[Edu-sig] Teaching GUI's in Python?

[Andrew Harrington]

You can do a lot of graphics with the turtle and no event handling.  A
question is how much you want to get into event handling, vs just
generating pictures and animations and allowing sequential interaction with
the mouse.

Turtle graphics takes a"first-person" point of view.  Other simple graphics
packages, also more aimed at a procedural flow:
Zelle's package that I also use in my Hands-on Python
Tutorial<http://anh.cs.luc.edu/python/hands-on>.

Goldwasser and Lechter's a slightly fancier package cs1graphics.

On Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 11:12 AM, Vern Ceder <vceder at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Brian,
>
> On Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 10:58 AM, Brian Wilkinson <Brian.Wilkinson at ssfs.org
> > wrote:
>
>> Hello everyone,****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Our upper school, looking to beef up their technology offerings, offered
>> an introductory programming course this year using Python.  I am normally a
>> technology coordinator, supporting teachers and students, but was tapped to
>> teach this class (which I have thoroughly enjoyed so far).  The purpose of
>> this course is to try and get kids excited about programming and so I would
>> like to teach them a bit about graphics and GUI’s.  My initial thought was
>> just to have them work with tkinter, as that (to me) seems the easiest
>> path.  After doing some reading, it looks as though wxPython and pyQt are
>> popular options as well.
>>
>
> Great news! Every programming course (especially Python programming
> course) in high school is win!
>
>
>> So finally to the questions:****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> 1) Is teaching basic graphics too ambitious for an introductory course?
>>
>
> Not at all.
>
>
>> ****
>>
>> 2) If the answer to #1 is no, do folks out there have suggestions for the
>> best tool to use with the students?
>>
>
> While there are many other tools, they all have the drawback of requiring
> extra installation, etc. That may be okay for school machines, but it can
> then be a bit of hassle for some kids if they want to install the same
> environment at home. So personally, I always tried to keep things as simple
> as possible. So my suggestion for an intro class would be to use the turtle
> library - it can do a ton of things, even to the point of creating
> reasonably fun games. Once you outgrow the turtle library, I'd suggest the
> next step is PyGame...
>
> Good luck!! and keep us posted!
>
> JMHO,
>
> Vern
>
>
>>
>>
>> **
>>
>> I have enjoyed reading this group this year.  It has been a big help.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Brian Wilkinson****
>>
>> Sandy Spring Friends School****
>>
>> Technology Resource Coordinator****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, *however
>> improbable*, must be the truth.”****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Vern Ceder
> vceder at gmail.com, vceder at dogsinmotion.com
> The Quick Python Book, 2nd Ed - http://bit.ly/bRsWDW
>
>
>
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>


-- 
Dr. Andrew N. Harrington
  Computer Science Department
  Loyola University Chicago
Lakeshore office in the Math Department: 205 Loyola Hall
http://www.cs.luc.edu/~anh
Phone: 773-915-7999
Fax:    312-915-7998
aharrin at luc.edu
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