One of the challenges of increasing diversity in coding is recruiting young women to learn these skills. This week Ellie Fitzpatrick and I ran a camp on how to program in Python. This is an all girls camp and we taught them the way we learn best, by incorporating creative coding opportunities. We utilized both Processing 3 and webbing Minecraft to Python.
Ellie has lead a lunchtime coding club at her school, Harpeth Hall, for 3 years. As a seasoned Python tutor she learned to use innovative coding examples that engage girl's imaginations and make them think critically. This week we covered the basics and much more. Our curriculum included:data types, lists, dictionaries, loops, functions, objects, and attributes by creating 'fish stores', 'big fluffy dog functions', and auto building in Minecraft.
By Friday, these young women had designed their own project. All are solving problems with their programs and creating unique code to perform their selected tasks. This programming class has morphed into an coding art creation event. Our youngest coder is working on the variables so she can move the doors and windows populating into her world from Python. She has spent the entire day on this project. Girls who learn to code in this manner learn persistence.
Our young women who took our class told us that there were some things that helped them. These requests set them apart from mixed gender groups. Handwriting notes was one of the things they requested to do often. Although I would not let them entirely write because working in the IDE and getting error feed back is important, note taking was calming for them and helped them with retention. They also reported sublime text was beneficial because Bella told us that 'the colors help her see different parts of the code'. All agreed the colors helped them know if they had saved their file as a .py and it was pretty.
We were all so involved in the coding projects on Friday we were an hour late to lunch. Not one person was waiting time checking email or playing video games. They were serious about learning and making their code function. Highly successful camp for our girls. I learned as much about teaching girls to code as they learned about code. Thank you to Harpeth Hall for providing the space and to WITT for sponsoring our work.
We used this reference to help build our camp:
https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Program-Minecraft-Transform-Python/dp/1593276702?ie=UTF8&creativeASIN=1593276702&linkCode=w00&linkId=9da2bb0112980892453add16ef058ffa&ref_=as_sl_pc_tf_til&tag=teachersandco-20
Ellie's favorite reference book to learn Python is:
https://www.amazon.com/Hello-World-Computer-Programming-Beginners/dp/1617290920?ie=UTF8&creativeASIN=1617290920&linkCode=w00&linkId=c9e511f0f876c9bc8405abd2503136ce&ref_=as_sl_pc_tf_til&tag=teachersandco-20
Showing posts with label Python. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Python. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Sunday, February 8, 2015
PyTennessee 2015: Teacher meets Python
Today's blog post is going to be short and sweet because it's Sunday afternoon and I still have two fantastic hours of Python learning left in PyTennessee. Python is a programming language which is making inroads into science, big data, animation, language processing, and education. It has strong community support and it's open source. Whenever you see open source relating to software it means FREE. Open Source is a labor of love by the people who built it. In the spirit of this fabulous community I will share with you many of the resources which I have learned about during my involvement with this community.
Young Coders Conference
The Young Coders Conferences were my introduction to the Python community. There were five young coders conferences last year in Middle Tennessee. The generosity of the Python Foundation and others made is possible for students to attend these conferences for free. All students received a free computer loaded with Python, Scratch and others to take home. Most of the conferences last year occurred in schools that had a Python champion teacher. This teacher was willing to jump through all of the administrative hoops to make it happen. I was allowed to 'ghost' the conference last February and learn along with other students. After the conference I became a champion for the students at my school. I held a Young Coders Conference at my own school during the school day. I also lead the Young Coders Conference for the Sunday session in PyOhio.
I wish I new the other teacher champions. I do know the school that also held a YC conference. Those schools are: Manchester Central High School in Coffee County, Seigal High School in Murfreesboro and Winchester High School in Franklin county. Props to all of these teachers who made this happen for their students. If you would like for your child to attend young coders follow PyTennessee so you can grab tickets to one of these free slots. Seats are limited and disappear fast. If you want to host a Young coders conference at your school contact us and we'll connect you to the right people.
I don't live in Nashville. Whom should I contact?
There are many ways to connect to the Python community. First try Meetup. In our area there are over 50 different Meetup groups related to technology. These groups cover everything from Arduino to Linux to Python and everything in between. If you are really lucky you will find a Pyladies chapter in your area. These women are very supportive of newbies trying to learn the python programming language. We do not have an active PyLadies chapter in Nashville. We do however have an active women's group called Nashville Women Programmers which is headed up by Lisa French.
I've checked Meetup and Googled Pyladies but nothing is going on in our area.
Before this conference I would have said you were out of luck but I would have been wrong. There are many excellent resources to help you learn Python at home and they are OPEN SOURCE.
There are videos from previous conferences you can check out through Pyvideo.org. When you go there search for 'Hands on python for beginning programmers'. You can split this course into bite size sections to work on at home. There are several other talks available for free. This site has an easy to use search bar.
Another fantastic resource to check out are the ipython notebooks. You can find these at ipython.org/notebook/html. The python community has amassed multiple notebooks to teach you about python, scientific python, python for apps, python and website and many other topics. This free education is available to you through these open source notebooks. An ipython notebook is available for the hands on class I referenced in the prior paragraph.
