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Would anybody be interested in an introductory course on computer programming?

aldld

By aldld
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aldld

aldld

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Posted (edited)

Hey everyone,

So I'm planning on teaching a little class on computer programming sometime in the near future, and I thought some people here might be interested :)

What I'm thinking of doing is holding live screencasts on ustream or a similar service. The course will be using the Python programming language. The purpose of the course is to introduce basic programming concepts and the tools used to solve problems using computers.

I'm also pretty sure that this can count towards CAS hours too :P

So, who's interested? Leave a reply here or send me a PM or something and I'll keep you posted for updates :)

Update: A general outline of the course, including a list of topics I intend to cover: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0Bzuha_iJwCLOZGNjOTkwZDItYTBhZS00MDViLWI4ZTUtZGI2YzJhMzc0OTg0&hl=en

Another update: Registration is now "officially" open: Sign up here http://ericbannatyne.ca/icp/

Edited by aldld
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TurtleR

TurtleR

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Hey, this is actually interesting, I'd be interested in this!

Can I get some more details thought?

As in like, flexibility of time (can we watch the videos at our own pace? Are there deadlines for assignments? When will it start/end, and how many classes?)

As well as accessiblity (Can we only watch them at the time you record them? Is that what you mean by live?)

Also, does this mean we can list you as the supervisor as the CAS activity? :P

I'm definitely interested though.

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aldld

aldld

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Hey, this is actually interesting, I'd be interested in this!

Can I get some more details thought?

As in like, flexibility of time (can we watch the videos at our own pace? Are there deadlines for assignments? When will it start/end, and how many classes?)

As well as accessiblity (Can we only watch them at the time you record them? Is that what you mean by live?)

Also, does this mean we can list you as the supervisor as the CAS activity? :P

I'm definitely interested though.

It should be flexible. If possible, I'm probably going to record the lessons so that they can be watched later.

Assignments probably won't have deadlines and will most likely be optional. They're really just meant to be simple problems to practice what you learn. I'm not a real teacher so I can't exactly force you to do any assignments :P

I'm not too sure when it will start/end, I'm still in the planning stages right now. Right now I'm aiming for about a month from today. I'm looking at about 9 lessons so far, there may be more or fewer.

And I suppose you could list me as the supervisor. I'm still new to all this so I'm not too sure how this works :P

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TurtleR

TurtleR

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Thats great! In fact it would be best if its a month from now. I think it would be best to record the lessons as, on IBS, a lot of us live in different time zones so it would be difficult to have a full class.

And ok that sounds awesome! Would the lessons come out all at once, or in weekly installments? (or maybe even bi-weekly?)

Do you need any help setting it all up? I mean, I don't know anything about the content (hence the reason I want to take it :P) but I can help you if you need advice on setting up?

And as for CAS, well at my school, we use a program called Managebac. If I list you as the supervisor, then when I finish the course, and click finish, then Managebac will send you an email. I think you then reply, or submit in some way, some sort of confirmation that I finished, and add a comment (I'm not sure 100% how it works, but the advisor of the art club did this :P)

P.S. Do we require any prerequisite knowledge for this?

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aldld

aldld

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Thats great! In fact it would be best if its a month from now. I think it would be best to record the lessons as, on IBS, a lot of us live in different time zones so it would be difficult to have a full class.

And ok that sounds awesome! Would the lessons come out all at once, or in weekly installments? (or maybe even bi-weekly?)

Do you need any help setting it all up? I mean, I don't know anything about the content (hence the reason I want to take it :P) but I can help you if you need advice on setting up?

And as for CAS, well at my school, we use a program called Managebac. If I list you as the supervisor, then when I finish the course, and click finish, then Managebac will send you an email. I think you then reply, or submit in some way, some sort of confirmation that I finished, and add a comment (I'm not sure 100% how it works, but the advisor of the art club did this :P)

P.S. Do we require any prerequisite knowledge for this?

Alright, sounds good.

As for prerequisites, not really. If you know how to download and install a program on your computer then you'll be all set :)

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ShootingStars

ShootingStars

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How long do you think it would take to get through the nine lessons? I'm worried about being able to do IB and this :P

You could also have a blog/a moodle/wikispaces/vlc etc to enable you to communicate with everyone easily and answer questions and put up videos etc.

