Python - Week 1 of 6: Welcome
Another MOOC! This one is called Programming for Everybody (Getting Started with Python) and comes from the University of Michigan (Go Wolverines!). It seems to be a very popular course, there are almost 46,000 people signed up to it! It lasts for 6 weeks and should take 4 hours a week.
The first thing I did was to have a look at all the tasks for this first week. Most of the courses I've done before have had somewhere between 20-35 activities. This one has 13. They're divided into four sections: Welcome, Materials, Writing Python Programs, and Bonus Material. Reading over the actual tasks, it looks like most of it is background information about the textbook that we'll be using (?!) and how to submit assignments (?!?!?). Okay, I wasn't expecting any of that! I hope the textbook isn't too expensive, I know what these American universities are like for that
The Welcome starts off with a welcome to class video from the lead educator Charles Severance, who goes by the name Dr Chuck. Hee! Okay, this guy is awesome. He comes over really well in the video, very personable and inspirational. Here's some excerpts from his welcome video:
"This course is dedicated to the notion that every single person on the planet needs to be able to write programs and can write programs. You do not have to have a bunch of math, I do not expect math. I do not expect you’ve taken any other programming classes. I don’t expect you know anything about computers. I think no matter what your background is you can program. That’s why it’s called Programming for Everybody.
I have a couple of goals. Certainly, I wanna teach you how to program. But actually, what I really wanna do is teach you how to take a programming class. Because it turns out that most of the other programming classes in the world are kinda difficult. [...] so when you’re done with this class, you can go and take another beginning class. And that way you have this as an on ramp to all of your programming activity.
Another thing that I wanna do is that I wanna teach you how to be a mentor. I wanna teach you how to be a teacher of programming. So I want you to take all my ideas and I want you to help the next person. [...] Another thing that’s important to me is that I want to create more teachers, whether they’re at universities, or community colleges, or high schools, or even middle schools, or in professional situations. I have given you all of the materials for this course at a website. They’re all licensed under Creative Commons, the slides, the autograders. I want you to, in a sense, adopt this textbook, and then use my teaching kit so that you can become a teacher of this material."
Well, seeing as I'm sharing my learning here with you, I guess I'm fulfilling that part of his goal!🙂 It's pretty cool that he's made all the resources freely available like that, with the intention of sharing the learning. I feel rather more relieved that it might not be quite as intensive as I'd first thought, and the fact that there won't be a lot of maths is a bonus.😉
There's also a short video from Guido van Rossum, the man who created the Python language. That is very cool. The last part is a page of text, explaining that the first week is the source of all materials so that students can go back to it as needed throughout the course. So organised! It also feels rather like a proper course at uni or something, where you're given all the information about books and processes in the first class and the hard work starts after that.
The next section is Materials. There is an actual textbook: Python for Everybody: Exploring Data in Python 3 which was written by a certain Dr Charles Severance. It's $10 / £7 for a printed copy but it's also available for free as a pdf or epub from Dr Chuck's website. All the course materials are freely available there too. The assignments process is explained next. All assignments are submitted through an autograder - it's basically a code checker that runs on a webpage. There's also a Python Playground where you can try out the code before submitting it. I'm a little relieved that I won't have to download the actual Python software as I thought and can do it all in a browser. It does suggest downloading Atom though you can use any text editor that can save files as plain text (*.txt), such as Notepad. I wish I still had Gedit that was standard with Ubuntu - I handcoded my entire website using that! It is available for Windows but it's not free; it is only a minimal charge though. I'd rather not download something just for a few weeks, I might wait and see how it goes.
In order to use Python in a browser, I had to sign up for an account with PythonAnywhere (or rather the EU version for special people). There are instructions on Dr Chuck's site on how to set up PythonAnywhere in order to use it for the course. This involves setting up a Linux shell and starting a Bash console! I think I'm right in saying that's a sort of virtual Linux command line. It's a good job I've vaguely familiar with Linux from having used Ubuntu for several years, so I know some of the commands.
The final section, Bonus Material is pretty much self-explanatory. It has three videos, the first of which is an interview with Pooja Sankar, a female computer engineer who built and designed a question and answer platform called Piazza using Ruby on Rails. The second is a visit to the Living Computer Museum in Seattle which I don't think I'd heard of before. It has lots of old computers, all of which are not only operational, but which you can actually use! That would certainly be a place I would like to visit! The final video is a very old one of Dr Chuck stock car racing. It seems a bit random but in the video, he says, "there’s one of those things in life where you, a lot of people wanna do this. This is the lowest risk way to do it, and then I can say I done this." Maybe like people who want to learn Python?
So that's the first week. It's mainly been providing the information and getting everything set up so I think the hard work will start next week. Despite the huge amount of people who are signed up to the course, there were less than a dozen of us actually commenting. I hope I won't have to rely on them for help if I get stuck! Week 2 is called Why We Program? I wonder if that's supposed to be Why Do We Program?!
