Tor Norbye Shows JavaFX

Tor Norbye from the Java Posse and Sun Microsystems shows JavaFX to my Python class at DVC College for Kids. He creates a scene consisting of a grid of rectangles, and shows how to animate it.

Recording Music for Computer Games

Student, cellist, guitarist and programmer Ethan Kuefner (@jazzcello on Twitter) visited my programming classes and showed how to record music and sound effects, and put them into computer games. We used Scratch, Python and Pygame, GarageBand and Audacity.

Adding a Second Sprite to SimplePygame (Challenge 4)

Adding a second sprite (a bird to chase the bee) to SimplePygame (Challenge 4).

Solutions to SimplePygame Challenges 1–3

Answers to Challenges 1–3 for SimplePygame: Setting the background color, and loading and moving a sprite.

Xturtle With Loops to Make Polygons

Explanation of polygons.py program, which uses xturtle to draw polygons of any number of sides.

An Alice Object Reacts to Another

How to move an object around with the arrow keys, and have another object react to it when it gets close.

Using GIMP to Make Graphics for Scratch and Alice

Shows using the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) to create a costume for a Scratch sprite, and a texture for Alice.

Twitter’s Doug Williams Visits My Programming Class

Twitter's Doug Williams describes how he got started programming. See Twitter’s Doug Williams Visits My Programming Class: http://briccetti.blogspot.com/2009/07/twitters-doug-williams-visits-my.html

Random Number Problems and Python Solutions

The solutions to these problems are shown:

1. Produce one or more random integers in the range -5,5
2. Randomly choose from a sequence like ('Sam', 'Sue', 'Bill')
3. Randomly choose a number between 1 and 3. Ask the user for a guess. Tell the user if the guess is right.
4. Display the result of rolling two six-sided dice
   
5. Use randint or choice to add an element of randomness to a program of your own design

Random Numbers in Python: randint and choice

How to use randint and choice from the random module.

Three Simple Python Problems and Their Solutions

Demonstrations of print, raw_input, and if/elif/else.

Power-Up and Shield

Shows how to have your character power up with a shield, which diminishes over time and can be reacquired with another power-up.

Making Scratch Graphics with Inkscape

Shows making a simple drawing with Inkscape, exporting it as a bitmap, and then importing the image into Scratch.

Overview of Scratch, Alice, Python and Pygame

Software developer and teacher Dave Briccetti demonstrates software he uses to teach programming to kids: Scratch, Alice, Python and Pygame.