Planning and Tending the Garden: The Future of Early Childhood Python Education by Kurt Grandis

Interest and activity in computing education is on the rise. Other language communities and projects have stepped up to promote early childhood programming. What tools are available for teaching Python? How do they compare?

This talk aims to discuss current trends, examine the current education landscape, question our goals as a community, and discuss opportunities for growing young developers.

Transcript

1. The Future of Early Childhood Python Education Kurt Grandis PyCon 2013
2. What is this all about?
3. Militarizing Your Backyard, Oh My!
5. Militarizing Your Backyard, Oh My! Lesson Learned: People Don't Care For: Squirrels Deer Raccoons Bears Heron Kids Rabbits ...
6. How Can I Get My Child Involved?
7. Me... • I shoot squirrels • Educational technology • Neurobiologist • Active community outreach • 2 young kids = home laboratory (lax ethical review board) • I like to build things and teach others to....
8. Let's Start...
9. Robots...
10. Sweet. Let's Build a Robot • Give kids the ability to directly control the robot ◦ type and issue commands ◦ immediate feedback and execution • Ability to manipulate or alter the environment Let's build it...
11. 1969 Called...
12. Build a Turtle Today > car.forward(10) > car.right(45) > forward(10) > right(45) > circle(10)
13. Lego Mindstorms nxt-python pynxc • Mobility • Sensors • Graspers • Coooool EV3...
14. Robot Simulator? • That's still pretty expensive • I have to build something? with my hands?! Programming/Logic Simulator Games • Robot Odyssey • Rocky's Boots • Omega • RobotWar
15. RoboMind http://robomind.net
16. Enough with the Robots...
18. TurtleBlocks
19. Games "Game First" Development Compelling example to modify
20. Games with PyGame Katie Cunningham's Rogue Series https://github.com/kcunning/Katie-s-Rougish-PyGame http://therealkatie.net/blog/tags/pygame/ Al Sweigart's Pygame Book
21. Traditional Programming Tutorials
22. Traditional Programming Tutorials
23. Python Programming Books Invent Your Own Computer Games With Python - Al Sweigart Python For Kids A Playful Introduction to Programming - Jason R Briggs
24. Python Programming Books Hello World! Computer Programming for Kids and Other Other Beginners - Warren and Carter Sande
25. Computational Thinking Computer Independent Problem-Solving Skills • Decomposition • Pattern Recognition • Abstractions • Algorithm Design http://www.google.com/edu/computational-thinking/
26. How Young?
27. Ideas? What Can We Do?
28. Python-Based Scratch-Like Environment
29. Python-based RoboMind-like Simulator
30. Questions? Ideas kgrandis@gmail.com @kgrandis http://kurtgrandis.com/