Chicago Teens Get a “Taste of Python”

This summer, hundreds of Chicago-area teens embraced a new summer experience: learning the fundamentals of the Python computer programming language. As part of Chicago’s first city-wide Summer of Learning initiative, more than 500 students participated in MIT’s six-week, online course, A Taste of Python Programming.

The course was developed after a conversation earlier in the spring between MIT President Rafael Reif and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel about ways to encourage summer learning when school is out of session. MIT was one of more than 100 organizations that participated in Chicago’s initiative.

“This is not a programming course,” said John Guttag, MIT professor of computer science and electrical engineering who taught the course with Eric L. Grimson, MIT chancellor and professor of computer science and engineering, and Chris Terman, MIT senior lecturer. “Instead, it is about problem solving in a computational setting. Everybody in the 21^st century should have a deep understanding of how to use computation.”

Watch the course video. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR6uh26SKCk]

A Taste of Python Programming was based on MIT’s 6.00 Introduction to Computer Science and Programming course. Each week the teaching team assigned problem sets of increasing complexity made up of small, repetitive steps culminating in a final assignment that built on all the course lessons. Students who completed the course received a Digital Badge that they can present to schools and future employers.

MIT alumni helped out too. Some 18 volunteers from the Alumni Association’s K-12 STEM Education Network served as community teaching assistants on the course site’s online forum, fielding questions on problem sets and clarifying course video lectures and reading assignments.

Community teaching assistant Kathleen Brown ’93, SM ’96 had studied under the same MIT professors 20 years ago as a computer science and engineering major. Because Python is a relatively new computer language, Brown took the opportunity to learn with the students.

“It was very reassuring to realize everything I learned at MIT is still very relevant,” she said. “What MIT taught me is much deeper than the syntax of a particular language.”

By studying the underlying concepts of Python, the students will be a step ahead in future computer science courses “regardless of what language the class is taught in,” Brown said.