Hello,
My name is Sheila King. I'm a high school AP Computer Science teacher. Heh. AP Exam is tomorrow! I've been learning Python for myself since January. If you read comp.lang.python or the Python Tutor List, you've seen my posts
probably.
Anyway, for the last two or so weeks of the school year, what I'm going to have my AP Comp Sci students do is this: They get a choice of two possible types of projects: (1) CMU graphics. (this is what all of my students did last year.) (2) Learn Python.
I must've given a pretty convincing speech about Python, because 10 of my 17 students picked to do Python. I was surprised. I thought most of them would want to do a graphics project. (Last year's class wrote a number of different games.)
Anyhow...here's my question: I'm looking for suggested projects or programming problems for my students.
They have had a year of C++, and some of them are excellent. Some are only barely proficient. I know the good ones will pick up Python easily. I hope
others will be able to do so, as well. It's going to be sort of independent study. (I'm putting several HTML tutorials on their desktops...)
If they only have about two weeks to "learn" Python, and write a small
Hi Sheila Congratulations.. I would love to know what _did_ you say in your speech? Here are my enthusiatic, (but propably over ambitious) suggestions. I think since time is so short, you may be better off helping them enagage in the wide world of Python, and give them motivation and basic skills so they can keep going by themselves with it. A. INSPIRATION: TOOLKITS & MODULES One one the great virtues of Python is its community and the scope of contributed nmodules. So I think one appraoch might be to explore with your students The Vaults of Parnassus http://www.vex.net/parnassus This will expose them to the possibilities and also offer endless examples of code. Perhaps pick something simple and show them how to make use of it. This is valuable skill which will carry them way beyond the precious few weeks they have allocated. I think learning to read real code is half the battle. Fortuntately readability is Python's #1 virtue once you get past those __wierd__ __words__. Books and tutorials often fail because as a newbie one does not understnd where they are going or why. Or it just plain boring! As babies we did not 'study' grammer, we are born into a world of bustling taklative adults with whom we are motivated to communicate, by love hunger expression etc. This is 'natural learning' and is incredibly effective since the wrl began. How thento induce even a littlw of that in students learning another Human langauge [..in this instance Python]? B. FEEDBACK Do something which allows interactive feedback - some visible/audible/tangible results. Perhaps graphic, perhaps sound, text manipulation or web related. Not as distraction but to see how one can use python to build up things and connect them to others. C. RESOURCES Among the wonderful modules you should definitely stop at Kirby's pages. Check out VPython http://virtualphoton.pc.cc.cmu.edu/projects/visual/ 2 weeks background ok. PIL - Python Imaging Library http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/ Once installed you can immediately start manipulating images with minimal Python experience. This very manageable. PIL has good clear PDF docs you print out. 2 weeks background ok. Have fun with language. Perhaps there are some poets in the class.. http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~steele/sources/wordnet-python.html SNACK http://www.speech.kth.se/snack/ <quote> The Snack Sound Toolkit is designed to be used with a scripting language such as Tcl/Tk or Python. Using Snack you can create create powerful multi-platform audio applications with just a few lines of code. </quote> MIDI http://www2.hku.nl/~simon2/python/ BLENDER http://www.blender.nl 3D Modelling and animation software with game engine and a Python API: http://www.janw.gothere.uk.com/documentation.html Blender itself woudl take up all your time to learn, but despite theis there is great value in discussing it with your sutdents a littel and revierwing some of the excellent but eclectic Python materials forit. I imagina at leat one of your tudents will keep going after the course is over: Start here =>a nice list of scripts: http://honk.physik.uni-konstanz.de/~strubi/3d/python/ for example in 15 minutes you can look over the illustrated scripts at: http://home.iae.nl/users/exwhale/blender/main/scripts.html take even a sinmple one for dsicussion: Some of the Python Blender sites are very good intro tutuorial sites, becuse they are writeen by motivated oung hackers taching each other. they don't suffer from too many years of CS training.. some are very well illustrated and broken down into good clear step by step common language. I recommend you to look at the bilingual pages at http://jmsoler.free.fr/didacticiel/blender/tutor/english/index_prog_python.h tm and then rad through the sequence http://jmsoler.free.fr/didacticiel/blender/tutor/english/python_script01.htm http://jmsoler.free.fr/didacticiel/blender/tutor/english/python_script02.htm etc.. An another is Crystal Space http://crystal.linuxgames.com/ 0.14 - A free portable 3D engine written in C++, with python scripting support. Adn lastly.. A 16-year old LA hacker's page http://jesswei.tripod.com/programs.html hth ./Jason ___________________________________________________________ Jason CUNLIFFE = NOMADICS['Interactive Art and Technology'] ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sheila King" <sheila@thinkspot.net> To: <edu-sig@python.org> Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2001 2:58 AM Subject: [Edu-sig] Intro and question: assignments/projects for year end there, the program
or two, what types of things could I have them do? We won't have time to get into GUIs. These can't be very ambitious projects, due to the limited amount of time.