Presentation: Teaching Python to Young Adults - "Invent with Python"

Teaching Python to Young Adults - "Invent with Python"

Al Sweigart

Audience level:: Novice
Category:: Education

Description

Finding polished but free resources to teach programming to kids can be difficult. "Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python" is a book that is freely available under a Creative Commons license, and gives the source code for many simple games so that readers (young adults or adult adults) can see what programs "look like".

Abstract

Al Sweigart is the author of "Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python" and "Making Games with Python & Pygame". He writes new blog posts on programming and software topics on inventwithpython.com and is an instructor for the Saturday Morning Kids Programming Class at the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment in Oakland, CA.

For this poster session, he'll talk about his experience writing the books and what he's learned from interacting with people who are learning programming for the first time.

"Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python" has 20 chapters featuring the source code for 11 games such as Guess the Number, Hangman, and Tic Tac Toe.

"Making Games with Python & Pygame" has 10 chapters featuring 11 games such as clones of Tetris, Nibbles, Connect Four and Bejeweled. The Pygame library provides 2D graphics and sound functionality.