[Events] Columbus Python Worskhop 1 report

[Catherine Devlin]

Hi everybody!  The first Columbus Python Worskhop went off last weekend,
and went very well.  I blogged about it at
http://catherinedevlin.blogspot.com/2013/01/hooray-for-columbus-python-workshop-1.html

We used Boston's curriculum virtually word-for-word.  Thank you Jessica!

We had about 18 students; I would have liked another 5-10... I'm beginning
to think that relying on the locals for publicity in cities I don't live in
will never be 100% successful.  Still, it might have been for the best,
since small classes fit better with my still-developing teaching skills.

Since neither of my TAs had lunchtime presentations, I called for COHPy
members to bring in snazzy demos.  That went great - they brought awesome
ones!

As for using IPython Notebook, it's definitely promising and I want to keep
using it, but of course the shakedown cruise revealed some technical
difficulties!  The big one is that IPy Notebook depends on pyzmq, and most
of the Windows users had trouble getting that installed; I had them fall
back to CodingBat.  I also want to bulletproof ipython_doctester a little
more to account for student mistakes like putting their code before the
doctest docstring (thus disabling it as a doctest).

I also keep thinking about converting the tutorial at
https://openhatch.org/wiki/Columbus_Python_Workshop_1/Friday/Tutorial to an
IPython Notebook version with executable cells right there in the tutorial
text.  If nothing else, it would let us version and fork it instead of the
tedious task of making new copies of the wiki for each workshop!  If I can,
I'll experiment with that for the next workshop.

I'd also like to experiment with producing something like prebaked
all-in-one installation scripts for as many prereqs as possible.  The time
spent getting everything set up is in some ways the most important and I
guess it builds character, but it is tedious and we need every minute we
can get for the real programming.

With both the CodingBat and IPy Notebook versions of the exercises, I saw
an error pattern with several students: thinking that the demo input/output
belonged in their code.  For example, for
http://codingbat.com/prob/p253286?parent=/home/bostonpythonworkshop@gmail.com/Friday,
they'd see the sample
    happyBirthday('Jessica') → 'Happy Birthday Jessica!'
and they'd write
    def happyBirthday(name):
        name = 'Jessica'
        return 'Happy Birthday ' + name + '!'

so that's apparently something I need to explain better... I'm eager to
figure out a concise and effective way to clarify that.

Another puzzle that I haven't figured out is the balance between
self-pacing and teaching from the front.  Like in Indianapolis, we had the
full range of preexisting skills from "What's a directory?" to "Does this
", so self-pacing is really essential... yet there are things that I would
really love to demonstrate live to people.  (Like "Don't write the sample
I/O into your code", for instance.)  Maybe at key points the tutorial
should say, "Now raise your hand to get a teacher to help talk you through
this part..."

The next Columbus workshop probably will wait for PyOhio in July - either
at the conference or briefly before.  But I'm going to run at least one
worskhop in Dayton in the meantime (and finally get to teach without doing
an overnight stay.)

The most important thing was that everybody had a great time - me most of
all, I think!

-- 
- Catherine
http://catherinedevlin.blogspot.com
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