Blog
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Presenting DBSchools Music Gradebook to the Stanley PTA
Recently I was looking over some old journal entries, and I found this one about presenting a music student testing program I developed with Bob Athayde and others to the Stanley Middle School PTA in 2005.
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Reflections On Teaching BJC Middle School
I’d like to write some more about how it’s going, teaching the Beauty and Joy of Computing to middle school students. (Here is my post, Good First Day Teaching BJC Middle School, from the beginning of the year.)
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Good First Day Teaching BJC Middle School
I teach computer science to private students, and to the middle school at St. Perpetua School (Lafayette, CA), and in the Athenian School’s (Danville, CA) after-school program. Today was my first day of the school year at St. Perpetua, where I spend about 45 minutes once a week with each of the grades 6–8.
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December 2020 Advent of Code Programming Challenges
In early December, 2020, I discovered Advent of Code, a creative and challenging story-based set of coding problems.
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PyBay 2020 Lightning Talk
Today I’m giving a lightning talk at PyBay. I’ll be showing my Python Text Adventure Game Engine.
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Processing Community Hangout Presentations
Today I’m presenting at Processing Community Hangout.
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Lessons by Videoconference
Over the years I’ve had a few students who lived too far away to come in person to programming lessons, so we used videoconferencing. Now with Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (aka “The corona virus”), it seems wise to have all my lessons this way. I’ve just begun this, and so far it’s going well.
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How I Got Started Teaching Kids
Here’s the story of several events that stimulated my interest in teaching kids.
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Introduction Letter to LASF
Years ago, as I was building the teaching side of my business, I wrote a letter of introduction to a local organization now known as Lafayette Partners in Education, wanting to join with them in some way to help the local public school students with computers.
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Programming Resources
I recently met an Athenian School parent who is deeply involved with robotics and other various programming activities at the school, and he shared some interesting resources with me.
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Summer Programming Class at The Athenian School
This month, I’m teaching programming in the summer program of The Athenian School.
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Young Programmers Work on RoomHelper 3000
RoomHelper 3000 is a free tool for teachers managing a classroom of students at computers. It’s open source, which means that anyone can see and contribute to the source code (what it’s made from).
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Graphics and Animation Programming with Scala at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center
Many of the local schools have Spring break starting April 1st. I’m offering a class on programming graphics and animation with the Scala language at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center.
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Hack the Future 23 at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center
Hack the Future number 23 at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center on February 23, 2019, was a big success.
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Keyboard Proficiency
When programming, it’s helpful to be able to use the keyboard efficiently. I like my students to be able to do all of these things:
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Holiday and Summer Classes
I stopped scheduling classes (other than those at the Lafayette Library) because it is hard to find times that work for the right students for each class. Instead I’ve been asking parents to form their own groups. I think I’d like to try again for the winter, spring and summer vacations. If you’re interested, please update your child’s course interests and availability in my student information system. If I get enough interest I’ll place a few classes on the calendar and we’ll see how it goes.
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What I’m Teaching Lately
With my students who come to my house, and those at the two private schools where I teach, I’m doing all sorts of fun programming. For example:
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Security and Privacy
Many are not aware of the security and privacy concerns around computers (including smartphones). I tell my students:
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Teaching Programming at St. Perpetua School
This year I started teaching at a second private school, St. Perpetua School here in Lafayette, California. I’m teaching programming to the entire junior high (grades six through eight) of about 70 kids.
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2018 Hack-o’-Lantern Project
This year I brought back the Hack a Halloween Pumpkin with Arduino project from 2015. I added a multicolor light-emitting diode (the dome-looking thing with four legs in the center of the picture) and rewrote and improved the programming.
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Status of Teaching
I’d like to update you on the status of my teaching computer programming to kids.
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New Classes at Core Academy
I have begun teaching programming to students at Core Academy on Fridays. It’s a small school, and the kids are eager to learn. We’ll be doing:
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Dave B’s Student Information System
I’ve been using meetup.com to publicize and enroll students into my classes since early 2014, but it’s not an ideal system for my needs. So, being a programmer, and having had considerable experience with student information systems as a volunteer with the Lafayette School District and as a contractor with School Loop, I have written my own, Dave B’s Student Information System.
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Moderately Advanced Projects (Mostly Python) Class Review
This week I taught a class called Moderately Advanced Projects (Mostly Python), for four of my students, who are going into grades 7–10. This group doesn’t appear on my Meetup.com calendar because it was privately formed by the parents and me.
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Python Web App Making Maps Around Schools
One of my new example programs for teaching how to make a web application in Python allows the user to select a school from a list, and then shows a Google Map of the area around the school. It’s for my more advanced students, but other students, especially those who know some HTML and CSS, might want to look it over and see if they find it interesting. Perhaps this will motivate new programmers to learn Python, and experienced Python programmers to learn how to make Web apps.
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Project-Focused Python Classes
This week I taught a class called Moderately Advanced Python Projects, for five of my best students, who are going into grades 8–10. I’m considering offering a class, Simple to Intermediate Python Projects, for my younger and/or less experienced students.