Wednesday 7 July 2010

20 Graduates from PyXO

Couple of weeks ago, Mohammad Nawahda started a dynamic team to make sure PaleXOers get the proper training about Python to ensure they have what it takes to start developing some great local activities and customizing others. We called it PyXO.

Hanna Kreitem managed to book a room in BZU CCE at Al Masa Building in Ramallah. There, we had 5 three-hours sessions, in which we explored, played with, practiced and hacked around python, GTK and Sugar.


Attendees were around 20 on average. Mostly are PaleXO members, some open source lovers, others joined PaleXO when they learned about what we do. I was amazed of how excited the guys were about Python and enthusiastic about starting building their very first activity and games.


The Python-effect was shown on the guys that came back everyday to learn more and more about it. They simply loved it. Sundous Hussien even started to brainstorm about games and activities that they want to start developing. Simply the idea was to capture and develop kids creativity by creating their future using a game, Sundous calls, Future Time Machine.


Started by introducing Python and it's inline interpreter. Playing around with Numbers, Strings then moving to more advanced structures, Lists, Dictionaries and Tuples. The following picture shows one of my favirote examples, which is calculating big numbers on the fly!


We also moved with learning how to build a Graphical User Interface (GUI) using GTK+ and PyGTK. We also moved on with a real life example by rebuilding Translate Activity that we built sometime ago. Starting with a standalone (non-sugar) program and then move on with how to make it run on Sugar, packaging it and installing it on Sugar.

Now that we are done with the basic training, we hope that software development will be moving much faster in the community and we hope we would come up with some great activities that would help kids learn better.

We will be having some small meetups to play around more with Python and Sugar and to start actually working and implementing some Activities. Meanwhile, we'll start to brainstorm about ideas that can be implemented.

At the end, we really would like to thank BZU CCE, Marwan, Nehad and Hanna Kreitem for helping us getting a place where we can gather and give the sessions.

Want to help? Have Ideas for Activities? Leave us a comment.

3 comments:

  1. There is a FLOSS Manual (in English) called "Make Your Own Sugar Activities!" that may be of use to this group:

    http://en.flossmanuals.net/ActivitiesGuideSugar/Introduction

    I am the author and I'd love to get any feedback you have on it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Jim, yes I am aware of that Book. I started reading it but I still haven't read it all (I am still at Adding refinements chapter).

    To be honest I had a terrible time learning to develop for sugar. Trial and error was too tiring. When I finally found your book it was a relief. So thanks a lot for having the time and writing it down and having it available for everyone.

    I always reference your book in the sessions. And I recommended all PaleXO members interested in developing an activity reading it.

    I will be happy to send you my feedback once I finish the book. But till now, I am loving it. Taking a real life Activity and walking us through developing it is the best thing.

    Thank you again

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you Mohammed and Jim,
    I hadn't have any idea about sugar before the PaleXo python training and really i found it very interesting, i think to do some ideas for sugar soon ,

    Thank you for your book .. i still in the beginning but if any thing arise i'll contact you ..


    Thank you :)
    and Thanks for PaleXO

    ReplyDelete