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Re: python in school notebooks/laptops

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  Re: python in school notebooks/laptops Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2011-05-30 23:28 +1000
    Re: python in school notebooks/laptops harrismh777 <harrismh777@charter.net> - 2011-05-30 19:57 -0500
      Re: python in school notebooks/laptops Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2011-05-31 12:53 +1000

#6658 — Re: python in school notebooks/laptops

On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 8:15 PM, John Thornton <secretelf77@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello
>         Is it a waste of time to try to get school admins to put python in
> their school laptops?

Two halves to this question.

1) Would it be of value if the school admins were to put Python on the
school laptops?
2) If you ask them to, would they?

The answer to #1 is "Undoubtedly". Cost? A tiny bit of disk space.
Benefit? Even if only one student in a thousand picked it up and
learned it, that's a huge number of people who've been exposed to a
better language than VB.

But the answer to #2, based on my cynical view of these things, is
"Unlikely". You could ask the school admins, but they'll point to some
policy from upstairs that says what they need to provide. And I don't
know who formulates that policy, but more than likely it's a
committee.

Who pays for all that software? I'm guessing it's part of one of those
perversities where something is valued more if it costs more ("We
spend $X million teaching our students modern computing"). Replacing
the netbook packageset with Ubuntu and a whole swathe of free software
(the significant part here being free-as-in-beer, but it would be
free-as-in-speech software too) would cut $400 per student off their
boast according to the figures you posted - but that doesn't seem to
include the OS itself, so possibly even more.

The other part of the problem is a huge lock-in involving grade
schools, tertiary education, and company employment agencies, all of
whom think that "computer skill" means "knows how to change cell color
in Excel". And that is not an exaggeration - my brother says that when
he was applying for jobs that required computing skills, the
recruitment agency wanted to know his ability level with Word 2003 and
Excel 2003. Getting past that is not going to be easy.

But if you can just get a smidge of extra software put on the laptops
(some nice easy tiny stuff - Python, 7-Zip, InfraRecorder - skip OO
because it's too heavy), nobody would notice the extra disk space
usage (even a cheap netbook will have storage measured in hundreds of
gig), and it gives them a chance to learn something decent. Bored
student browsing the Start menu... might not happen very often, but if
even one person learns Python, that'd be worth it!

Possibly the best way to encourage Python deployment would be to
require it to run some internal script. Then the interpreter will be
put on the laptops ("it's so tiny, won't cost anything to put it
there"), and IDLE will be available for anyone who wants it. Now the
question is, how can you get into a position where you can have a
script that's needed for every student...

Chris Angelico

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#6685

Chris Angelico wrote:
>>          Is it a waste of time to try to get school admins to put python in
>> >  their school laptops?

    No, absolutely no...  Python advocacy is necessary in this venue !

> Possibly the best way to encourage Python deployment would be to
> require it to run some internal script.

    Chris has a great idea here... but I think more along the lines of 
an app that benefits school admins in terms of networking registration, 
accountability, or messaging. In other words, if I understand Chris 
correctly, make the script / app  necessarily useful to the admins you 
are trying to advocate to, so that the students reap the benefits of 
having the interpretor installed and ready...?!?

    Great idea...





kind regards,
m harris

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#6695

On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 10:57 AM, harrismh777 <harrismh777@charter.net> wrote:
> Chris Angelico wrote:
>> Possibly the best way to encourage Python deployment would be to
>> require it to run some internal script.
>
>   Chris has a great idea here... but I think more along the lines of an app
> that benefits school admins in terms of networking registration,
> accountability, or messaging. In other words, if I understand Chris
> correctly, make the script / app  necessarily useful to the admins you are
> trying to advocate to, so that the students reap the benefits of having the
> interpretor installed and ready...?!?

Precisely. If there is some kind of need for a script to be deployed
on all students' laptops (even if it's just part of some installer,
and not necessary post-setup), then write it in Python and put the
interpreter on there. This is not shenanigans, but simply the use of a
quality tool; it's no different from the eComStation installers making
extensive use of VX-REXX, and thus mandating its installation as part
of the eCS install.

Chris Angelico

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