On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 9:17 PM, Jeff Rush<[email protected]> wrote: << SNIP >>
> The education sector is weak because of the (relatively) few programmers > except for Kirby in positions to influence it. The XO was a big hope > but it really isn't setting the education world on fire - more of a slow > simmer sadly. Thanks for the reality check and acknowledgment Jeff. Very true our education sector is weak relative to what I'd like to see: an agile computer language to chew on when learning high school mathematics (yum!), not black boxy calculators with those tiny screens and no polyhedra! I talked to at Scott Gray at Pycon about O'Reilly's plans to use Mathematica in Eclipse to certify, see Google is involved in teacher certification as well (something going in Colorado). Whether the Python community rises to this challenge remains to be seen. Software Association of Oregon is talking "digital math track", thinks this Litvins text is a step in the right direction, though no one is saying it's the final word: http://www.skylit.com/mathandpython.html I've just published my slides for the OS Bridge conference starting tomorrow, in some ways a recap of what I've been up to, helping to give a sense of my direction / momentum: http://coffeeshopsnet.blogspot.com/2009/06/os-bridge-conference.html (links to PDF, won't make as much sense without the narrative, but gives the flavor at least). I look forward to seeing some of you there. Given I'm so focused on the education sector, I'll revert to edu-sig as my principal archive for brainstorming / marketing along those lines. We welcome new joiners. I might post to Advocacy too though, thanks for the reminder about it. More later, Kirby _______________________________________________ Portland mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/portland
