[Edu-sig] Python in Secondary Schools

[Sven Forum]

Yup,

I'm a student at the Erasmus High School in Brussels.
In about 1 year I'm going to graduate as a teacher in mathematics, history
and informatics.
I 'll give math and history to children between 12 and 15 years old and
informatics to those between 14 and 18(+) years old.

This is the Belgian model ... informatics just starts in the third year of
secondary schools. It's a course of 1 or 2 hours (~50 minutes) a week. The
emphasis is on Microsoft office packets Word, some Excel and a little
Access, ... programming happens in Pascal (most of the times), a language I
personally despise, and the pupils need to know a little about networking,
the www (some html), new thingy 's, ... and some other bits.
#Q1: What model does your country use?

Before I graduate, I, of course, have to write a graduation paper (~correct
term?).
Now, I fell madly in love with Python. So I want to write my paper about
teaching Python in secondary schools ... I'm thinking about a textbook from
the third year up until the last year, teaching basic concepts using this
beautiful language. On top of that I'm also a great fan of Free Software and
Open Source ...

My favorite sources for Python are:
* How to Think Like a Computer Scientist, Learning in Python
* Dive Into Python
* The Livewires Python Course

#Q2: What should a graduated student (18y) need to know or, perhaps better,
where should I stop?
Which books are recommended?
--- Values, Types, Expressions, Statements, Operations, Procedures,
Functions
--- Strings, Lists, Dictionaries, Tuples
--- Logics and Conditionals
--- Loops, Recursion, Iteration
--- Classes and Objects, methods and attributes, Inheritance, Overloading
--- ADT: Stacks and Queues, Trees, Linked lists
Getting blurry now ...
--- Files, Pickle, Error Handling
--- Sockets, Server, Client
--- ???
--- Using a database
--- CGI
--- HTTP, html, xml handling
--- GUI programming
--- ???

#Q3: If I copy-paste the GPL and GFDL into (respectively) the examples and
my textbook, is that enough to make it Free (as in Freedom)? Or do I have to
register somewhere?

Motivation is important. The students need to see and feel the use of
programming.
For instance, making a pacman-game (Livewires) will give students enough
motivation.
Or making a little script to rename all photos from some holiday ...
Or making a small and raw server-client chat program ...
Or a simple webserver in Python and then go from there to set up your own
WAMP/LAMP.

#Q4: What little chores did you solve using Python?
What would interest you as a 14-18 year old?
When did you think like "Man, if I only knew how to start solving this
problem... how does this works?"

I know these are some big questions, but I hope you can help me out of your
own experiences ...

Regards,
Sven
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