Howdy, I'm in my first year of teaching computer programming in Python and am developing my material based on the How To Think Like A Computer Scientists book at www.ibiblio.org/obp. I have to confess that I fell into teaching computer programming without any formal training, and I'm learning a lot of the material as we go along (I'm a few steps ahead of the students, but not far). Looking through some of the edu_sig posts, and Timothy Wilson's page at http://www.isd197.org/sibley/cs/icp/, I'm seeing that assigning students a large project seems to be more popular than assigning a number of smaller, more pedantic problems. What is the rationale behind the larger projects as opposed to smaller projects? What are the benefits and drawbacks of asking students to spend a week on one large project instead of that same week on three or four smaller tasks, then giving a large task once a month or so? I've been using what I consider to be smaller projects (my stuff is at http://www.bembry.org/tech/python/index.shtml ) and am wondering if fewer, larger projects would be better for my kids. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bryce Embry --- Geek of All Trades, Master of None --- Margolin Hebrew Academy --- 390 South White Station --- Memphis, TN 38117 --- (901) 682-2409