[Edu-sig] Starting Python

[catherine curley]

Adam

I'm an old COBOL programmer/analyst that have moved on to other areas over
time.   I'm trying to get my 12 year old interested in computers instead of
just playing games.  I've gone through a number of the tutorials available
on the internet but haven't come up with suitable examples that would be
suitable for a 12 year old to try.  He can enter the instruction in some of
the tutorials but he can't comprehend how he might use python.  Have you
come across any simple exercises for kids.

Catherine


On 1/26/06, adam <adam at monkeez.org> wrote:
>
> Good to read that someone else has started a club. I have about 5 eleven
> year olds who are intersted to learn more. We've tweaked the pygame demo
> 'chimp' with photos of themselves and changing the sounds, which has
> whetted their apetite to learn more about the mechanics of Python.
>
> > Hi Andrew,
> >
> > I would have a look at RUR-PLE, at Livewires, and also the book Python
> > Programming for the Absolute Beginner by Michael Dawson.
> >
> > RUR-PLE is great for a little while, it's a little robot on the screen
> > that can be programmed to  move around mazes and so forth using a very
> > limited set of instructions.  It's quite an eye-opener to kids to see
> how
> > a few simple constructs can lead to all kinds of unexpected behavior. Go
> > to http://rur-ple.sourceforge.net/
>
> Thanks for this resource - will look into it.
>
> <snip>
> > Regards,
> >
> > Andy Judkis
>
> I've started writing some basic documentation [1] aimed at this age group
> which describes the basics of installing python (on Windows I'm afraid)
> and then the basic concepts of variables and touching on Built-ins.
>
> Unfortunately, I've not got a great deal of time to spend on this
> (full-time teaching committment) and so it's something I'd be interested
> in expanding with the community.
>
> I'd be interested in developing the documentation with others using the
> GPL, possibly managing it through CVS (or some other version control that
> I can learn easily). The original doc is developed in .sgml, but I'm not
> wedded to it. Please also feel free to comment on the quality of the docs
> - they're far from perfect.
>
> If anyone else is interested in preparing these docs, and knows enough to
> help out, please contact me. If you think the docs may be useful to what
> you're trying to do, and you develop more, consider forwarding them for me
> to add.
>
> TIA.
> Adam
>
> [1] http://www.sjb-school.org/cc/python/python-kids.en/python-kids.html
>
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