In 2015, PyCon will be holding its third annual Python Education Summit. This year, I have the honor of Chairing the Summit. The Summit is a gathering of teachers and educators focused on bringing coding literacy, through Python, to as broad a group of audiences as possible. We invite educators from all venues to consider joining the discussion, share insights, learn new techniques and tools and generally share their passion for education. We are looking for educators from many venues: authors; schools, colleges, universities; community-based workshops; online programs; and government.

Goals

The goal of the Summit is to bring together leaders from multiple educational venues to:

• learn more about each other’s efforts and
• gain useful insight from each other
• form connections that might foster future collaboration
• identify common issues and begin discussing ways to attack them
• create an enhanced sense of unity, purpose and community among teachers of Python, wherever they might be

It is our hope that the Summit will serve as catalyst leading into the rest of PyCon to encourage even more interaction – hallway discussions, open spaces, lightning talks, and sprints.

Anyone attending this conference will gain a broader understanding of approaches, issues, resources and constraints in teaching Python, will have the opportunity to contribute to the discussion, and will make contacts with other teachers of Python from across the community.

Schedule and Format

The Education Summit takes place on Thursday, April 9th, the day before the main tracks of PyCon begin, so that summit attendees will be able to attend all of the regular talks.

The Summit is scheduled to run all day, from 9:00 am to 4:30 pm, with breaks in the morning and afternoon and one hour for lunch. The content and agenda are being finalized and a call for proposals is currently open. We anticipate three or four invited talks, two tracks of participant-submitted talks in the afternoon, plenty of open discussion, and a round of lightning talks.

What to expect?

We encourage all attendees to engage in the dialogue. While there will be plenty of presentations and examples of teaching techniques and tools, we are anxious to hear your questions, see your ideas and experience your passion for education and Python. So please come willing to learn, to participate and most importantly, to teach.