Teach teens computing: Object-oriented programming in Python

Course Description

Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a different style of programming compared to the 'procedural' programming that most young learners start with. However, it can be a helpful way to think about some types of problem, using 'objects' to represent items in the real world, or abstract things such as computer files. As they develop more complicated programming projects young people may find this style of programming more useful, but they may need some help to get started and make the most of the advantages of OOP.

This course is designed for educators (including coding club mentors and other informal educators) who want to be able to support young learners to develop their Python programming skills, so that they can use this object-oriented approach to solve problems. Across four modules you will develop your own OOP knowledge and skills so that you are better able to support your learners, and use your own experience to identify how you can best support them.

Required knowledge or skills

You will need to be comfortable with creating functions with parameters and returns values in Python.

What you will learn

After completing these four modules, you will be able to:

• Introduce the key ideas of object-oriented programming, using Python.

• Build your own classes to create objects with their own attributes and methods.

• Write a simple text-based adventure game using OOP.

• Extend your own and other people's classes, using the concepts inheritance and polymorphism.

• Develop ideas for using object-oriented programming in the classroom.

What you will need

You will need either:

• A modern web browser and an internet connection to access the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s Code Editor

• To install an offline Python integrated development environment such as Thonny