The livewires course materials are excellent and have been a big help to me in our high school computer science program. They were written for middle school kids, but I find them particularly helpful with those students who find our textbook too difficult or too dry. The livewires materials are fun to use and engage these students in learning to program. Thanks Richard! On 10 May 2001 23:01:01 +0100, Richard Crook wrote:

I don't normally shout much about our resources, but the list seems recently to have been discussing areas where we might be able to save folks some work.

LiveWires is a computing holiday in the UK for 12-15 year olds; all our course material and Python modules is on our website. In particular, we have a support library to provide (Tk-based) graphics in a window with a straight procedural interface for beginners (similar to that described recently by Daniel Yoo). Daniel: apologies, I haven't yet had time to take a detailed look at what you've done, but you might find our course materials relevant anyway...

In addition, some of what Jason Cunliffe posted struck a chord, so there might be some synergy there -- we've been actively using these materials for a couple of years to teach real beginners. I know Jeff Elkner has also picked up on this for some of his students (Hi Jeff!).

Website at http://www.livewires.org.uk/python/index.html, for anyone interested. Feel free to comment -- we're in the process of updating and extending for this year's holiday. If anyone's interested in the directions we're going from here, drop me a message.

Regards, Richard -- Richard Crook // SJ Consulting Ltd, Cambridge // richard@sj.co.uk