[Edu-sig] Karel the Robot Comes to Yorktown...

[Jeffrey Elkner]

Hi All,

Every year something terrific comes out of Yorktown High School's
participation in the Python Conference.  This year was even better than
the previous two, since it was near enough to us that thirteen of our
students could attend.  We learned a lot and met many interesting
people, and the students left the conference turned on to programming.

The highlight of this year's conference for us has to be Michele Moore's
tutorial, "Graphical Interface Programming in Python".  Ironically, it
wasn't until months after the conference that I realized just how
important it was.  Ten of my thirteen students took it upon themselves
to attend the tutorial, which opened my eyes as to just how much they
wanted to learn to do GUI programming (up to that point not a part of
the 1st year program).  The tutorial was way over their heads, but moved
by my students evident interest in the subject I talked to Michele after
her presentation and asked her if she would be interested in helping
some of my students learn Python GUI programming.

And did she ever help!  First, she came to one of our Linux Users Group
meetings and gave a presentation right at the student's level of
understanding.  Then she mentored several of our students to the point
that they are becoming quite adept.

The most telling result of these efforts is the release of a Python
implementation of Karel the Robot, with a graphical interface written in
wxPython by Yorktown student programmers Donald Oellerich and Wassem
Daher.  This project would not have been finished on time (and I should
add, under budget ;-) if it were not for Michele's generous help.

The Project now has a sourceforge site at:

http://pykarel.sourceforge.net

The Python community continues to amaze me with it's generosity and
eagerness to help, and provides a reason every bit as important as the
many merits of the language itself for using Python to introduce
students to programming.

jeff elkner
yorktown high school
arlington, va