[Tutor] Recommended Resurce or strategy for beginning students

[Mike Barnett]

I like the idea of starting out right away on a GUI.  I know this is completely backwards to what would normally be taught, but hear me out.  Kids today are used to GUI interfaces.  They're on their phones, their computers, their TV  sets.  

Why not teach kids to output to a window instead of a command line?  What if it's just was easy, or easier, to work with a GUI as it is the command line?

To output to the command line in standard Python:
print('my string', variable1, variable2)

To output the same information to a window using PySimpleGUI:
Popup('my string', variable1, variable2)

Or, you can "print" to a debug window if that's your thing.
Print('takes the same parameters as print')

If the ultimate goal is to teach kids about how to design a GUI window, how to lay out a GUI using good user interface design principals, then it would be nice to get the GUI coding out of the way and let the focus instead be on the GUI itself.  This is when having a drag-and-drop Designer Tool is handy.  If not, then the next best thing is a simple programming interface.

PySimpleGUI was designed so that the code visually matches the window layout.  

It's capable of duplicating pretty much any layout and widget combination that you can create coding directly to tkinter's (or Qt's or WxPython's) interfaces.  PySimpleGUI simply creates and executes the "boilerplate" code that is often brought up when GUIs are discussed.  

A goal was to remove all of the boilerplate code and provide a programmer with a simple, friendly and flexible set of APIs.  You write a single line of code per row of widgets in your window plus a 1/2 dozen lines to implement the event loop.

I don't see the harm in approaching the problem from a different direction.  It could be wildly successful.  Or... not...  The worst that can happen is you screw up a classroom full of future programmers, creating a warped vision that GUIs can be fun and easy.


@mike

-----Original Message-----
From: Matthew Polack <matthew.polack at htlc.vic.edu.au> 
Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2019 1:58 AM
To: tutor at python.org
Subject: [Tutor] Recommended Resurce or strategy for beginning students

Hi All,

In our growing school we're teaching Python programming for the first time as an elective subject with Year 9 and 10 students. (Had a dabble at this last year with 3 students in Year 11)

I'm wondering what specific resource or stategy people would recommend for absolute beginners?

ie. a course or program, book,...set of activities to follow that strategically introduces and develops key skills.

At this age level I don't think we need to be achieving 'rocket science'..but rather giving the students a good solid introduction.

Some of the leadership wanted me to use this programming in combination with building robots...I've even wondered whether this is trying to achieve too many things...and we're better off focused on programming itself... but am open to this idea too...

I've had a play with using the excellent PySimpleGUI...which is an excellent resource for building a GUI...but I've realised before doing too much of this we might need to get a grip on core fundamentals....

The challenge is trying to find a way to making this 'fun' for students whilst also having them genuinely learn rather than just 'copying pasting'
code...achieving something that looks good...but not really understanding what they are doing.

So far my strategy will be:

1.) Establish some core basics(utlising some form of 'course',,,which goes through basics of syntax..variables...loops etc. utilising just raw code...(probably a simple 'Adventure Game')
2.) Build some simple programs using PySimple GUi..eg. Some quiz games etc.
(there are some great examples on Github by another teacher and also the author Mike of PySimpleGUI.
3.) Possibly explore robotics.

Can anyone make any recommendations on either resources or teaching/learning strategy/curriculum.

Thank you,
Matt


Matthew Polack | Teacher


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