Somewhat tangentially bouncing around in this vicinity, I offer these remarks re our situation at work, where we want students connecting over the wire to have good first experience using Python. Retention is an issue.
The school's guiding philosophy requires providing real hands-on programming experiences and real interactivity with a full Python console, which until recently has meant booting a remote desktop into a server, running a session of Eclipse on a Windows server in Illinois (front end client could be anything). Here's a picture of the rig: http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2011/06/back-office.html Part of what keeps us in Eclipse is Tkinter. Our students can do widgets programming. We do not have the Zelle package installed, but would like to add it. We already work with Wolfram and have new kind of science exhibits working in the wings (I've posted about that here already), but so far only in ASCII (console i/o). Getting Game of Life type CA stuff running with graphics.py has already been done right here in this very archive, in earlier versions of Python. Anyway, a lot of students feel overwhelmed by Eclipse and have a hard time distinguishing between Python-the-language and the surrounding IDE. Many are brand new to programming, having heard Python is a friendlier-than-most language, winning the "best language ever" award a 3rd time in a row, didn't I just read? http://www.linuxjournal.com/slideshow/readers-choice-2011?page=27 However just recently, management has decided to swap out Eclipse in the first unit and go with a Javascript and Java enabled front end in a browser, already used to teach Perl. We can get away with this in the first unit only because Tk / Widget programming doesn't happen until the second unit. We'll ease them over to Eclipse having won their loyalty on the basis of Python (plus Coderunner, the name for the teaching tool). In the new configuration, no need for remote desktop, a less shaky connection. So even if you loved Eclipse, your situation may improve. The ability to learn widget programming interactively, writing your own programs, without having to install anything locally, not even Python itself, is a marketable feature. Then we have highly trained mentors to back it up, so there's no sense of "just a machine" on the back end. Works well so far (a relatively new gig for me, but this team has been at it for quite awhile). Kirby _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
