Python progress

Today was a great Code Club session.

Some of us have been finding the Python progress a bit slow so far, with not much reward, with some concepts seemingly hard to grasp. And that’s fair enough, because text-based tic tac toe, or trying to say that older adventure games are fun, really doesn’t compare to the cool feedback of an iPad or the more visual games we create with Scratch. So turning it all around today, we dived into the Python level-based challenge that I came across last week. It was also a good time for it as due to other school activities, we’ve been away for 2 weeks.

We had a new person over in the Python group, and he was working through some a Code Club Python exercise. Meanwhile, a few of us sat down and put our heads together to start solving the Python challenges programmatically. I may be painting this as a quiet, focussed session, so I’ll also add that tons of stuff was going on at the time. It was pretty chaotic, and for some reason that made it more relaxed, and also awesome at the same time. Numerous times, Sphero balls would run into my feet, and elsewhere someone was printing a tiny bear.

The importance of keeping our work became more obvious today, as we were able to go back and reference previous Code Club exercises to help us solve some challenges.

In both Python activities, there were some good breakthroughs. We don’t always get it the first time, and sometimes that’s what helps us learn things. I can think of at least 20 things that didn’t work today, and each time one of us would notice something, that led us to figure out the answer, and keep moving on. I got the impression that a few kids surprised themselves by solving some of the Python errors, while trying to get to the next level.

Something that seemed to take away the pressure with our Python progress, was that we were fine with people moving around to spend time on whatever they wanted.At the end of the session, we’d worked as a team, and in parallel, and learned how to think on our feet, apply new concepts, and were rewarded by solving a few of the challenge levels. It’s great to hear the emphatic “YES!” of accomplishment once again.