While many of us in the IT industry are intimately familiar with the advances Python is making on the tech. and business frontiers, we often don't see the work happening in other domains. Python has a reputation for being an excellent first language and very easy to study. The Kerala state governments IT@school program teaches Python to high school kids. The CBSE also has introduced Python as an option to C++ for high school students. The FOSSEE.in project introduces free and open source Python based tools to engineers and other people working in scientific domains. 

This year, for the first time at PyCon India, we're putting together a panel of people who have been working in this area and giving them a forum to discuss the topic. The panel will consist of 3 experts on the stage who will have a discussion about the role of Python in the education domain on stage. Questions will be selected in advance to guide the discussion and there will be an open Q/A session at the end. 

The participants for the panel will be. 

1. Dr. Prabhu Ramachandran - Dr. Prabhu is a member of the faculty at the department of aerospace engineering at IITB and has been active in the open source community since 1998.  He is the creator of Mayavi , an active member of the SciPy community and a nominated member of the Python Software Foundation. He was involved in the setting up of FOSSEE.in. He setup the Indian operations of Enthought Inc. in 2011 and is currently a director of Enthought India. 
2. Dr. Ajith Kumar - Dr. Ajith's main area of work is development of instrumentation for particle accelerators and associated experiments, including radio-frequency accelerating structures, control and data acquisition systems, digital and radio frequency electronics modules. He is involved in developing laboratory equipment for teaching physics and engineering following the philosophy of Free Software. Has been a user and propagator of Free Software in the field of education for several years.
3. Dr. Nagarjuna G. - Dr. Nagarjuna holds a faculty position at Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR in Mumbai. He is an author and maintainer of the GNU project GNOWSYS, and leads the gnowledge.org lab in Mumbai. He investigates as part of his research profession at TIFR, the structure and dynamics of knowledge networks and designing distributed computing platforms for education and social change. The gnowledge.org conducts workshops for teachers in the use of ICT for science and mathematics education starting from primary schools to undergraduate education. He is an advocate of free software and open standards for education, eGovernance and conducts workshops for academia and industry, and the chairperson of Free Software Foundation of India.

The panel will be moderated by Noufal Ibrahim. Questions for the panel are welcome. Please send them to noufal at nibrahim.net.in or to the PyCon India mailing list. I can't guarantee that we'll ask all of them but more questions make for a more interesting and fruitful discussion. 

The panel is scheduled to take place in the main auditorium on 31^st August from 2:45 to 3:30 right before the tea break. It's a plenary session so you won't miss any of the talks while this goes on. Everyone is welcome to attend. We'll have a brief Q/A session at the end of the panel.

I hope to see you all there!

Noufal Ibrahim