On 7-Jul-07, at 9:04 PM, Andy Judkis wrote: > I'm seriously thinking about using Scratch rather than Python, for > just that > reason -- the cool factor is built-in, it's as accessible as "if" or > "while".
I haven't been actively trying to teach my kids to program, but they know that's a big part of what I do (both for work and for fun), and they like computers a lot. I've attempted to put together an environment to teach them Python a few times, but got bogged down each time (too many projects). On the other hand, they both (my daughter is 10 and my son is 6) picked up Scratch right away and have been coming up with interesting ideas and uses for it ever since. They give up their (very limited, we have strict limits for all electronic media) time on the Nintendo DS in order to write Scratch code. Now my daughter is running into the limits of Scratch and her ambitions are exceeding those limits (and where she goes, my son soon tries to follow). I'm beginning to show her the ropes with PyGame and she is watching over my shoulder. When a sprite moved down instead of up when we pressed the up arrow, she said, "Let me fix it!" I handed my laptop over to her, she found the right spot, flipped the minus sign, and we tested it. So now she's fixed her first bug in Python code, I figure she's hooked. I've also got an order at Amazon for "Squeak: Learn Programming with Robots" that Ted Leung talks about (comparing Squeak to Python for his three daughters learning to use computers) here: http:// www.sauria.com/blog/education/1457. Julie Leung has her own perspective on it here: http://www.julieleung.com/archives/ 002073.html. This book has probably been mentioned here before, given that Andre has the first comment on Ted's blog. I don't yet know whether Squeak or Python will win my kids hearts and minds (maybe both?), but I do know Python and PyGame run on my new Nokia N800. All of this is anecdotal and non-academic. Just wanted to contribute my data point to the discussion. --Dethe "The good thing about reinventing the wheel is that you can get a round one." --Douglas Crockford _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig