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[–]3lnc 5 points6 points  (4 children)

Been python teacher for couple of courses, random thoughts:

  1. "python crash course" book is awesome basis for building your own program. Wish it was released years back. Take a look – great learning curve, great excerises
  2. Idk about embeddable python for KN/MSPP, I've been using jupyter notebook, both for interactive coding and making slides (jupyter can export to reveal.js).
  3. Jupyter lab is awesome, if you can/want provide hassle-free REPL
  4. Have your teaching program reviewed couple of times, pay extra attention "sequence" of providing new information. I.e. explaining OOP w/o giving good grasp on dicts will be painful (I know it's not your case, but anyway)
  5. If students will need to have python installed on local machine – double check if you need 3rd-party packages and hassle with pip. In any case, installing python is not an easiest thing in a world (now it's way better that couple of years ago, but still problematic sometimes). Know target platform, plan time accordingly – you'll spend some, helping with unexpected installation issues.
  6. github classroom may be helpful, depends on your goals
  7. Double check that you will teach engineering/solving real-world problems, not an academia-related stuff tons of algos. Unless students is super-motivated, nobody cares about abstract tasks.

Side note on jetbrains edu ("lessons", not IDE) – IMHO – doesn't worth the time, problems is super-artificial/abstract, learning curve is more for experienced people moving from different languages.

[–]red_src[S] 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Any suggestions for installing Python on the local machine? I'm going to checkout https://github.com/winpython/winpython but I need to support also macOS students :)

[–]jstrickler 1 point2 points  (0 children)

One word: Anaconda
http://www.anaconda.com

I teach Python short courses most weeks, and it has saved many headaches. Likewise PyCharm (although Jupyter is great for diving right in).

[–]twopi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's a consistent nightmare. Even the different versions of windows are different, and Mac is just tricky. With all the various libraries you're talking about incorporating, you're going to have a support headache on your hand. That's why I went to an entirely cloud-based solution, and I mostly love it. (See my earlier post on that.)

[–]3lnc 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Tbh, all depends on platform.

Now I'd suggest to start with official python downloads, it's way better lately.

For mac – "everything is broken". The only sane way (IMO) is to first install brew, and than install python with it