First of all, I want to thank everyone for all the suggestion, both on this list and in e-mail. I'm going to try to get something specific together for my students by Friday. As for these comments below: On Wed, 9 May 2001 23:53:42 EDT, HotToPot@aol.com wrote about [Edu-sig] Intro and question: assignments/projects for year end : :Don't ask them to face a blank page. : :If its Game of Life, start them with functioning code and challenge :them to extend it in some fairly specific way. : :If its graphics, start with functioning code that draws lines, ask them to :draw :boxes and circles. : :Even at high levels of programming, few people are asked to face the :blank page. One is extending, optimizing, debugging, porting, etc. : :Give them something broken to fix. Plant a few bugs. : :But don't ask them to face the blank page. I wasn't going to make the class all do the same project. I was going to let them pick what they want to do. Last year I did this with the CMU Graphics library, and it was a great success. However, in this scenario, it was mostly necessary for them to "face a blank page". Well, let me qualify that: We did have two "demo" programs for them to examine. I'd like to thank Rob for suggesting the Useless Python site, as a reference. I think you're right. That's a good source for samples and examples. -- Sheila King http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/ http://www.k12groups.org/