Python Power
Welcome to the second week of the AcadeCoders session: Python Power. This blog post will cover each daily activity of each camp day with various pictures and descriptions. Python is an object-oriented programming language that is highly regarded for its efficiency and speed. It is well-known companies such as YouTube and DropBox.
Day 1: Monday, July 4th, 2016
We began the day with morning ice-breakers for the campers and instructors to get to know each other better. After these various ice-breakers, the AcadeCoders transitioned to their jiu-jitsu session with Maddie of K2 Martial Arts.
Following the ice-breakers and jiu-jitsu, the AcadeCoders were ready to start their week with an introduction to Python. The AcadeCoders were taught the basics to the Python syntax, including variables, Booleans, whitespaces, and math operations. Once the AcadeCoder were comfortable with the basics, we moved to the morning challenge: Tip Calculator. The AcadeCoders had to program a calculator that calculates the tip amounts for customers.
Following the morning Python lesson and lunch, the AcadeCoders took to Academie de la Capitale’s outdoor play yard for outdoor activities and fun in the sun!
Following outdoor activities and play, the AcadeCoders were ready for their Afternoon lesson and challenge. The AcadeCoders were taught strings, escaping characters, using upper and lower coding methods for strings, printing variables with strings, and advanced printing with explicit string conversion. The AcadeCoders were then given the challenge: Date and Time. Campers will learn how to code a database that keeps track of day and time. This challenge will look at getting the date and time with python, extracting information, and organizing it all.
Day 2: Tuesday, July 5th, 2016
The AcadeCoders began their morning with a lesson on conditionals and control flow. This is where the AcadeCoders learn to create programs that generate different outcomes based on their output
Following snack time, the AcadeCoders were given their morning challenge: PygLatin & Functions. The AcadeCoders apply their knowledge of python thus far and apply it to build a PygLatin translator
After lunch, the AcadeCoders took to Academie de la Capitale’s outdoor play yard for dodge-ball and free play. Free play was taken inside where the AcadeCoders could read, play with Lego’s, or chess.
Following lunch and outdoor play, the AcadeCoders were ready for their afternoon lesson of Functions. The AcadeCoders learn to use various functions to make their code more efficient and organizing data they are holding. They were then faced with the Vacation challenge where they had to take all their knowledge in Python and functions to code and organize a vacation to their destination of choice.
Day 3: Wednesday, July 6th, 2016
The AcadeCoders began their morning with a lesson on Lists and Dictionaries. The AcadeCoders learn to use lists and dictionaries to store, organize, and manipulate information.
Following their snack break, the AcadeCoders were given the “A Day at the Supermarket” challenge. The AcadeCoders had the challenge to use looping with lists and dictionaries to devise their own store in a market and learn to organize selling.
After lunch and outdoor activities at Morrison Park, the AcadeCoders began their afternoon with the challenge “Students Become the Teacher!”. In this challenge the AcadeCoders took their python knowledge in turning the tables and teaching the instructors. In this challenge, campers will create a ‘challenge’ course to display to the instructors of all their python knowledge thus far. Following this challenge the AcadeCoders began their lesson on Lists and Functions. The AcadeCoders learn to use functions with lists, manipulating and removing elements, and using two lists as two arguments in a function.
Day 4: Thursday, July 7th, 2016
The AcadeCoders began their morning with a challenge to refresh and use what they have been taught so far: Battleship! The AcadeCoders will build a simplified, one-player version of the classic board game Battleship. In this version of the game, there will be a single ship hidden in a random location on a 5×5 grid. The player will have 10 guesses to try to sink the ship.
Following lunch, the AcadeCoders took to Academie de la Capitale’s playground for 3-pin dodge-ball and rounds of chess to cool down.
After outdoor play and activities time, the AcadeCoders were ready for their afternoon lesson and challenge. The AcadeCoders were introduced to an important concept in Python; loops! The AcadeCoders learned to create their own loops, basic looping syntax, for loops, and creating complex lists and organizing information using loops.
Following this lesson on loops, it was time to put it to good use! The AcadeCoders were then given practice challenges to sharpen their looping skills to become more confident programmers
Day 5: Friday, July 8th, 2016
Last day of Python Power with the AcadeCoders! The AcadeCoders started off their morning with a challenge: Exam Statistics! The AcadeCoders had to create a database model of a list of exam scores from a math exam and find the mean, standard deviation, and variance of the test scores.
Following lunch, the AcadeCoders took to Academie de la Capitale’s playground for dodgeball and free-play. The AcadeCoders played various version dodgeball while making their own games during free-play.
Following dodgeball, the AcadeCoders came in for some well-deserved ice cream bars to cool them down. After, they transitioned back to the classroom for their final lesson. The AcadeCoders were introduced to advanced topics in Python. In this lesson, we covered iterating over data structures, list comprehensions, list slicing, and lambda expression.
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