[Edu-sig] Re: Python for fun and OBP

[Jeffrey Elkner]

Hi Chris!

Let me introduce you to two of my students, Anoush Garakani and Scott
Newman.  They are
both students in my CSC I and II class who have signed up for AP CSC
next year.  I've asked
them to look at the Towers of Hanoi lesson and give us feed back.

These kinds of lessons will be very useful to our CS program.  I have
been grappling for
a long time on how to leverage Python to improve understanding in our AP
course. I have
not yet effectively done that.  Next year I plan on using both languages
in the course.
Concepts will be introduced first using Python and then we will focus on
the question,
now how do you do this in C++?

C++ syntax is so ill-suited to the task of teaching programming and
slows down the pace
of the course to such a degree that we always end up rushing at the end
of the year to
get to the topics that are really supposed to be the core of the course:
data structures
(lists, stacks, queues, trees, heaps), and algorithms (searching and
sorting).

These topics are well covered in the Java version of "How to think like
a computer scientist",
so I plan on translating the rest of that book into Python as soon as I
can.  If we can create
a web site with both a text book and collection of activities and case
studies, we will have
a real resource for anyone interested in using Python to teach
programming.

Thanks for the lesson!
jeff

On 12 Mar 2001 12:58:08 -0800, Chris Meyers wrote:
> Hi Jeff,
>
> Did the tower.py and tower.doc attachments come through? I'm 
> anxious to hear your impressions.
> 
> Thanks, Chris