The first thing I did was to have a look at all the tasks for this first week. Most of the courses I've done before have had somewhere between 20-35 activities. This one has 13. They're divided into four sections: Welcome, Materials, Writing Python Programs, and Bonus Material. Reading over the actual tasks, it looks like most of it is background information about the textbook that we'll be using (?!) and how to submit assignments (?!?!?). Okay, I wasn't expecting any of that! I hope the textbook isn't too expensive, I know what these American universities are like for that
The Welcome starts off with a welcome to class video from the lead educator Charles Severance, who goes by the name Dr Chuck. Hee! Okay, this guy is awesome. He comes over really well in the video, very personable and inspirational. Here's some excerpts from his welcome video:
"This course is dedicated to the notion that every single person on the planet needs to be able to write programs and can write programs. You do not have to have a bunch of math, I do not expect math. I do not expect you’ve taken any other programming classes. I don’t expect you know anything about computers. I think no matter what your background is you can program. That’s why it’s called Programming for Everybody.
I have a couple of goals. Certainly, I wanna teach you how to program. But actually, what I really wanna do is teach you how to take a programming class. Because it turns out that most of the other programming classes in the world are kinda difficult. [...] so when you’re done with this class, you can go and take another beginning class. And that way you have this as an on ramp to all of your programming activity.
Another thing that I wanna do is that I wanna teach you how to be a mentor. I wanna teach you how to be a teacher of programming. So I want you to take all my ideas and I want you to help the next person. [...] Another thing that’s important to me is that I want to create more teachers, whether they’re at universities, or community colleges, or high schools, or even middle schools, or in professional situations. I have given you all of the materials for this course at a website. They’re all licensed under Creative Commons, the slides, the autograders. I want you to, in a sense, adopt this textbook, and then use my teaching kit so that you can become a teacher of this material."
Well, seeing as I'm sharing my learning here with you, I guess I'm fulfilling that part of his goal!🙂 It's pretty cool that he's made all the resources freely available like that, with the intention of sharing the learning. I feel rather more relieved that it might not be quite as intensive as I'd first thought, and the fact that there won't be a lot of maths is a bonus.😉
There's also a short video from Guido van Rossum, the man who created the Python language. That is very cool. The last part is a page of text, explaining that the first week is the source of all materials so that students can go back to it as needed throughout the course. So organised! It also feels rather like a proper course at uni or something, where you're given all the information about books and processes in the first class and the hard work starts after that.
The next section is Materials. There is an actual textbook: Python for Everybody: Exploring Data in Python 3 which was written by a certain Dr Charles Severance. It's $10 / £7 for a printed copy but it's also available for free as a pdf or epub from Dr Chuck's website. All the course materials are freely available there too. The assignments process is explained next. All assignments are submitted through an autograder - it's basically a code checker that runs on a webpage. There's also a Python Playground where you can try out the code before submitting it. I'm a little relieved that I won't have to download the actual Python software as I thought and can do it all in a browser. It does suggest downloading Atom though you can use any text editor that can save files as plain text (*.txt), such as Notepad. I wish I still had Gedit that was standard with Ubuntu - I handcoded my entire website using that! It is available for Windows but it's not free; it is only a minimal charge though. I'd rather not download something just for a few weeks, I might wait and see how it goes.
In order to use Python in a browser, I had to sign up for an account with PythonAnywhere (or rather the EU version for special people). There are instructions on Dr Chuck's site on how to set up PythonAnywhere in order to use it for the course. This involves setting up a Linux shell and starting a Bash console! I think I'm right in saying that's a sort of virtual Linux command line. It's a good job I've vaguely familiar with Linux from having used Ubuntu for several years, so I know some of the commands.
The final section, Bonus Material is pretty much self-explanatory. It has three videos, the first of which is an interview with Pooja Sankar, a female computer engineer who built and designed a question and answer platform called Piazza using Ruby on Rails. The second is a visit to the Living Computer Museum in Seattle which I don't think I'd heard of before. It has lots of old computers, all of which are not only operational, but which you can actually use! That would certainly be a place I would like to visit! The final video is a very old one of Dr Chuck stock car racing. It seems a bit random but in the video, he says, "there’s one of those things in life where you, a lot of people wanna do this. This is the lowest risk way to do it, and then I can say I done this." Maybe like people who want to learn Python?
So that's the first week. It's mainly been providing the information and getting everything set up so I think the hard work will start next week. Despite the huge amount of people who are signed up to the course, there were less than a dozen of us actually commenting. I hope I won't have to rely on them for help if I get stuck! Week 2 is called Why We Program? I wonder if that's supposed to be Why Do We Program?!