I think I'm interested, but don't want to commit to anything because I'm not sure if I'll be able to find the time.

Great idea though, good luck with it and yes flexible learning is probably best. Not just because of time zones, but also because we're all going to be busy with work and stuff too so coordinating would be difficult!

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aldld

aldld

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Hey,

I'm a fairly decent programmer myself, though I have limited experience in Python. If you'd like, I can help out - I'm a PHP guy myself.

Python sounds like a great idea for teaching the concepts though!

I don't know quite yet if I'd need much help with the lessons directly. But if you have a second, maybe you could look over the list of topics I was planning on covering https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0Bzuha_iJwCLONzliNDE0Y2ItZWZhZS00YTk5LWFhOTItMDgwMWMwNzQ4Mzc5&hl=en

And of course, feel free to join in the chat during lessons to help answer questions :)

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aldld

aldld

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Don't worry, I'm about 90% sure I'll be going ahead with this, as long as nothing comes up which would cause me to not have enough time for this :P

If that does happen, if possible it would just be rescheduled to start some other time. But so far everything seems to be going okay :)

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timtamboy63

timtamboy63

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Hey,

I'm a fairly decent programmer myself, though I have limited experience in Python. If you'd like, I can help out - I'm a PHP guy myself.

Python sounds like a great idea for teaching the concepts though!

I don't know quite yet if I'd need much help with the lessons directly. But if you have a second, maybe you could look over the list of topics I was planning on covering https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0Bzuha_iJwCLONzliNDE0Y2ItZWZhZS00YTk5LWFhOTItMDgwMWMwNzQ4Mzc5&hl=en

And of course, feel free to join in the chat during lessons to help answer questions :)

That does look quite good.

However, I might put the File I/O and manipulation before OOP, as I usually like learning the core functions, etc before I go onto other programming methods such as OOP.

Also, learning programming is a lot more fun if you have some sort of practical tasks to do, that might actually come in handy in the future, rather than simply regurgitating theory, etc. I'm not sure if you planned on having those, but I would definitely give it thought.

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aldld

aldld

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That does look quite good.

However, I might put the File I/O and manipulation before OOP, as I usually like learning the core functions, etc before I go onto other programming methods such as OOP.

I might mover the order of the lessons around a bit. The lesson on OOP is intended to just introduce some basic concepts like what is a class, what is an object, and some basic inheritance.

My reasoning for placing OOP before file I/O (as well as other things like string manipulation, random simulation, etc.) is that in Python the libraries used make extensive use of some OOP concepts so if you haven't at least learned the very basics of OOP you have to resort to just blindly using the functions without understanding what it means when you call f.read() (where f represents a file)

Also, learning programming is a lot more fun if you have some sort of practical tasks to do, that might actually come in handy in the future, rather than simply regurgitating theory, etc. I'm not sure if you planned on having those, but I would definitely give it thought.

Yeah, definitely. I do intended to focus more towards theory, but it's always a good idea to have practical examples. It's just that the easiest examples to are either mathematical in nature (which do have practical uses) or are like those boring math textbook "word problems" you see ("If a train leaves Chicago 3:00 AM..." :P)

So yeah, I'll try to remember to focus on more concrete problems. If you have more ideas I'd love to hear them too. And thanks for all your suggestions so far as well :)

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aldld

aldld

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I'd be very happy to attend your classes if they'll really be able to help us. To the mods, why not create a special portion for tutorials for people who want to help?

This will really help us very much! :D

That actually sounds like a pretty good idea :)

I just thought I might add... I might not be able to do live tutorials due to scheduling problems and such... If that ends up being the case I will instead upload screencast videos to YouTube and definitely setup some sort of forum for asking and answering questions.

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Cryphisss

Cryphisss

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Hello Aldld! I am really interested in that! I am an IB1 student currently in Sweden and I am searching for my second year to get CAS points and thats really entertaining! I would love have that course which will help me and you too for your CAS points!

My email: _____

Regards,

Victor Raykov

Edited by Sandwich
Please don't give your email out publicly on the forum.
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