I used to judge science fairs in the DC area. There were junior and senior divisions, and the junior division age range was from 6th to 9th grades. At the time I got the occasional project written in Basic, many of which were very interesting. I would think that Python would easily outclass Basic! It would depend entirely upon the individual student. HTH
Brian Blais wrote: > Hello, > > I was wondering what the approximate minimum age to learn python is. Has > anyone had > experience teaching middle school students, or elementary school students > Python? > What brought this up for me is thinking about starting a Lego robots group in > a local > middle school. I only teach college, and have little experience with middle > school > students, so I find it hard to guess what they could actually do. I started > programming when I was about 5th grade, on a Commodore VIC 20 (3.5k RAM!) in > basic, > but I don't think I am typical. (Of course, now, you can probably infer my > age to > within 2 years! :) ). > > > I've written something so that students can program in Python syntax to run > the Lego > Mindstorms robots. The most commonly used language for these robotos, in the > middle > school, is Robolab which is entirely graphical. Although a good program, I > find > there are some drawbacks: > 1) Robolab is commercial, and not all schools can afford this above and > beyond the > price of the lego mindstorms > 2) Robolab only runs on Mac/Windows, and not Linux, so those schools that > have tried > to save money on the operating system get whacked there too > 3) Robolab can *only* do Lego robots. > > Although you learn the basic language structures (loops, branching, etc...), > because > it is graphical, Robolab doesn't translate directly. Perhaps this is enough > for kids > to start, but perhaps one can do better. > > On the other hand, my pynqc tool (which uses the freely available nqc > language for > the Lego Mindstorms) is: > 1) free (in both senses) > 2) runs on Mac/Linux/Windows > 3) because you use python syntax, it is easier to go and do other python > projects not > involving robots > > In my mind, this opens up more doors, but it is not graphical. > > I wanted to hear responses from people who have experience teaching > programming in > elementary/middle (or even high) school. Do graphical languages make a big > difference? Do text-based languages put up barriers to young learners? Is > it no big > deal either way? > > > thanks, > > Brian Blais > > -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list