I cracked a book and found out that Python supports turtle graphics. I love drawing pictures with graphics. I have since I was in university. So today I played around with the Python turtle a bit.
Mostly I played with a few of the usual turtle methods and wrapping drawing code inside loops. I had some fun but didn’t learn a lot. I’m not sure that was the most productive use of my time.
It did suggest that using graphics with Python is potentially a way to make learning Python more interesting. I have Mark Guzdial’s book on Media Computation around here somewhere. I’m going to dig it out and see if it the libraries for it will work in my environment. I want to do more than draw lines.
We use Turtle for several introductory exercises in the National Computer Science School Challenge (https://ncss.edu.au/ncss-challenge) attended by thousands of school children in Australia and beyond. In conjunction with Blockly, it provides beginner students with a very visual introduction to the flow of a computer program.
ReplyDeleteI teach Python to kids as young as 9 years old with graphics, and I actually don't use Turtle until we get to loops.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoy working with Processing to do graphics (with Python) and have also played around with Pygame. I recommend using Mu IDE for Pygame because it is seamless to use Pygame and Pygame Zero.
+1 for Processing. I use it in both my Python and Java courses just as soon as we hit nested loops, and students love it, whether it's a Game of Life, photo processing, or building an interactive game.
ReplyDeleteI used to use PyGame, but installation challenges got in the way. After switching over to Processing, we haven't looked back.