Teaching Python

[Arthur]

On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 14:45:21 GMT, Mediocre Person
<mediocre_person at hotmail.com> wrote:

>You state, "Python is REALLY easy to learn. Your concern should probably 
>be: "are they going to learn this so quickly that I run out of material 
>in a month?" I've seen 6th graders learn to write relatively impressive,
>object-oriented python programs within about 2 months." Can you give me 
>some references to this, such as samples of student work? I would like 
>to see what grade 6 students can do in two months!


Me too.

My IQ problem might be more dramatic than I thought.  It took me
longer than that to sense which way was up, and I was coming to the
effort with good energy and a good deal of non-programming computer
background.

"REALLY easy" sounds great, but I think the idea that it is in fact so
can work, in the end, to discourage those of us who don't find it so. 

"REALLY worthwhile", perhaps.

>I agree that the syntax of Python makes it is easy to learn. However, I 
>think I've got a pretty good imagination where material is concerned! 
>There are excellent tie-ins to their mathematics, physics, chemistry, 
>and biology curricula. For instance, I recently came across the concept 
>of partitions in number theory, and computing all the partitions of an 
>integer is a dilly of a pickle of a problem!
>

I strongly agree that it is these tie-ins that make the effort to
extend programming literacy more widely "REALLY worthwhile".

And happen to believe that Python is an excellant way to go.

Art