Day Two 2015

I had my first morning class today. The main goal today was to get through all the material to create a basic calculator, which meant we need to talk about raw_input. Raw input was a fun topic since the students really felt like they were communicating with the computers. Personally, I believe it's much easier to get input in python than it is through java, and the kids picked up the material pretty easily.

The students have all heard about the course from their friends and classmates and are super excited to be a part of it. I believe that the way a class will be successful is by being engaging and incorporating hands-on learning. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of lecturing, and I'm pretty sure the students don't want to come to school early and leave late because they're being lectured. I told them to give me any suggestions they had to make this class better, and honestly tell me what they wanted out of the class so I could best tailor the material to them. Teaching this course a second time had given me the ability to make it better by slightly changing it so it resonates more with the students.

In the morning we went through all the rest of the necessary topics for the calculator which were print statements, comparators, math operations, and variables. At the end of the session, I quizzed the students and had them come to the board and answer my questions. I think this was effective to make sure they understood the concepts. They also took notes during the class that they could refer to in the afternoon.

When I got back home, my brother was playing with a baby bird that had fallen out of her nest because she couldn't fly and hurt her wing. I guess we just have luck with birds, since we found one last year too!

In the afternoon, we made out first big program which was the calculator. The students made it with minimal help, and I was glad that they are actually picking up all of the syntax. The most complicated topic that we went through was string formatting. It's a tough concept to grasp since it has some pretty weird syntax.

name = raw_input('What is your name? ') age = raw_input('How old are you? ') home = raw_input('Where do you live? ') print 'My name is {0}. I am {1} years old and live in {2}.'.format(name, age, home)