Jim thank you i believe that i will use that method or try to rather ^_^ warmest regards,
Chris Yarger Founder Yarger Designs web: http://YargerDesigns.co.cc skype: cpyarger msn: [email protected] aim: patyarg yahoo: christoyarg Rodney Dangerfield - "My marriage is on the rocks again, yeah, my wife just broke up with her boyfriend." On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 10:09 AM, Jim Carroll <[email protected]> wrote: >> i currently am attempting (and slightly failing) to teach a small(5) >> group of children (ages 8-14) >> python programing out of a creative commons book found here: >> http://pythonbook.coffeeghost.net/book1/ > > Great! I learned basic from very similar programs way back... > >> unfourtanatly i am having trouble trying to explain why (rembember the >> mind set at that age) they need to know the basics. any hints, >> suggestions and/or comments is appreciated.(what notes i have are >> posted on my website). > > I remember having to actually type in basic programs from a Rainbow > magazine into my Tandy Color Computer. Having to get each character > right before the program ran correctly was a rewarding challenge. I > could type in and run programs that I didn't understand, and in the > process see what made them go, and eventually look up everything that > I had to in order to understand why it worked. At that point, I could > change little things, and see if the behavior of the program changed > the way I expected. (I still do that today!) > > One of the best instructors that I ever TA-ed for was a guy named Otto > Berkes (he's now at Microsoft, and is one of two or three guys who > created the X Box.) He was teaching x86 assembly, and he had a really > fantastic teaching style... he provided 99% of a fun solution, and the > students had to fill in the last 1% for a rewarding result. (it was > an animation viewer, and the last 1% was the RLE decoder for the > Autodesk-specific video format.) He gave very specific instructions > for the hard parts, (how to link your code with what he provided.) > The last 1% was enough of a challenge to really engage the students, > (and frustrate about 20% of them.) > > I think that if you started off with Reversi from the book, but > intentionally broke something like how the reversing works, they would > see that they have to figure out the code to make it work correctly, > and that curiosity would make them hungry to learn the basics. > > If they had an environment where PyGame was already installed, the > http://www.pyweek.org/ challenges would give some really nice examples > that were even more engaging, and the students could do things like > make the character in the side-scroller jump higher than originally > intended, or some other modification along those lines. > > I think the trick is to gloss over the basics as long as possible... > and before long they'll be asking you the "why" questions that > indicate their brain is ready to absorb. > > -Jim >
