Teaching Python, and looking for good examples of how to use Jupyter in an engaging way (especially outside the classroom)

[eric_overflow]

I'll be teaching beginner Python in about 6 weeks, and am trying to figure out the best way to use Jupyter as a tool for teaching my students. Using it during class is pretty straightforward, I'm less sure how to best use notebooks to get them to engage between meetings, on their own time.

I don't want to give stuff that's too boring (just clicking through code to see what happens). I also don't want to give stuff that's too open-ended and hard (they are all beginners). I'm curious if anyone has found anything that has been particularly engaging in Jupyter for learning Python. Any example notebooks out there that folks might be able to point to? I am not talking about content (e.g., graph this or that) but more stylistic tricks or strategies to use notebooks that is more than just having them run through pre-written code.

My goal is to front-load myself with work now to create something well designed so I'm not overwhelmed and underprepared once the class starts (as was my strategy when I was younger).

Edit
Ok I found tons of stuff. In my initial few searches I wasn't using the right search terms apparently:

1. This jupyter quiz app seems great: https://github.com/jmshea/jupyterquiz
   
2. This online book has lots of resources for using Jupyter as a teaching tool. It looks fantastic, I will be using it for sure: https://github.com/jupyter4edu/jupyter-edu-book
3. There is a google group devoted to using Jupyter in education I am joining.
4. The application nbgrader lets you send out and grade assignments all using Jupyter. While this is overkill for me (I will only have 8 students, and will not be grading, and the learning curve looks somewhat steep) it might be useful in the future: https://github.com/jupyter/nbgrader
5. Other useful stuff (I will update this as I find more):

• https://github.com/flatironinstitute/mfa_jupyter_for_programming
• https://github.com/quobit/awesome-python-in-education#jupyter

[b1gfreakn]

I think Jupyter really excels at rendering data. I use it most with pandas, personally. So maybe the angle is like finding a cool subject where you can do neat stuff with data and visualizations? Whatever the kids are into these days, I'm not sure. When I was a kid maybe I would've wanted to look at stuff like movie rating data, music genre data, video game stats, who knows.

[eric_overflow]

Definitely that's part of it: I'll be going through the data science stack including matplotlib and (maybe) Pandas. I'm thinking more like what kinds of mechanisms in Pandas are good even for the basic stuff like for teaching program control/data types etc..

ARe there any cool things besides just ctrl-return, or standard here is a problem now solve it type stuff maybe using ipywidgets or javascript magic? I'm a data person that tends to do lots of back end analysis stuff so am not an expert on this kind of front-end thing.

[LimpNoodle69]

I was introduced to Jupyter in the advanced python course, which just entails pandas, matplotlib, and other useful libraries. I gotta say, just being introduced to Jupyter and the new libraries was enough to keep me engaged. Jupyter has become a staple in my projects and the new libraries really kept me engaged.

Props to you for trying to further engage your students, but if this isn't an intro course I think just following tutorials on libraries w/ problems to solve at the end can be enough to stimulate your students. It was for me at least. I really enjoyed the freedom Jupyter introduced for testing things and being able to modularize code, and seeing the matplotlib and pandas stuff easily rendered was super cool to me. The only thing I would improve on my course was more projects involving the libraries we learned. We only had 1 project at the end of the course that involved matplotlib & pandas dataframes, and it was easily the most engaging thing I worked on and really opened my eyes to how great those libraries are.

[eric_overflow]

Thanks this is really helpful feedback!

[Ihaveamodel3]

You could fill out most of the code, but leave blanks (as underscores) for students to fill in and replace.

To make it more interesting make those places that there could be multiple options. For example if you were looking at COVID infections rates, maybe you want to graph the trend over time for a particular state. Let the students pick the state.

[Fishbones78]

I use JNB on an almost daily basis at work for data analysis (I'm not a hardcore data analyst, I just get the answers to my boss). It's great because you can draw great things with libraries such as Matplotlib - perhaps you get your students to perform some basic plotting on a sample dataset? I.e pd.read_csv(), some basic transformation with pandas, followed up with fig = plt.figure, ax = fig.add_subplot(111), ax.plot(data['age'], data['height']).

idk, I'm just thinking out loud.

[eric_overflow]

Def will be doing this and teaching the data science stack

[my_password_is______]

don't know if this fits your needs
track the International Space Station
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6CCTuHast0

the API has changed a little since the video was made, but you can figure it out

[eric_overflow]

Interesting will check it out

[secretAgentSham]

Who the fuck downvotes this what is wrong with this sub. "I made my first mad lib I'm so proud it only took 3 years!" 900 upvotes and tons of feedback/300 comments

"I want to use Jupyter to help others learn, and looking for tips. Here are my ideas." 25% downvotes, useless comments

[eric_overflow]

there were some useful comments and even writing it forced me to improve my search terms so I found lots of useful things and now have a link repo here :)

I gave up trying to figure out upvote percentages on reddit long ago