Python is a great programming language for introducing children to the basics of computers and programming, and is also widely used in the software industry. It has a clear readable code style making it easy to grasp, enabling learners to focus on computational thinking, conceptualizing, and problem solving rather than only the syntax.
It is a very popular language with computer science departments in colleges across the country for teaching introductory computer sciences courses. It is also part of some computer science and programming elective courses in local high schools.
Beginner:
- Prerequisite: Using a browser, basic keyboarding skills. Get introduced to programming. Learn about variables, data types and operations on them, boolean algebra, conditionals, input/output, while loops, for loops, built-in lists datatype and its methods. Develop an interactive text based game that uses all the concepts learnt. 5th grade and up.
Advanced Level I:
- Prerequisite: Beginner Level Reinforce beginner concepts with practice programs. Then: advanced lists methods, dictionaries data type, functions & parameters, file input/output, string manipulation. Develop an interactive game that uses concepts learnt in this level. 6th grade and up.
Advanced Level II:
- Prerequisite: Advanced Level I Advanced functions & parameters, local and global variables, nested for loops, practice programs of middle school competition level, recursion and its efficiency. Develop a text based game using all the concepts learnt. Completing this level also prepares student to move to Java. 7th grade and up.
Competitions Prep with Python:
- Practice and prepare for local and online computing competitions at middle and high school levels by writing Python programs of increasing complexity. For prerequisites, how to join the course
Projects with Python:
- Prerequisite: Advanced Level I Implement projects such as a chat-bot. Investigate chat-bot’s, observe how they respond to keywords in input. Get an introduction to NLP (Natural Languag Processing) and AI (Artificial Intelligence). Use GUI modules to learn about events, event handlers and create animations. 6th grade and up.
Python and Robotics:
- Prerequisite: Advanced Level I Use Python and Microsoft Visual Studio to program a pre-built LEGO® EV3 robot. The most-taught textual programming language meets the most popular robotic platform. Emphasis is on coding and applying Python knowledge gained in Beginner and Advanced Level I, not on building the robot. 6th grade and up.
Comprehensive Python Programming:
- Prerequisite: Advanced Level II Introduction to Object Oriented Programming, inheritance. Sets, recursion revisited namespaces, designing modules, regular expressions, lambda operator, exception handling. The student can also choose which concepts to learn. 9th grade and up.