<div dir="ltr">Thanks to everyone for the support. I hope no one minds if I write a general reply.<br>
<br>
Winston Wolff wrote:<br>
> We teach computer programming with Python at Stratolab, but I like to start with Scratch first.<br>
<br>
I've looked at Scratch, but I haven't yet had a chance to try it out.
My plan is to start with high school kids, and depending on how well
that goes and how much time I have, I will try to work my way down to
younger kids. As I do I may be more inclined to try things like
Scratch, but, to start at least, I want to avoid giving the impression
that I am just teaching them how to use a toy or play a game. Not that
those things aren't important. In the broader scope of the class I do
want to introduce games, including board and card games. The only games
kids here play are action games on gaming consoles, and soccer.<br>
<br>
Daniel Ajoy wrote:<br>
> There are Logos in Spanish, for example FMSLogo (which is free)<br>
<br>
Gregor Lingl wrote:<br>
> Python 2.6, which was released one week ago, comes with a new turtle module.<br>
<br>
I have a soft spot for Logo. It's how I fell in love with programming
in 5th grade. I have been following Python development, so I was aware
of the new turtle module, though I hadn't seen the demos. It's amazing
what you can do with so little code, and the GUI for the demo browser
is something along the lines of what I'd want in an IDE for the
students. I can certainly see using it once the students have a firm
grounding in the basics. I think that would be preferable to a seperate
version of Logo, so that I'm not forcing my students to switch
environments.<br>
<br>
Winston Wolff wrote:<br>
> For the kids who move to Python, graphics are a great way to
go--it provides a lot of positive feedback. PyGame is rather low
level. I use my own MoonUnit wrapper around PyGame (
<a href="http://stratolab.com/misc/makebot">http://stratolab.com/misc/makebot</a> ), but LiveWires is similar.<br>
<br>
I do intend to introduce graphics as early as possible. I've used
Pygame before. In fact, I once wrote a minimal GUI framework in SDL,
which is the library Pygame is based on. I also like what the Pyglet
developers are doing. I'm inclined to start with the turtle module,
though, if only because it's functions relate easily to drawing with a
pencil. I have seen MakeBot and LiveWires before. I wanted to try
MakeBot last night, but ran into an error (see postscript).<br>
<br>
Vern Ceder wrote:<br>
> My advice teaching-wise would be to go slow with the initial
concepts. To someone who has never coded at all variables, lists,
loops, etc are somewhat alien concepts, while once you know how to
program, the same concepts seem trivial.<br>
<br>
That's the plan. Patience, persistence, and a little creativity. At one
point I tried a very simple exercise in Guido van Robot with 3 high
school kids, and was surprised to find that they were struggling with
the idea that the robot followed the instructions sequentially. So, my
expectations have been tempered a bit.<br>
<br>
Andrew Harrington wrote:<br>
> Look at the data on the Sugar installations for thousands of kids
in Peru. The Sugar environment is certainly localized for Spanish and
takes little resources.<br>
<br>
For some reason I skipped over the thought that Sugar would run on
other machines, even though I know it's based on Fedora. But there's so
much more to XO than Sugar. Would you say that even on it's own Sugar
offers significant advantages over, say, Edubuntu? And if so, would
that be true for older kids? Regardless, I will try to grab a copy,
though bandwidth is a luxury here.<br>
<br>
Charles Cossé wrote:<br>
> Actually, there you might be interested in TuxWordSmith which is
almost Scrabble and plays in many language combos, including
Spanish/English and English/Spanish.<br>
<br>
I will take a look, thanks. As for supplies, there are always things
lacking in a place like this, as I'm sure you know. For the class, at
least, I think I can manage with what's available.<br>
<br>
Thanks again for all your responses,<br>
Miguel Turner<br>
<br>
P.S. -- MakeBot error<br>
This was right after installing to the default location:<br>
<br>
MakeBot 2008-10-07 22:42:06 INFO Checking folder "C:\Program
Files\Stratolab\MakeBot-1.4\Builders" for builder files. (core.builders)<br>
MakeBot 2008-10-07 22:42:06 DEBUG details=[Errno 2] The system cannot find the file specified (core.builders)<br>
MakeBot 2008-10-07 22:42:06 ERROR Error in MakeBot: Here is the stacktrace:<br>
File "main.py", line 360, in ?<br>
File "wx\_core.pyc", line 7749, in __init__<br>
File "wx\_core.pyc", line 7346, in _BootstrapApp<br>
File "main.py", line 139, in OnInit<br>
File "main.py", line 168, in init_windows<br>
File "main.py", line 275, in new_document<br>
File "wxgui\mbdocument.pyc", line 281, in __init__<br>
File "core\builders.pyc", line 219, in find_builders<br>
File "core\builders.pyc", line 111, in __init__<br>
<br>
exceptions.IndexError: list index out of range (__main__)<br>
<br>
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