[Haskell-cafe] Open-source projects for beginning Haskell students?

[Brent Yorgey]

Hi everyone,

I am currently teaching a half-credit introductory Haskell class for
undergraduates.  This is the second time I've taught it.  The last
time, for their final project I gave them the option of contributing
to an open-source project; a couple groups took me up on it and I
think it ended up being a modest success.

So I'd like to do it again this time around, and am looking for
particular projects I can suggest to them.  Do you have an open-source
project with a few well-specified tasks that a relative beginner (see
below) could reasonably make a contribution towards in the space of
about four weeks? I'm aware that most tasks don't fit that profile,
but even complex projects usually have a few "simple-ish" tasks that
haven't yet been done just because "no one has gotten around to it
yet".

If you have any such projects, I'd love to hear about it!  

Here are a few more details:

* The students will be working on the projects from approximately the
  end of this month through the end of April.

* By "relative beginner" I mean someone familiar with the material
  listed here: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~cis194/lectures.html and just
  trying to come to terms with Applicative and Monad.  They definitely
  do not know much if anything about optimization/profiling, GADTs,
  the mtl, or Haskell-programming-in-the-large.  (Although part of the
  point of the project is to teach them a bit about
  programming-in-the-(medium/large)).

* What I would hope from you is a willingness to exchange email and/or
  chat with the student(s) over the course of the project, to give
  them a bit of guidance/mentoring.  I am certainly willing to help on
  that front, but of course I probably don't know much about your
  particular project.

thanks!
-Brent