Python for Kids
I am volunteering in a pilot project that targets to teach programming to school kids (class VIII-IX). My responsibility is to design the course. I have been researching about this and decided to use Python (not because it's my favorite language but because I think teaching Python would be a good idea).
If anybody can share any useful resource, links or suggestions it will be highly appreciated.
I shall keep you updated about the outcome of the project.
If anybody can share any useful resource, links or suggestions it will be highly appreciated.
I shall keep you updated about the outcome of the project.
Comments
wishing u best of luck in every steps of it.
http://software-carpentry.org/
I believe that would be interesting if the kids could develop a small game. Would make it funnier and more interesting, instead of data processing scripts :)
I wold love to see the outcome.
I will be glad to help if you need.
Teaching programming by writing computer games is a good approach I think. I found this one interesting: http://inventwithpython.com/
http://www.livewires.org.uk/python/home
It may be a little bit outdated, but there are very nices ideas there!
http://www.briggs.net.nz/log/writing/snake-wrangling-for-kids/
I remember that in my secondary (Poland, 12-15 years old) I started with Logo and then moved to Pascal. The thing that was great about Logo, was the fact that basically every action could be easily shown by graphics. I still think that Logo is a great language to start with.
What I think would be a good idea is to use a very simple graphics library. I don't know any Python libraries (I'm new to Python), but something like Java's Processing (www.processing.org) could come in handy. It's dead simple to draw primitives etc. I know a python implementation called pyprocessing.
Good luck with your work! Don't forget to teach the kids some math and most of all to encourage them to think! This is what I lacked the most in my secondary ;)
While it's never good to overload children and turn them off of a subject, kids deal with abstractions every day, it's just a matter of explaining these things in terms they're familiar with...which IYOCG handles pretty well. It should be a good foundation for your own work. :)
You may use pyGame and GoogleAPI to play around with Google Maps too. Choice is typically yours.
Best of Luck!!
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Mohd Anwar Jamal Faiz
To be honest, so did I :)