A proposal

[Abhishek Anand]

Hello

Recently we started a similar project as pyKata ( http://www.pyground.com).
Its a month old and still getting the finishing touches.

In case you have forgotten but I was one of the applicants for GSoC
2010 for pyKata. I am a pre-final year student at BIT Mesra, India.

Let me introduce you to pyground.

pyGround is a web application which lets you learn python by
practising it on its online interpreter. Basically you learn a
concept, fire the interpreter and code it straight foreward without
having to open any desktop application. Additionally you can learn web
application development with Google App Engine, Google Data APIs,
create facebook and twitter applications with their python libraries
and implement algorithms in python after learning them all in an
interactive fun-based environment.

To be honest I have hit a roadblock regarding the important part, that
is contents. I want them to be pure and authentic. So here is my
proposal.

Can we merge pykata and pyground. I mean we at pyground will handle
issues of the application development, SEOs and visibility while you
guys focus on good content for the application. You will have full
administrative ownership of pyground with a focus on the content.

I have posted it here so that f you want, we can have open discussion
regarding this matter.

Regards
Abhishek Anand
Department of Information Technology,
Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra
India

[David MacQuigg]

Hey Abhishek,

Great to hear you are still working on getting something better for
students of Python. I'm a little disappointed that you didn't put all
that effort into PyKata, but I understand. After our disastrous
involvement with Python Software Foundation and GSoC, a lot of
enthusiasm was blown away. So we are back to the slow, but steady
progress we had before. Richard is putting together some problems for
his high-school students this fall. On the web-development side, we
still need that Teacher Report page. If nobody with Django experience
volunteers, I will probably just hire someone.

I like your idea of merging PyKata and PyGround. This will minimize
fragmentation of scarce resources (web developers and authors). Here
is my proposal. Let's make it easy for authors to contribute to
either site without having to learn both. We have defined a nice
problem submission format. If you can make your website read that,
then it will be real easy for authors to submit problems to either or
both websites. Whichever site becomes more popular can then take the
lead in a merger.

-- Dave

[Abhishek Anand]

Hi


It seems a good idea to have a one place,one format submission of
problems for both PyKata and PyGround. I suggest making even the
layout and other UI features alongwith the submission format
consistent in both places. We can handle the teachers report part
together.Also, as PyGround apart from the general problems will have
articles,examples and code snippets on topics such as Social APIs, App
Engine APIs, algorithm implementations in Py etc. which is currently
not handled by PyKata, we can redirect users who are more oriented
towards learning the language part to PyKata. PyKata would serve as a
single point for students and teachers. i.e. students from both places
would be redirected there ( till a single entity comes out after the
merger).
There seems to be a minor problem on the visibility part.Visibility on
social websites like facebook pages will attract more and more users.
But if we operate independently, it would appear as we are competitors
( which I hope we are not :D). If we can project both the applications
as sister apps ( PyKata being the more language specific one), then it
would be fine.

Please add anything that you would like to suggest.

Abhishek

[Richard Guenther]

Hi guys,

As David said, I'm working on problems for my Python high school classes this fall.  Did not get as much done over the summer as I wanted to, but we should get these done during this fall, as I'm teaching the class.  I have no problem sharing with either project, or combining both, as long as the licensing is open (Creative Commons, etc).

I have the potential here for some major work being done, as my senior class is very talented (three are working as programmers during the Summer), and I also have graduate students in CS working with me.  Summer had my students working and grad students--well, doing grad student things.  I spent my time landscaping our yard and transitioning to our new Mac lab here.

Tomorrow is the first day of school.  I will be in touch and should have a good idea of the logistics for the curriculum end of things.  Currently we have been working on this on a private forum, but I have no problem making this a visible process as we work on it.

Thanks,
Richard




Richard Guenther
Math and Computer Science
Skyline High School
Longmont, CO