I have used RUR-PLE in my classroom for two semesters now. I teach a group of generally above-average 10th graders. My course is a required part of the curriculum, so the group includes many kids who are not big computer fans.
I've found RUR-PLE to be a very constructive way to approach programming. I use it to teach the basics of looping and branching and defining subroutines, and we do about 6 of Andre's exercises. (We spend about 4 1/2 hours of class time on it before moving on to Python, using modified versions of the LiveWires and a little bit from How To Think Like a Computer Scientist.) RUR-PLE is a very constrained environment, but it ramps up nicely into "real" Python. It shelters beginners from the ugly stuff like num=int(raw_input("number?")) but it retains enough complexity so that the behavior of programs is not all that predictable to the kids. They still have to do a considerable amount of thinking in order to get things to work. After the time with RUR-PLE, I found that only 2 or 3 kids out of 34 could write a trivial program that would send the robot counter-clockwise around the edge of a rectangular world of unspecified size until it hit a beeper. The kids could understand a solution like: while not next_to_a_beeper(): if front_is_clear(): move() else: turn_left() turn_off() when they saw it, but most could not synthesize it themselves. This is after we discussed this -specific- problem in class, and after all the kids had done similar things with the exercises. When we moved on to Python, they were still struggling with similar very simple problems. I think programming is much harder for "normal" (not self-selected) kids than most of us seem to acknowledge. One of my kids said "It's so totally logical, and yet it's so frustrating. . . " I think kids are turned off when we tell them how easy it is, and then they discover otherwise. It just serves to make them feel stupid. We'd be better off saying "It's hard at first, but it's really worthwhile. Here, let us help you get started." I think RUR-PLE is a great tool for this. Regards, Andy Judkis Academy of Allied Health and Science Neptune, NJ _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig