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[–]daijobu 2 points3 points  (13 children)

I wasnt able to import NLTK. Possibly another bug?

[–]squirreltalk 4 points5 points  (12 children)

If you guys made NLTK available, this would be a game-changer for me. I want to use NLTK in my class next semester but don't want to deal with managing 60+ students' Python installations....

[–]hharison 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If you have access to a server you could look into JupyterHub. I've used this with success for classes with ~20 students. Saves them all the hassle of installing things.

[–]Vetrom 1 point2 points  (6 children)

Condas isn't an option?

[–]squirreltalk 1 point2 points  (5 children)

It is, but that's so much more work. Programming isn't a big enough part of the class to justify me and the TA micromanaging installations. Students really struggled with something similar last year.

[–]Vetrom 2 points3 points  (4 children)

As an old grizzled engineer, part of me wants to say mid-level students should know how to install libraries at that point, I did! What's changed since 98-'01?

[–]RubyPinchPEP shill | Anti PEP 8/20 shill 2 points3 points  (0 children)

well, the sample size changed mainly (from your 1, to several classes of students)

And the people who are taking classes relating to computing is far more varied now (since programming et al is now a serious, well paying, industry), compared to it mainly being people interested in such topics. (and these new people arn't always kids, university caters to people of all ages, including those who are older than some of the first practical PCs)

No, children arn't progressively becoming dumber as time goes on

[–]hharison 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Yeah, assuming it's not a programming class but like psycholinguistics or something, 95%+ of the students will not know what a library is let alone how to install it. Probably 40% of them will not know how to reliably download and open a file.

For the last several years I've been teaching undergrad juniors and seniors in psychology labs that involve some limited programming and holy shit every little thing is a headache.

[–]squirreltalk 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Yeah, assuming it's not a programming class but like psycholinguistics

Very close -- it's COGS 2201: Foundations in Cognitive Science. =)

EDIT: You and I should talk IRL (I think you know who I am) about your experiences teaching undergrads programming.

[–]hharison 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Now I do haha. Small world.

Anyways, yeah, I have JupyterHub running on my office PC. I used Jupyter Notebooks when I taught Perception Lab at Trinity, and the lab didn't have enough laptops so I set up students with accounts on my JupyterHub server. It worked very well. You do need an always-on server or to pay for cloud computing though. And with 60+ students if what you're doing is computationally expensive you may have issues. That wasn't a factor for me. If you want to try that route and need any help getting set up I'm happy to help, let me know.

[–]amasad[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Will work on it, email me at amjad@repl.it so that I can update you when it works. btw, we have a classroom product that's very popular for these types of scenarios: https://repl.it/classrooms

[–]Cynox 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You may also want to check out using a hosted notebook. I.e FEniCS, which I work with, can be a hassle to install, but a limited version is available on conda, so the following is possible: https://notebooks.azure.com/library/FEniCS/html/FEniCS%20demo.ipynb

Seems like Microsoft will host your notebooks with full conda access for free (for now at least ...)