Are there decent recent implementations in python of these? Or tutorials of some sort?
I think you launch an active learning server, and the Python application interacts with it.
You may be able to run everything in Python https://github.com/JohnLangford/vowpal_wabbit/tree/master/py....
Here's further description https://github.com/JohnLangford/vowpal_wabbit/wiki/Command-l...