Description

Python is uniquely positioned as the programming language for kids with no experience. Unlike the other programming languages, Python’s syntax is concise and easily readable by humans, because it mirrors the human language.  As beginners, kids will quickly pick up the basics and learn how to use this language for game development and animation.

The goal of this course is for students to start programming using Python. Students will be introduced to basic Python constructs. The Level-1 course includes learning the basics of computer hardware, setting up the development environment, basic data types and how different operations affect them, simple loops and conditionals. We also introduce students to the lists and dictionaries giving the students worked examples to understand these data types. Lastly they learn how to use functions and how to call them in the main function. Students complete the course by coding several exercises and finishing up one final project that involves implementation of 5-10 functions and properly calling these functions through conditional, nested loops as needed by the project requirements.

In Level-2 students will review concepts from Python Level-1 by completing exercises, and will then be introduced to classes, objects and attributes. Students will also learn how to read from and write to files.  Students will be introduced to the Pygame library. Students complete the course by coding several exercises and finishing up one final project that involves implementation of a game using classes and objects.

Concepts introduced include

• Basic computer architecture
• Basic Data types: String, Lists, Dictionaries, Tuples
• Conditional statements and nested loops (for and while)
• Functions
• Classes and Objects
• Pygame