Python in High School

[Gabriel Rossetti]

sprad wrote:
> I'm a high school computer teacher, and I'm starting a series of
> programming courses next year (disguised as "game development" classes
> to capture more interest). The first year will be a gentle
> introduction to programming, leading to two more years of advanced
> topics.
>
> I was initially thinking about doing the first year in Flash/
> ActionScript, and the later years in Java. My reasoning is that Flash
> has the advantage of giving a quick payoff to keep the students
> interested while I sneak in some OOP concepts through ActionScript.
> Once they've gotten a decent grounding there, they move on to Java for
> some more heavy-duty programming.
>
> I've never used Python, but I keep hearing enough good stuff about it
> to make me curious.
>
> So -- would Python be a good fit for these classes? Could it equal
> Java as the later heavy-duty language? Does it have enough quickly-
> accessible sparklies to unseat Flash?
>
> I want to believe. Evangelize away.
>   
I think it's a good idea (to use python), Mr. Swinnen, a high school 
teacher in Belgium wrote a book out of the course that he created for 
his programming class : Apprendre à programmer avec Python, 2e édition, 
O'Reilly. His course was originally a translation of Allen B. Downey's 
Open-source book (see : http://www.greenteapress.com/free_books.html).

I think this is proof of concept, no?

Gabriel