[Edu-sig] Queens, NY - PYTHON Programming for Kids

[Dustin James Mitchell]

On Wed, 12 Jul 2000, kathrine smith wrote:

> P.S. Speaking from experience, whatever you do . . .
> do not show dull videos. :)

You mean like "This is Bill's keyboard"?

I'd second the "go outside and play" point as well.  It's proably a good
idea to have some of the classroom time be explicitly computer-less --
will you have a blackboard and chalk?  There's lots of stuff to do
interactively, including simulating the python interpreter, getting used
to thinking about how the computer looks at your program.

I came up with some simple rules for assignment (variables as boxes with
stuff in them), including a way of drawing them on the board, then had the
kids 'execute' short snippets to see how they worked.  It's fun, it's
active, and it doesn't cause monitor burn :)

Dustin

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|                         Dustin Mitchell                )O(        |
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