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PyCon US 2013: Announcing "The Young Coder: Let's Learn Python"

I am proud to announce a new special event to PyCon 2013. This event comes courtesy of Lynn Root, who approached us with a crazy idea some time ago - offer an introduction to Python tutorial, free of charge to a different demographic - Young Coders (or, coders to be!). The course is called "The Young Coder: Let's Learn Python" and it is going to be great.

Quoting from the page:

This free tutorial will explore how to program using Python by making games. We will start with learning Python's simple data types, including numbers, letters and strings, and lists. We will also explore comparisons, if-statements, and loops. Finally, we will combined our new knowledge by creating our own game using the PyGame library.

This is one of those idea that when proposed I slapped my forehead and said "Why didn't I think of that?!" - but of course the best ideas for PyCon come from our community members and those working on the forefront of outreach and education. 

PyCon will be providing not only the food and space free of charge - there will be no admission price for students, and all students will be provided with on site equipment (rather than needing to bring their own) and students will walk away with their very own Raspberry Pi computer with the hope that this in conjunction with the class will continue to inspire them.

We're doing this not only to teach some young, eager minds - but to also help inspire some of the very people who will be Python's future one day. Lynn herself did an excellent post titled "Our Generations Legos"

The tutorial is being taught by Lynn Root, and Katie Cunningham - two excellent teachers, but they're also looking for additional volunteers to help with one on one coaching.

Space will be limited - we will announce signup for the class when we approach the conference, so stay tuned. More information is at https://us.pycon.org/2013/events/letslearnpython/.

Being able to do something like this is why it's an honor to serve as chair - and to help with all the other volunteers and the community to make PyCon happen. We can change the future, one small push at a time.

-Jesse

Comments

Netjunkie said…
This is a great opportunity to get young coders involved by giving them the commodore / spectrum experience. My concern is that this will not be an 'end to end' tutorial and will not leave kids with a fully functioning game at the end of the tutorial. Lets hope we fully embrace what is possible with this opportunity.