If you prefer to learn through twitter follow @geekgurldiaries. She has many resources and videos related to Python and the Raspberrypi which you can link to via her twitter account. If you don't know what a RaspberryPi is you can check out this link http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LPESRUK/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00LPESRUK&linkCode=as2&tag=teachersandco-20&linkId=WIGSB2VULYFCDT3O. @Geekgurldiaries even has a link to the school age curriculum for using Rapberry Pis to teach Python while exploring sound. If you aren't on Twitter you can find this curriculum by Googling SonicPy. Again this curriculum is open source which means it's completely free and very valuable which makes it a gift. Thank you Cambridge and the engineers who built this curriculum.
I would just rather have a quiet space with a book and a Python shell to figure this out
Okay, I can point you towards a good resource. This isn't free but I understand the comfort of holding a book in your hand as you follow the curriculum at your own pace. O'Reilly publishes books on Python and other languages. I have several of their works on my shelf at home. If you are a modern reader with a nook or whatever O'Reilly also has their books available in print. When you are programming for the first time I would suggest starting with a children's text to learn coding. O'Reilly has two or three of those book titles available.
I want to say a quick thank you to the sponsors of PyTennessee and the organizers. If you had not organized this I wouldn't have met Carol Williams who introduced me to many of the resources listed in the above article. I also want to thank Brian and Lyndsy from the Center for Open Science. You all inspire me to reach for things I might not try otherwise. COS.io will link you to the Center for Open Science if you want to check out the great work they are doing or just say, "Hi."
Young Coders Conference
The Young Coders Conferences were my introduction to the Python community. There were five young coders conferences last year in Middle Tennessee. The generosity of the Python Foundation and others made is possible for students to attend these conferences for free. All students received a free computer loaded with Python, Scratch and others to take home. Most of the conferences last year occurred in schools that had a Python champion teacher. This teacher was willing to jump through all of the administrative hoops to make it happen. I was allowed to 'ghost' the conference last February and learn along with other students. After the conference I became a champion for the students at my school. I held a Young Coders Conference at my own school during the school day. I also lead the Young Coders Conference for the Sunday session in PyOhio.
I wish I new the other teacher champions. I do know the school that also held a YC conference. Those schools are: Manchester Central High School in Coffee County, Seigal High School in Murfreesboro and Winchester High School in Franklin county. Props to all of these teachers who made this happen for their students. If you would like for your child to attend young coders follow PyTennessee so you can grab tickets to one of these free slots. Seats are limited and disappear fast. If you want to host a Young coders conference at your school contact us and we'll connect you to the right people.
I don't live in Nashville. Whom should I contact?
There are many ways to connect to the Python community. First try Meetup. In our area there are over 50 different Meetup groups related to technology. These groups cover everything from Arduino to Linux to Python and everything in between. If you are really lucky you will find a Pyladies chapter in your area. These women are very supportive of newbies trying to learn the python programming language. We do not have an active PyLadies chapter in Nashville. We do however have an active women's group called Nashville Women Programmers which is headed up by Lisa French.
I've checked Meetup and Googled Pyladies but nothing is going on in our area.
Before this conference I would have said you were out of luck but I would have been wrong. There are many excellent resources to help you learn Python at home and they are OPEN SOURCE.
There are videos from previous conferences you can check out through Pyvideo.org. When you go there search for 'Hands on python for beginning programmers'. You can split this course into bite size sections to work on at home. There are several other talks available for free. This site has an easy to use search bar.
Another fantastic resource to check out are the ipython notebooks. You can find these at ipython.org/notebook/html. The python community has amassed multiple notebooks to teach you about python, scientific python, python for apps, python and website and many other topics. This free education is available to you through these open source notebooks. An ipython notebook is available for the hands on class I referenced in the prior paragraph.
If you prefer to learn through twitter follow @geekgurldiaries. She has many resources and videos related to Python and the Raspberrypi which you can link to via her twitter account. If you don't know what a RaspberryPi is you can check out this link http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LPESRUK/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00LPESRUK&linkCode=as2&tag=teachersandco-20&linkId=WIGSB2VULYFCDT3O. @Geekgurldiaries even has a link to the school age curriculum for using Rapberry Pis to teach Python while exploring sound. If you aren't on Twitter you can find this curriculum by Googling SonicPy. Again this curriculum is open source which means it's completely free and very valuable which makes it a gift. Thank you Cambridge and the engineers who built this curriculum.
I would just rather have a quiet space with a book and a Python shell to figure this out
Okay, I can point you towards a good resource. This isn't free but I understand the comfort of holding a book in your hand as you follow the curriculum at your own pace. O'Reilly publishes books on Python and other languages. I have several of their works on my shelf at home. If you are a modern reader with a nook or whatever O'Reilly also has their books available in print. When you are programming for the first time I would suggest starting with a children's text to learn coding. O'Reilly has two or three of those book titles available.
I want to say a quick thank you to the sponsors of PyTennessee and the organizers. If you had not organized this I wouldn't have met Carol Williams who introduced me to many of the resources listed in the above article. I also want to thank Brian and Lyndsy from the Center for Open Science. You all inspire me to reach for things I might not try otherwise. COS.io will link you to the Center for Open Science if you want to check out the great work they are doing or just say, "Hi."
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