Next Gen Coders Program

The Next Gen Coders program works with kids of diverse backgrounds in grades 3 - 12 to teach the frameworks of coding and software development. We believe coding is a basic skill like learning language, math, reading, and other skills - we want to encourage this next generation of coders to creatively build the future. We seek to inspire kids to create, innovate, communicate, and build. We wish to build psychological safety and empower them to learn, build, test, fail fast, and develop passion and persistence with coding, software development, and along their life journeys.

The Next Gen Coders program will be conducted through 10 lessons + Demo Day over 8-10 week synchronous Zoom online program culminating in a Demoday at the end of the term.

Logistics

• April 4, 2021 - June 6, 2021 x 10 weeks

• Sunday evenings 7 - 8 pm CT

• Learning Coding in Python

• Demo Day –1 hour slot to present progress

Schedule & Concepts

LESSONS 1 & 2

• Basic data types

  • Bool

  • Ints

  • Floats

  • Strings

  • variable scope

• Conditionals

  • if/else/elif

  • try/except/finally

  • conditional expression (ternary)

• Boolean logic

  • ==

  • <, >, <=, >=

  • !

  • !=

  • not, and, or

• Math operators:

  • +, -, /, *, **

• EXERCISE:

• Choose your own adventure game, use at least 3 different data types and 1 calculation

LESSONS 3 & 4

• More data types

  • Lists

  • Tuples

  • Dictionaries

• Loops

  • for each

  • for

  • while

  • nesting

• Functions

• EXERCISE:

• Battleship game, loop through to draw board, loop through ships to see if they were hit

WEEKS 5 & 6

• Classes and Objects

  • constructor

  • this

  • object variables

  • instance

  • methods

  • inheritance

• EXERCISE:

  • Battleship, build classes for users, ships

LESSONS 7 & 8

• Packages

  • import

  • venv

  • pip

• How to read documentation

• Pygame

• EXERCISE:

  • Construct PyGame battleship board showing your ship locations

LESSONS 9 & 10

• Work on battleship game

  • Detect hits, mark incoming/fired/shots

  • Miscellaneous help with people’s projects

  • Nicer graphics if we have time

DEMO DAY!

• Showcase the work you did in class