PyGotham opening the magic box
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2016 PyGotham talk, Opening the Magic Box: Creating transitional Python libraries and IDE tools for young learners
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PyGotham opening the magic box
- 1. OPENING THE MAGIC BOX: Creating transitional Python libraries and IDE tools for young learners
- 2. Welcome! Juan Farfan Meg Ray Thomas Ricard @teach_python@darkaardvark2 @gnarlychaplin
- 3. K12 CS Education: Current Landscape
- 5. #CSforAll
- 6. Forms of CS Education in K12 At Home After School In the Classroom
- 7. #CSforAll Equity, Access, Inclusion Thinking is a Skill A Literacy Informed Citizens
- 8. K12 CS Education: Where to Start?
- 9. Windows of Opportunity ✘Brain development research shows that there are “Windows of Opportunity” for learning language and math in early childhood ✘Exposure precedes understanding ✘Confidence is key ✘Follow-up studies demonstrate long-term academic gains
- 10. Theory of Cognitive Development
- 11. Starting with Objects Sensorimotor Stage Knowledge from sensory experiences and physical interactions with objects Parsing Grammar Preoperational Stage Thinking with images and symbols, but unable to logically manipulate information First Algorithms Concrete Operational Stage Applying logic and operations on concrete objects to form conclusions via induction Layers of Abstraction Formal Operational Stage Emergence of deductive reasoning through the use of abstract concepts
- 12. Where does Computer Science fit in? Traditionally, CS is introduced at the high school level with roughly the following progression: This does not work for young learners because it: 1. Begins with abstractions 2. Assumes deductive reasoning 3. Maps to knowledge from higher level math Data Types -> Variables -> Control Flow -> Functions -> Classes
- 13. Window of Opportunity for Computer Science?
- 14. We’re starting from Scratch Why does Scratch work for young children? 1. Actors (Objects) are primary & concrete 2.Maps to prior knowledge via simple, readable methods 3.Inductive learning with preconfigured blocks 4.Event-driven programming generates immediate sensory feedback 5.Complexity is constrained by the language
- 15. Beyond Scratch How do we make a programming language and environment accessible to young learners? 1. Make Actors (Objects) primary & concrete 2. Map prior knowledge to simple, readable methods 3. Induce learning with preconfigured blocks 4. Generate immediate sensory feedback with event-driven programming 5. Obscure complexity with custom libraries
- 16. Our approach
- 18. Python Why Python? ✘Versatile ✘Teachers have heard of it ✘Brackets are hard for kids to type
- 19. Python Online Python online ✘We use Skulpt as our compiler ✘http://www.skulpt.org/ ✘It works ✘Has a growing support for standard library ✘Let’s us extend with javascript
- 20. You had me at hello
- 21. Visual Elements
- 22. Toolkit
- 24. When to extend Python modules/tools ✘Curriculum and Library together ✘Which topics for which grades Let’s talk about an example python module...
- 25. Making a new tool part 2 ✘Recently we’ve been teaching the concept of a REST Api for 6th grade ✘Survey of professional tools ✘Decide what parts we like and don’t like for a grade level
- 26. Compare professional tools What do the pros use? ✘Urllib ✘Urllib2 ✘Requests
- 27. Compare professional tools Why not Requests? ✘Even ‘pip install requests’ may be a point of friction ✘We’re not looking for features. ✘It’s not standard library
- 28. Compare professional tools Why do we care about the standard library? ✘What does our compiler (Skulpt) use? ✘Most Something -> JS compilers are not focused on community packages.
- 29. Compare professional tools Requests vs Urllib2
- 30. Compare professional tools Urllib2 syntax choices
- 31. Compare professional tools Again, the audience. ✘Requests library for older audience (8th+) ✘Maybe Urllib isn’t the answer here. ✘Let’s make something new.
- 32. Making a new tool Guiding principles ✘Classes need to use data they generate ✘Teachers need to manage the data ✘Teachers like spreadsheets Conclusion: Custom Python object using Skulpt
- 33. Making a new tool But wait, ✘Wasn’t the point to teach real world tools? ✘What exactly are we teaching then? ✘What’s the value of learning something that’s specific to our platform?
