swcarpentry/website — pull request #333 by jiffyclub (2013-03-03 01:30:53+00:00)
Title: Blog post on teaching with ipythonblocks at UW

Text of post:

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The recent [University of Washington boot camp][uwswc] was my first chance to
try teaching Python with [ipythonblocks][blog post], and it was a great success!

![ipythonblocks demo image.][blockspng]

The students reported that the immediate feedback from ipythonblocks was a
great way to see what their code was doing. We were able to move quickly
through topics like for-loops and if-statements in relative comfort, and even
cover slicing with ease.

I had always hoped that the opportunities for creativity with ipythonblocks
would appeal to students. At the UW boot camp we did observe people,
especially those who grasped the concepts quickly, striking off on their own
to experiment with larger grids and more complex algorithms for varying block
color. I think this is a great advantage of the visual nature of ipythonblocks;
there is only such much creative fun to be had playing with lists, but far
more possibilities with what is essentially a grid of pixels.

My only regret is that we ran out of time so the students didn't get to make
[Starry Night][] or practice with files and functions as much as I'd have liked.
I think it wouldn't be too hard to expand the lesson I'd planned to spend all
day playing with [ipythonblocks][].

[uwswc]: http://software-carpentry.org/blog/2013/03/washington-went-well.html
[blog post]: http://penandpants.com/2013/01/10/ipythonblocks-a-visual-tool-for-practicing-python/
[Starry Night]: http://nbviewer.ipython.org/urls/raw.github.com/jiffyclub/ipythonblocks/master/demos/starry_night_to_text.ipynb
[ipythonblocks]: https://github.com/jiffyclub/ipythonblocks
[blockspng]: https://raw.github.com/jiffyclub/blog-posts/master/software-carpentry/img/ipythonblocks01.png "Demo of ipythonblocks."