[Edu-sig] Intro and question: assignments/projects for year end

[Sheila King]

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 there,
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 the
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 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.

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/