- 34. Making a new tool Core concept: making a request. ✘“Getting data” is a tough concept. ✘How can we make it more concrete?
- 35. Making a new tool What we started with: ✘Link to unique survey posted in instructions ✘Link to data spreadsheet in instructions also ✘RequestSpreadsheet class
- 36. Making a new tool Curriculum decides API, not the other way around
- 37. Extending the idea ✘Visual representation ✘Conversion to JSON ✘Lessons about dictionaries ✘Maybe the URL is automatic?
- 38. Making a new tool They’ve learned one part ✘Later curriculum will get them closer to using a tool like Requests or Urllib ✘More advanced tools in a later grade
- 39. Developing a Tool for Learning 1. Start with learning goal and grade level 2.What are the other requirements? 3.Survey professional tools 4.Choose the parts we can use or build 5.Try it in the classroom!
- 40. Get Developing!
- 41. How to extend Skulpt Since we’re here to learn about Python, let’s write some Javascript.
- 42. How to extend Skulpt Skulpt ✘Active Github community since 2011 ✘Python in the browser with growing support for Python standard library ✘New compiler features, like debugging, are on the way
- 43. How to extend Skulpt First steps ✘Fork the repo ✘https://github.com/skulpt/skulpt ✘Try out skulpt.py
- 44. How to extend Skulpt Add a new “module” file to the lib ✘We’ll call our module “alerts.js”
- 45. How to extend Skulpt Minimal module >>> import alerts
- 46. How to extend Skulpt Add a class
- 47. How to extend Skulpt Add the init method
- 48. How to extend Skulpt Add the show popup method
- 49. How to extend Skulpt That’s it. Complete code:
- 50. How to extend Skulpt
- 51. Get Involved 1. Contribute to open source tools and education projects 2.Volunteer to teach a class or club 3.Host interns or shadow days 4.Sponsor education events & donate old hardware 5.Create new education tools (Links in the notes)
- 53. Thank you! Please follow us at: Juan Farfan: @darkaardvark2 Meg Ray: @teach_python Thomas Ricard: https://github.com/petroleyum/skulpt/tree/ext ending-skulpt-example Check out our platform: www.codesters.com
Editor's Notes
- National K12 CS Framework https://k12cs.org/ National K12 Standards http://blog.csta.acm.org/2016/02/17/draft-2016-csta-k-12-cs-standards-we-need-your-feedback/ New AP Course https://apstudent.collegeboard.org/apcourse/ap-computer-science-principles
- Learning at home with a parent or online Learning in an after school club, program, or camp Learning in a classroom setting, during the school day Opt-in electives Required classes
- Windows of Opportunity (http://dev.thelittleschool.net/PDF/new%20brain%20development%20research.pdf) Starting Early (http://www.nctm.org/Standards-and-Positions/Position-Statements/Mathematics-in-Early-Childhood-Learning/) The Algebra Problem (http://hepg.org/hel-home/issues/28_3/helarticle/the-algebra-problem_533) The Future of Children (https://www.princeton.edu/futureofchildren/publications/docs/05_03_01.pdf)
- Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget%27s_theory_of_cognitive_development) Neo-Piagetian Theories (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Piagetian_theories_of_cognitive_development)
- Sensorimotor Stage Infants learn about objects and object permanence After 6 months, children begin to respond more actively to the sounds of their native language Around 9 months, they speak their first words starting with oft-heard and easily pronounceable nouns [mama, doggy] From age 1-2, short phrases start to arise, mostly consisting of object+action or object+adj pairs (mommy eat, doggy bad) Children can start to link numbers to objects (two mommy, three doggy) Preoperational Stage From age 2-4, children begin to correctly assign pronouns After around age 4, they have acquired nuanced and understandable grammar (She’s eating dinner.) Literacy begins to develop around the same time Simple calculations, but unable to perform reversals Egocentrism and transductive reasoning Concrete Operational Stage Inductive reasoning Formal Operational Stage Algebra Research: Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget%27s_theory_of_cognitive_development) Applying Piaget’s Theory (http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ841568.pdf) Brown’s Stages (http://www.speech-language-therapy.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=33:brown&catid=2:uncategorised&Itemid=117) Inductive Teaching (https://www.mcgill.ca/tised/files/tised/michael_prince_on_inductive_teaching_and_learning.pdf)
- MIT Intro to Python Syllabus (http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-189-a-gentle-introduction-to-programming-using-python-january-iap-2011/calendar/)
- Scratch Project - https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/116440191/
- Scratch: Programming for everyone (http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/scratch/scratch-cacm.pdf) Scratch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_(programming_language)) Why not Scratch? (http://www.fcet.staffs.ac.uk/nas1/CSTeachConf/2015/ScratchPython/a25-armoni.pdf)
- Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas by Seymour Papert (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindstorms_(book))
- If it doesn’t work in the classroom, than it doesn’t work. Period.
