ipythonblocks

ipythonblocks is a teaching tool for use with the IPython Notebook. It provides a BlockGrid object whose representation is an HTML table. Individual table cells are represented by Block objects that have .red, .green, and .blue attributes by which the color of that cell can be specified.

ipythonblocks allows students to experiment with Python flow control concepts and immediately see the effects of their code represented in a colorful, attractive way. BlockGrid objects can be indexed and sliced like 2D NumPy arrays making them good practice for learning how to access arrays.

See these demo notebooks for more on using ipythonblocks:

• Practicing with RGB
• Basic usage with explanations
• Fun examples
• Animation
• ImageGrid
• Going from a JPEG to BlockGrid and text
• A programatic firework animation
• Using ipythonblocks.org

Install

ipythonblocks can be installed with pip:

pip install ipythonblocks

However, the package is contained in a single .py file and if you prefer you can just grab ipythonblocks.py and copy it to wherever you want to use it (useful for packaging with other teaching materials).

Dependencies

Required dependencies:

• Python >= 2.7
• IPython

Optional dependencies:

• requests >= 1.0 (for posting and getting to/from ipythonblocks.org)
• Pillow (for creating images)

Testing dependencies:

• pytest >= 2.3, (for the test suite, see below)
• responses >= 0.1
• mock (dependency of responses)

Demo dependencies:

• PIL (for starry_night_to_text.ipynb)

Testing

The test suite is written using pytest, so you can run the test suite with:

py.test