Processing in the classroom

[Ira Greenberg]

Some people expressed an interest during my workshop to create a place for a dialogue on Processing in the classroom. I'm not sure if this is the place, but I thought I'd try to get the ball going.

[REAS]

Ira, I think a mail list would be a great medium for this discussion (if the NING doesn't work out). We have a mail system running on the P5 server.

[Ira Greenberg]

Sounds good. I guess I should draft something then?
Hope your trip back was good.

[David Bouchard]

A mailing list would be nice. Another idea that was floating around would be to add a section devoted to teaching Processing on the discourse forums (maybe under a fourth item under "Discussion"). The forum is readily available to everyone (not just those on ning.com) and makes it easy to browse archived discussions.

[Ira Greenberg]

Hi David,
I spoke to Casey about this and apparently there used to be such a section at processing.org, which had no activity ( I don't even remember it which isn't a good sign). I think the thing to do is to try the Processing mailing list first and then perhaps reinstate the educators' forum if there is sufficient activity.

It was nice meeting you at a&&c and perhaps we'll see each other in Toronto.

(I do agree long term this ning group is too small to sustain this).

[Daniel Shiffman]

Would love to help out with getting the mailing list going, let me know what I can do!

[REAS]

I'm willing to give the Discourse idea a shot again if there's support. It will need a monitor, though.

[_why]

Perhaps if you need more activity, we could work together to make some kind of a central forum for teachers. Certainly Processing has the lion's share of interest and I don't want to dilute the topic at all.

I'm just thinking that regardless of the specific language used, teachers are going to need tools -- general tools for passing scripts around and automating lesson plans and just strategizing. In addition, the more people you have under that banner, the more it becomes a movement. A kind of central forum would let us pool resources so people can meet online and develop that sort of stuff together.

Maybe like an instance of the Processing forums that could be used under artandcode.com?

[Aileen Owens]

It's so valuable to keep the discussion going. Great idea!

[Ira Greenberg]

In preparing an initial email, maybe this group can brainstorm what topics to include?
Here's a first shot:

Welcome, blah, blah
Effective Lessons
Tutorials to share
Syllabi to share
Requested/Wanted stuff (articles, books, links,...)
General Questions (related to teaching Processing of course)
Upcoming Workshops
...

Ira

[Golan Levin]

I'm willing to extend the artandcode.com domain for any such purpose, especially open-source syllabi. If it can be done with this Ning, contact me; I'm happy to promote anyone motivated enough to Administrator.

[Ira Greenberg]

Dan, would you like to co-monitor this with me?

[Kyle Geske]

This is a great idea. I'd love to be part of this mailing list.