Thursday, March 11, 2010

Its time for a new intro programming course!

I'm reviewing a new text, "Mathematics for the Digital Age and Programming in Python" by Maria and Gary Litvin, and it looks great! Surf on over to http://www.skylit.com and have a look. 

I've been running an intro or preAP Computer Science course based on some sort of BASIC since 1975 (qBASIC/yaBASIC, VB/REALbasic, TI-83BASIC/TI-89BASIC)! So its time for a change. I think I will propose a new 2-year curriculum: 
Computer Math (Fall Semester) = Python & TI-83BASIC 
Advanced Computer Math (Spring Semester) = C++ & TI-89BASIC 
AP CompSci (2nd year) = Java & Octave

I am very interested in this new python based text. I am thinking of using it for our intro programming course. As this is a math credit class, doing some discrete math would be a great bonus! 

BTW, I use SAGE/Octave/R with my AP Calculus, AP Physics and AP CompSci students. SAGE is based on python, so using this book with http://www.sagenb.org would be very easy. However, this online notebook approach obviates input/output files. If I were to install SAGE on my Linux boxes in my PC classroom, I could use python on its own or within SAGE with input/output files. 


Teaching with Technology, 

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