- Starting with objects in curriculum based on the theory we talked about.
- Sprite is starting point ---> how does this apply to the rest of our environment and library? We’ve been talking about making the ideas concrete, these are other considerations we’ve found besides Concrete objects: Considerations: Mostly everything on the stage should have the same methods Sprites, Shapes, Text, Graphs, Charts Explicit Redundant Methods Many options for optional parameters
- Like drag and drop languages We think it should be runnable snippets Can both be singular methods or small example snippets Allows for easy discovery and experimentation Helps debug syntax errors Works as API documentation
- So we mentioned the difference between “professional tools” and “learning tools”. This is our process for deciding which tools and lessons are appropriate for a certain grade level.
- When I say “tools” I usually mean python modules or classes.
- Let’s say we want to teach programming along with statistics concepts. Let’s make a lesson about data science for kids. What’s it for? Who’s it for?
- If you search online for anything about “python” and APIs you’ll find a lot of people telling you to use Requests.
- Think about classroom experience, think about teachers I’ll add here that if this were 8th grade, then we’d use something like requests
- We use Skulpt as our compiler. The goal of the Skulpt project is be a faithful js implementation of python2.7, not to be the greatest hits of the python community. This may limit us in using tools that are “community standard”.
- So to give you an idea of how we compare languages, just look at these two “hello world” examples. We need to make these three lines as readable as possible. What could we change? What works or doesn’t work for our audience of 6th graders We’re not at all worried about features of a tool at this point. We just want this to be simple as possible.
- If we pick a package, how can we rewrite the same example to be more readable. Compare syntax of urllib2 methods which is easier to understand if you're 11 years old? would hiding the import statement make it clearer?
- I'll add here that if we were focusing on 8th grade then we would probably make a port of the Requests library in Skulpt (and we'll probably do that soon). We had an inclination that Requests would be a little "magic" for 6th grade though (which may be a mistake on our part)
- So we’re going to make a python object attached to our own codesters module that kids can use to “get data” Which we hope to make similar to consuming a REST API (in essence. It should kind of feel like urllib or something similar).
- So if we’re not using the Requests library or Urllib2, then how are we preparing kids for the Real World?
- Try to describe how abstract the idea of “getting data” is. Also even if students aren’t using a “real world” tool, they’re using class in a module, which can be a lesson about what a module is later, But we don’t want to talk about that for now.
- RequestSpreadsheet Class takes a survey, a link is generated that they copy paste into the editor Concept of a request But not misleading → can’t request just anything Leaves open to future dev RequestDoc, RequestMap
- Another core concept of the speech Columns and rows (vs. records)
- If the URL is automatic, would that start to ruin the lesson?
- Started with something concrete first, give them tools with more abstractions later
- You could make these tools offline. I want to talk about the Skulpt project how to use Skulpt because I think it’s cool.
- We’re going to write a simple Python module to do the usual javascript Hello World activity. We’re going to show one of those terrible js alert popups. We make a new js file right in this lib folder here. Skulpt will find all python and javascript files in this folder and try to serialize them into Modules in its standard library
- Open Source: Skulpt PSF Education workgroup Volunteer: Girls Who Code ScriptEd TEALS Host interns or shadow days: SEP/Pathfinders C/I ScriptEd Sponsor education events & donate old hardware: C/I A non-profit near you Your personal network