Teaching children to program Python with the Pyland game

Presented at PyCon UK 2014.

See the code at: https://github.com/pyland/pyland

This summer, a team of interns at the University of Cambridge Computer Lab have been working on a project to teach children to program in Python through a programming game. The primary target platform is the Raspberry Pi, though multi-platform ports are planned for the future. It is, of course, open source. The game consists of a number of challenges and puzzles which invite the user to apply programming techniques in order to progress. I will discuss the motivation for the game, give a demo, give some insight into its implementation, our plans for the future, and how you can get involved.

Transcript

1. Teaching children to program
   Python with the Pyland game
   Alex Bradbury @asbradbury
   @ProjectPyland
   

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2. Who is this guy?
   ● Alex Bradbury, @asbradbury, asb@asbradbury.org
   ● Researcher at University of Cambridge Computer
   Laboratory (compiler! many core architectures!)
   ● Contributor to Raspberry Pi since the beginning
   ● Co-author of Learning Python with Raspberry Pi
   ● Writes the LLVM Weekly newsletter http://llvmweekly.
   org @llvmweekly
   ● Co-founder of lowRISC, a project to create a mass
   produced open-source System-on-Chip http://lowrisc.
   org @lowRISC
   

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3. What is Pyland?
   ● A programming game
   consisting of a set of
   challenges - solve the
   puzzles, get the treasure
   ● Characters can be
   controlled with Python
   scripts
   ● Featuring lovely 2D tile-
   based artwork
   ● Summer intern project:
   Ben Catterall, Heidi
   Howard, Joshua Landau
   and Ashley Newson
   supervised by me and
   Robert Mullins
   

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4. Pyland motivation and aims
   ● “To provide a fun and creative environment on the
   Raspberry Pi to aid children learning programming and
   more general Computer Science concepts.”
   ● Provide a bridge between Scratch and Python (11-12
   year olds?)
   ● Be engaging, appealing, fun!
   ● Give motivations for programming: demonstrate how
   programming can be used to achieve goals much faster
   

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5. Status
   ● It was a 10 week project...
   ● Runs great on the Raspberry Pi
   ● Core engine features implemented and
   working well
   ● Three ‘sample challenges’
   ● Not quite ready for exposure to the little ones
   ● Support multiple characters, concurrent
   execution of multiple scripts
   

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6. DEMO!!!!1111
   

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7. A blast from the past
   

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8. ● Code plus some architecture docs at github.com/pyland/pyland
   ● MIT licensed code, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA)
   art assets
   ● SDL2, OpenGL and OpenGL ES rendering
   ● Python 3 (of course!)
   ● Main engine: C++11. Each user script runs in a different Python thread
   ● Python API calls push to the event queue to be processed by main event
   loop
   ● Maps created using Tiled map editor, challenges implemented with some
   C++ code :/
   Implementation details
   

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9. What’s next for Pyland?
   ● Full set of challenges
   ○ This is *difficult* (thanks for your help, PyCon UK
   teacher attendees!)
   ● Integrated text editor
   ● Multi-platform support
   ● Better error message feedback (see Khan Academy
   etc)
   ● GUI prettification
   Further future:
   ● Make your own levels in Python and share them
   ● Collaborative programming over the network
   

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10. “Hey Alex, how can I help?”
    ● Sponsorship (we’re looking for matched funding for art
    assets, more development work, ...)
    ● Code (try it out, add new features, bugfix)
    ● Challenge design (we have a bunch of art assets
    currently unused)
    ● Test it out with kids (in a few months time)
    ● Advice - how do you think we should take this further?
    

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11. Questions?
    Twitter: @ProjectPyland, @asbradbury
    Github: github.com/pyland/pyland
    Web: http://www.pyland.org
    Thanks to: our summer interns (Ben Catterall, Heidi
    Howard, Joshua Landau and Ashley Newson) and the
    Broadcom Foundation
    

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