[Edu-sig] Elementary School Instruction

[Kirby Urner]

Hi Andy --

Yeah, I wouldn't know about your class in particular.  I'm glad your school
hasn't been hit by the so damaging "we refuse to learn" syndrome.  Such a
missed opportunity! 

Good thing we have those community colleges in case one decides to go back
and review what one /could/ have gotten, for free, the first time (though in
the field of computers, the technology will likely have changed in some ways
since high school -- so you have to keep going back to school anyway).

I hesitate to list out any one list of proficiencies, but let me give it a
go:  an appreciation for Python's most basic data structures, the ideas of
module (standard library, 3rd party, user defined), of namespace, the
concept of dot notation and how this fits into class/object ideas.

Dot notation is of special importance, because we find it in so many
languages besides Python, including in the architecture of the Internet
itself, where net.4dsolutions becomes a qualifying path name, something I
might use in Java to distinguish my namespace (or class path). 

People ask about the "dot com" crash.  What was that all about anyway?
Sometimes you can snag student interest through storytelling.  Finding the
interesting stories (interesting to /them/) -- that's always the challenge,
no?

When I taught at the police station (West Precinct, HPD), the premise was
"so you want to be an open source developer" and so interest in Python
piggy-backed on top of the self concept of the average enrollee.  If you
want to think of yourself as "able to program" (and these kids did), then
"in Python" isn't a stupid way to go (kids don't want to be stupid --
usually).

This course wasn't just Python though.  It was basic Linux command line, a
little vi, demos/talks about diff/patch, the protocols, the layers, ip
numbers, dns servers, sockets and ports.  A lot of this was just spoken
about, or communicated with movies e.g. 'Warriors of the Net' and
'Revolution OS' (we screened both, plus some others).

Kirby


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andy Judkis [mailto:ajudkis at verizon.net]
> Sent: Thursday, June 09, 2005 7:31 PM
> To: Kirby Urner; edu-sig at python.org
> Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] Elementary School Instruction
> 
> Hi Kirby,
> 
> Thanks for responding.
> 
> I'm fortunate in that in our school, there really isn't a stigma
> associated
> with being a good student.  The culture is really pretty good that way.  I
> would love to blame my problems on the kids but I think the problem is
> really me, and my unrealistic expectations about how long it really takes
> to
> begin to get a sense of what programs and programming are about.  Which
> brings me back to the questions:
> 1) how do you motivate typical kids to be interested enough in this to
> climb
> this particular hill? and
> 2) what is a reasonable set of things for them to learn in a 20-30 class
> hour unit on Python?
> 
> Thanks again,
>     Andy