On 11/01/2010 01:31 PM, Daniel Fetchinson wrote:
Hi folks,
My niece is interested in programming and python looks like a good
choice (she already wrote a couple of lines :)) She is 10 and I
thought it would be good to have a bunch of playful coding problems
for her, stuff that she could code herself maybe after some initial
help.
Do you guys know problems like these? Or a good resource where to look them up?
Cheers,
Daniel
Does she like robots? My kid's school started a program last year (for
5th and 6th graders) that taught some Python programming in the guise of
controlling a small robot.
The programs was created by Institute for Personal Robots in Education
<http://wiki.roboteducation.org/Institute_for_Personal_Robots_in_Education>
(IPRE) at http://wiki.roboteducation.org/Main_Page.
The hardware is the scribbler robot
(http://wiki.roboteducation.org/Myro_Hardware) controlled via a
bluetooth connection. It has the ability to move forward/backward at
varying speeds and turn radii, dragging a pen for drawing if you wish.
It has IR and light sensors, and a camera. It also has several
programmable LEDs, and can play music and make beeps.
The software is a Python library called Myro
(http://wiki.roboteducation.org/Myro_Reference_Manual) that allows to
control the scribbler interactively (through Idle) or via written/save
Python files.
By the end of one semester, (some of) the kids were able to program
small Python loops and a few if statements based on sensor values for
object avoidance or light following and such.
Great fun (and a bit of Python programming) was had by all.
--
Gary Herron, PhD.
Department of Computer Science
DigiPen Institute of Technology
(425) 895-4418
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
