco and UCT are running another weekend Python course in August: |
| | 44 | * Perhaps CTPUG people could help out as tutors. |
| | 45 | * Perhaps invite teachers involved in language decisions to come help / observe. |
| | 46 | * Handily this is just before the September decision. |
| | 47 | * What is the current curriculum? |
| | 48 | * Would be useful to get a copy. |
| | 49 | |
| | 50 | |
| | 51 | == !PiCloud Talk == |
| | 52 | |
| | 53 | Links to things discussed: |
| | 54 | |
| | 55 | * [http://www.picloud.com PiCloud] |
| | 56 | * High-level cloud computing interface using Python. |
| | 57 | * Provides call(func, *args) and map(func, sequence) functions. |
| | 58 | * Built on top of Amazon's EC2 and S3. |
| | 59 | * Code that can be run pretty much unrestricted (NumPy and SciPy provided, can upload own modules, can read and write to filesystem). |
| | 60 | * Can't listen for incoming connections. |
| | 61 | * !PiCloud service currently in beta and free. Later will be charged at approximately Amazon EC2 / S3 rates. |
| | 62 | * [http://code.google.com/p/boto/ Boto] |
| | 63 | * Lower-level interface to EC2, S3 and other Amazon Web Services. |
| | 64 | * Allows control and creation of EC2 instances, load balancers, etc. |
| | 65 | * Google App Engine |
| | 66 | * Code than can be run tightly restricted (data must be stored via BigTable, no access to custom C extensions) |
| | 67 | * Some ways for running GAE apps on your own hardware: |
| | 68 | * [http://github.com/jchris/appdrop AppDrop] (not actively maintained) |
| | 69 | * [http://code.google.com/p/django-gae2django/ django-gae2django] (run apps under Django, also not actively maintained) |
| | 70 | * [http://codespeak.net/execnet/ Execnet] |
| | 71 | * A library for setting up your own distributed Python computing environment. |
