Tidbits and snippets for Computing Teachers
So this summer I’ve been coding in Python.
I’v decided to push this in my A Level classes more than learning VB.net, Javascript & PHP. Not because I don’t enjoy doing these languages, but that some students would struggle with switching between these. Perhaps code agnotism only comes with a maturity of having to learn different programming languages over the years?
I am currently teaching Javascript to Year 9s as we are in remote learning mode and it has worked well as it is a web based language which students can easily do in a browser without needing any special software. I have the first edition of the following book and it’s great.
I’ve created a podcast for GCSE Computer Science students to revise topics in small “bite size” chunks.
I’m slowly releasing new episodes, but I’ve committed to doing an episode a week, as I realised people were actually listening to them.
You can either listen using the embed above or go direct to the page here, https://anchor.fm/bitesize-computer-science where you can leave an audio message, which I might include in a future podcast.
I stumbled across this website that allows you to visualise line by line execution ina Python program. This may be useful for students who are unclear about how a function (or blocks of code) run within a program:
This was recommended by Al Sweigart in his Automate The Boring Stuff with Python (https://automatetheboringstuff.com/)
Splitting names in Excel:
=LEFT(B1,FIND(” “,B1,1)-1)
=RIGHT(B1,LEN(B1)-FIND(” “,B1,1))
I came across this course on the Raspberry Pi Certified Educators Course this October. It piqued my interest as it uses a text based adventure game to introduce OOP concepts to learners.
I had previously done this with an idea of a Space Invaders game using Visual Basic.NET. This was a fun introduction to concepts and it is easy to create classes and objects in VB. However my current cohort of learners are mostly unfamiliar with VB and have a better grasp of Python.
The course is written by Laura Sach, who I finally met at PiCademy after years of following her on Twitter. And I thouroughly recommend it as an accessible way of understanding Object Oriented Principles in Python
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/object-oriented-principles/
We were asked to go to Poundland with £10 to spend on getting items that would help us teach a Computing lesson. My colleague and I chose to teach the fundementals of OOP and objects usin a selection of toys that we bought – eg some rubber balls, plastic cars, dinosaurs etc.
Here is the outline of teh mini lessonw e gave to our peers:
STARTER Get toys out on the table
“What are all these items?” Answer – hopefully “Toys”
These items are all part of the Class of “Toys”
They have similar properties – you can play with them – what else??
What groups can you see here? Get toys and group them by type – eg cars, animals, soft toys
These can be called sub classes which inherit characteristics from the parent class
Pick up two cars.
These are both in the class “Car”
Eg Yellow car and blue car
“These are instances of Car – they are objects or the class Car”
We could name them “YellowCar” and “BlueCar” – or Car1 and Car2
Each car has properties – pieces of information about each car – eg
Can you think of any others?
Properties are essentially static – you can’t easily change them – just read the value
Can you think of some properties of any of the other groups of classes?
E.g. Dinosaurs –
Challenge can you think of a property for the Toys superclass? (eg suitable age, material made of, needs batteries?)
Properties of the parent class are automatically “inherited” by the sub classes
So if the Toy parent class has a property of “suitable age” then the Cars classes will inherit it, so it will also have that property.
Methods
Methods are the actions that an object can perform
Eg A car can drive or stop
A Dinosaur can attack
A ball can bounce or be thrown
Useful teacher resources from CAS