Python as an educational language (Long)

[Halvorson, Peter]

Motivation is likely to be the biggest stumbling block in teaching
beginning programmers.  You mention "power users" who are not programmers
(oxymoron?).  They aren't likely to be captivated by 
programming for its own sake.

Two hours practice to an hour lecture is good, but they have
to have projects in which they are interested, that create
something useful, and relate to the lecture.  They aren't all 
likely to find the same things interesting.  Telling them to 
pick something interesting isn't likely to work either, they're
likely to just shrug.

You might want to create a widely varied list of suggested
projects.  Include games, GUI, COM automation, text processing,
data base and web applications, and anything else you can think 
of (feel free to copy existing projects from Parnassus).  Then 
see how the specific subjects can fit into your outline, rate
them on how large the scope might be, and let the students pick 
projects as they go along.  The projects don't have to exercise 
everything you cover, your students aren't likely to walk out 
experts in every topic you cover.  But they should know something 
about the possibilities and have a place to start from in learning 
and practicing on their own.


peter

ps Don't forget a suggested reading list.  There are a lot of
classics on different ways of thinking about problems that can 
count as light reading, e.g. Bentley's Programming Pearls books,
the Little Schemer, Thinking Forth (I keep the good books at home, 
hopefully these titles are close).  You can probably find some
good articles from journals and magazines too.