Here's something I posted recently to the new diversity list (check list of lists), thought I'd better run it by here as I don't think Andre yet knows of his plan to turn edu-sig community page into French only (with English backup for disabled).
I've got the usual "party line" about reaching out to students through the user group infrastructure, hoping to drum up exhibits for Vern to judge and share with us in Atlanta. There's another post before this, almost as long, that sets the stage, but I'm reluctant to cross-post too much. Speaking of cross-posting (and not doing it (but Diversity is a closed archive)), here's a pointer to the Wittgenstein list I've been frequenting of late (my specialty at Princeton, his later philosophy in particular). I'm doing a segment on the "is" operator in Python. Comments welcome. http://www.freelists.org/post/wittrs/mix-of-investigation-and-live-logic-re-understanding I'm pumping some Python into philosophy discourse in much the same way I use it to enliven math learning. I think academic philosophers are missing the boat in ignoring live executable logic, of the kind Leibniz hoped we'd have, in favor of pre-computer propositional calculus stuff ala Bertie Russell & Co. Prop-calc *anticipated* a lot of the skills we'd be needing, but staying stuck in that rut, out of a secret desire to collude with peers on dividing up intellectual turf a certain way (inter-departmental relations), doesn't well serve our students. Like Robert Hansen on math-teach talks up how you can go along for months and years in computer science without ever meeting or talking with a mathematician, as if that's a "good thing". In my school, we were taught that hyper-specialization brought us to the brink of species extinction, so there's this "never again" bias. Anyway, back to work, hope a few of you have the patience for my storytelling below... (true stories, with lots of pictures to back 'em up, so more fun than just science fiction eh?). Kirby PS: also enjoying Math 2.0 (mathfuture) list, Ed Cherlin among us also (Maria an effective recruiter). ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: kirby urner <kirby.ur...@gmail.com> Date: Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 6:12 PM Subject: Re: [Diversity] Okay, here's the deal. To: divers...@python.org On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 4:17 PM, Rami Chowdhury<rami.chowdh...@gmail.com> wrote: > I'm sorry, I'd just like to check that I'm reading you correctly. So you're > saying the Python community should consider sponsoring / supporting: > - FOSS 'covens' Hi Rami -- Thanks for requesting clarification. I'm not suggesting I'm that easy to follow, try to pack a lot in, lose a proportion of readers that way (malesh). I don't think PSF needs to lift a finger to sustain the reality of FOSS covens and FOSS witches in Oregon. We've already worked that into our lore, have a long history on that score pre-dating FOSS. Dunno if you've been to our town, but it's quite common to see bumper stickers with five pointed pentacles with the word Clergy underneath -- might be the Intel parking lot. http://www.thejukejoint.com/bumperstickers.html (not that different from New Orleans) FOSS witches Gabrielle and Selena are more into Postgres as a specialty (they presented on Code 'n Splode at OS Bridge, our latest open source conference, developed in response to OSCON sharing the glory with San Jose, after choosing Portland seven years in a row (I think it was)). "World Domination" was our theme, per this banner: http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157...@n00/3639256600/in/set-72157619963850814/ (banner) http://opensourcebridge.org/sessions/34 (the talk I gave, not as hands-on as the write-up sounds, more a lobbying meeting) > - Programming classes / activities for high school math / science > students > > I'd like to say I think the latter is a great idea... > More on Digital Math track (DM), versus Analog Math track (AM -- traditional precalc - calc): http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=6777885&tstart=0 There's this PSF plan to foster user groups internally to high schools and then have students forward their work to our Pycon-level "watcher" (like a talent scout, like a dog show judge) for possible inclusion in a "poster session" sharing floorspace with company sponsors (Google might even sponsor posters from Summer of Code or whatever) either inside or outside the main exhibit hall in Atlanta. This plan was hatched by the Python in Education committee aka edu-sig and our watcher is a man named Vern Ceder. Our edu-sig web page (part of Python.org) is managed from Canada by a university president. We may redo the whole page in French by default, with the English version for those who still need it -- haven't run this by Guido yet though. Mirroring the edu-sig page in multiple languages seems a good idea for *some* web host to consider... Anyway, the lobbying required to get agile programming in a hybrid relationship with math content at the high school level is a long uphill slog. We have many allies. The Litvins text used at Phillipps Exeter, one of the USA's stronger elite academies, is looking pretty good, definitely a step in the right direction (being upgraded to work with Python 3.x). The calculator companies want to postpone the day when we use Python as a calculator. Their idea of heaven is to emulate a TI on a Pentium (or better) such that the Intel CPU becomes a slave to Texas Instruments software. That's not so popular in my neck of the woods (Silicon Forest), but the fact remains that, come September this year, only a lucky few will be learning any Python in one of our several pilot programs around the state (in Sherwood, LEP High, Saturday Academy or what not). In terms of gender sensitivity, given there's a lot of green field development involved with running a whole new math track through high school (the most optimistic outcome) or even just a new course, it pays to have gender studies specialists on board early, which is where Dr. Tag comes in. Does that mean we try to hide the fact of FOSS witches? No, Tag and Lindsey are friends (per picture below). Lindsey is also known to some in her inner circle as "miss torture taxi" (a nick name) as her work history includes helping with computerized maintenance of those Gulfstreams owned by General Dynamics (her company's client), some run out of nearby Evergreen (though her base was Savannah). http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157...@n00/3832823886/ (small coven) http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157...@n00/3751824838/ (Dr. Tag @ Linus Pauling House, a local HQS) http://wweek.com/editorial/3315/8562/ (local paper re "torture taxis" -- part of our local lore (esoterica)) http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157...@n00/sets/72157621643139200/ (Lindsey at work (salvage successful)) Note that Lindsey ended up hating her work and came here as a political and economic refugee, same as many others. She's unusual in having been management level on her totem pole, having a clear view to higher levels, but mostly her job was to ride herd and not code. Her background in technical topics would be more in the area of Perl and SVG. These days she's focusing more on her musicianship, wanting to be a rock star in the more literal sense. Anytime I suggest plugging her back in to some corporate setting, such as Sisters of Providence (my client for some 15 years), she gets all jittery (PTSD). The stress some geeks endure has to do with having only Pointy Haired Bosses and no Dilberts at some level. That's a problem with USA culture: people disconnect from technical subjects to become politician-managers of the clueless variety, while in some other systems you get more engineers towards the top (we get that in pockets, but mostly politicos run her onto the rocks). At least in Portland she's finding CTOs she respects, of both genders and then some :). Anyway, just rambling, like doing a little PR for Portland now and then. Our local goddess, Portlandia, has a boyfriend in Gothenberg, Sweden, where I heard Guido give a talk on the origins of Python. It's for people in technical domains anxious to get on with their work without wasting a lot of time on the intricacies of computer science. It's in that spirit that we're introducing it to pilot schools, giving an added international spin thanks to the new Unicode base -- still haven't seen much source code in Arabic though, need to fix that before going much further with the Baghdad proposal. That's another aspect of Diversity in Python: getting snippets of Python code using top-level naming that's not always Latin-1. I've been doing slides around that, mostly showing Chinese: http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2007/11/unicode.html http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2008/05/chinese-names-in-python.html Kirby ндсжег воss _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
