[Edu-sig] high school programming club question

[Liow, Dr. Yihsiang]

Hi everyone,

I've been reading postings in thie group a long time but have not really posting much.

Anyway, I have a question.

I'm planning to start a high school programming club and I'm looking for materials. I've been programming Python for 4 years and have used PyGame, VPython in some of my CS classes. But the plan for the high school programming club is to attract high school students with no background in programming  at all. I'm also planning to start small and grow slowly. So I'm thinking of going an *8-week* intro to programming using Python. The club might meet for 1 to 1.5 hours. I'll try to revive it again in Spring. Perhaps for the weeks between the two 8-week sessions, I'll try to stay in touch with the high school students using a message board. I might involve senior CS students as mentors.

That's roughly the plan. The next step is just to find suitable teaching or lab material. I've already looked at LiveWire. 

Do you have any recommendations? Again this is for high school students with no background in programming and they might meet only 1-1.5 hours/week for 8 weeks.

Also, if you have suggestions and tips for such a set up, please *do* let me know. (If you think 8 weeks of 1.5 hours is too little, then please *do* persuade me to modify my plan.)

Thanks in advance.

- yihsiang