Hi Tamim -- Speaking teacher-to-teacher, I think in terms of an XY graph with X-axis the techie nuts and bolts and Y-axis the lore / history / storytelling.
Then I draw a curve representing any given students "bandwidth horizon" and suggest varying the angle along the curve i.e. keep changing the mix of lore and tech. Too many teachers neglect lore I think: where did Python come from, who is Guido, what is open source, how many languages are there, what are they used for? Yes, we can go overboard and have only "fluff" but it's wrong to think of lore as "fluff" when in a good / healthy trail mix with techie (e.g. the syntax itself, magic methods...). What I find is a real time saver and helpful is to *not* start with a blank canvas i.e. an empty screen and say "now code something". Rather, start in the middle with something fairly complex yet understandable (conceptually) and invite them to make changes (plus they get to keep the code). I took this approach with middle-to-high schoolers (teenagers) with limited experience at a summer school. http://www.4dsolutions.net/satacad/martianmath/toc.html Each student had a high end Mac. I had Visual Python installed with my stickworks.py and other goodies (all free and out there) so they had something visually interesting, a live animation, right from square one. But then they could change some things. I call this "providing scaffolding". It's not like you're saying this is a shortcut to learning the language and people who slog along are wasting their time. It's not that. We're just front loading with concepts and human interest material and recruiting a few into diving in more seriously as a result of having so much fun. We're not hiding the fact that it'll take a lot longer to get good at Python. Additional resources: http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/cp4e.html Kirby On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 5:27 AM, Tamim Shahriar <[email protected]> wrote: > > I am going to conduct a workshop next month. I shall use Python in the > day-long workshop. The workshop will be for girls only (grade 9-10) who > know how to use computers but not familiar with programming. > > If anyone has experience conducting similar workshop and has resource, > please share. > > Also, what do you think I should show them in the workshop? Every girl > will have access to a computer during workshop? Should I go with solving > problems from their math / physics book? Or should I try to show them > simple games to make it more fun? I am waiting for your ideas. > > > Regards, > Tamim. > Python Blog : http://love-python.blogspot.com > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > [email protected] > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > >
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