Python in Science andEngineering Education in India

Prabhu RamachandranAsokan Pichai

fossee.inIIT Bombay

SciPy 2010Austin, TX, June 30 – July 1, 2010

Outline

Introduction and Goals

What we’ve done

Looking ahead

Outline

Introduction and Goals

What we’ve done

Looking ahead

National Mission on Educationthrough ICT

MHRDhttp://www.sakshat.ac.in

$ One billion in three years

I 60% for connectivityI 40% for content

Some other initiatives

I NPTEL: courses onlineI Virtual labs

Open Source mission

Adaptation & deployment of opensource simulation packages

equivalent to MATLAB, ORCADetc.

≈ $ 20 million

IIT Bombay’s take

I FOSSEE: PythonI FOSSEE: Scilab scilab.inI Blender based animations:oscar.iitb.ac.in

FOSSEE

Free Open-source Software forScience and Engineering

Education

http://fossee.in

Goals

Increase adoption of FOSS tools inthe curriculum

Current Focus

I PythonI Scilab

People

I Kannan Moudgalya, Mani Bhushan (CHE) –Scilab

I Madhu Belur (EE) – ScilabI P S V Natraj (SysCon) – ScilabI G. Sivakumar (CSE)

I Prabhu Ramachandran (AE) – Python

Details . . .

I Started in May 2009I Pilot funding (1 yr): $200,000I 3 years total: $1.7 million

Approach

I CurriculumI Design new coursesI Modify existing courses

I Spread adoptionI WorkshopsI Conferences

I Community Involvement

Outline

Introduction and Goals

What we’ve done

Looking ahead

Tasks taken up

I CurriculumI Design & prepare course material

I Spread adoptionI Workshops for Python & ScilabI Hosting conferences

I Community InvolvementI Freely available contentI Infrastructure for community

involvement

Workshops

I Python — 15 WorkshopsDirect beneficiaries — 201 teachers &567 students, 32 professionalsIndirect beneficiaries . . .

I Scilab — 9+ Workshops 1

Direct beneficiaries — 254 teachers &230 students

I Facilitated & funded 3 Facultydevelopment programs

1Jan. 2010

Intro tutorials at SciPy 2010

Design/Material for SEES course

I Software Engineering forEngineers and Scientists

I Due: end of JulyI Linux, Python and computing,

LATEX, VC . . .I hg.fossee.in/sttp/I fossee.in/review

DVD distributions

Conversion of existing courses

I Digital Control – CL 692 (done)I Distributed Systems – CS 451

(ongoing)I Matrix Computations – EE 636

(ongoing)

Outline

Introduction and Goals

What we’ve done

Looking ahead

PyTasks

I Online portal for communityinvolvement

I Credit and cash

Spoken tutorials

spoken-tutorial.org

I Screencasts for FOSS

Certification

I Courses made available onlineI Online examination

Conferences

Sage days 25August 9–12th at IIT, Bombay

in conjunction with ICM

fossee.in/sage_days

Conferences

SciPy.in 2010December at IIIT, Hyderabad

Getting into the syllabus

I Try and push Python & Scilabinto the syllabus in colleges

I Need — Books and CourseMaterial

Getting into the syllabus

I Books at various levels usingPython/Scilab

I Books for teaching introductoryprogramming, data structures etc.

I Convert existing books that use otherlanguages into using Python/Scilab

Getting into the syllabus

I Develop spoken tutorials for curricularactivities

I Convert the existing workshops tospoken tutorials

I Develop supplementary material tosolve problems using Python/Scilab

More courses

Advanced course on Python forscientific computing

Help core projects

SciPy and Sage

Ideas welcome!

We’re really excited about this!

Thank you!

?

prabhu@fossee.in

info@fossee.in