Learn Python with BananaTales and CodeMonkey

Key Takeaways

And we're back with another Code Monkey video. This time we're looking at more textbased coding and we're not just going to do Coffee Script. We're moving on to Python coding. Now, I do want to say a quick thank you again to Code Monkey for sponsoring this video, giving me access to the full platform so I can show you exactly what they offer. These two courses that we are discussing today are called the Banana Tales. Now, Banana Tales has two parts. We have the Python fundamentals and advanced topics. Now for all those out there wondering what is Python and why do I need Python? Python is a very very popular language. Many schools teach Python and many different platforms use Python. Python is not just any textbased language. It is one of the most popular languages at the moment and especially in schools. Many teachers around the world choose Python because it has easy tolearn syntax and it is incredibly powerful. Let's jump into our very first course, Banana Tails, the Python fundamentals. I'm going to open it here. As you can see, I have not started this course yet. Let's explore this together. The interface will look very familiar as before. or if you haven't seen any of the older videos yet, do check out the links in the description and then that will give you a feel of how the progression within Code Monkey really builds up to Python in Banana Tails. We're going to start coding and we're going to start with the very first level. Now, let's go ahead and play the video. Watch the introduction. It's always great fun. We're only going to watch a small part so you get a feel of what this looks like. Banana Tails. We've got the two brothers eating bananas. As you can see, they always want to get their hands on those bananas. Now, I'm going to stop the video. And the first thing we see is little introduction of, "Oh no, the twins are separated. Help feed the baby monkey." Now, there's no code yet, but we can already get a feel of the actual setup. So, here you can see we have our play area or our preview on the right hand side. On the left hand side we have our code or our files. This is like an IDE or integrated development environment. Here we have the solution. py and level setup py are two different Python files. It's already hinting at how this will be built. At the bottom we have our console. So we can check our console output and we have some hints that we can use. Now the hint says that basically in this first one there is no challenge. There is no coding. It's introducing the way that the program works. We have to click on the banana and we will make its way to the monkey. So, let's go ahead and do that. We're going to click on it. Moves down, makes its way to the monkey. Challenge one completed. Very easy start. Now, challenge two will introduce some code. So, we're going to go to challenge two. Now, you will see on the left hand side there is a little bit of code already in that area. Here we can see under solution.p py we have giraffe.height equals six. It is currently at two 3 four five six. Let's see what happens. Our giraffe is now closing that gap. We can click on the banana to make its way to the baby monkey. Now, we still haven't had to change any code. We're simply being introduced to the concepts behind it. Let's go ahead and click on next. Now, we have a very similar setup, but as you can see here, the giraffe's height is set to 10. Let's just double check that we're at 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 10 will bring it all the way up here. So, let's preview that. Going to click on run. And this is our first obstacle. The first time we have to change our code. So now our students are going to tweak this. They're going to change the actual value. So we're going to rewind it. Change the value to eight. run the code, click on the banana, and it's going to build up to to a more advanced level of Python. Now, instead of going through all the challenges, let's fast forward, and let me show you a more challenging setup within this first level, Banana Tales one. Going to open the world selector. Let's go all the way to the right. Let's open up challenge 25. Now, here you can see we've already got a little bit of code. This is our level setup. It's got those snakes. We've got a list here at the top with all the snakes. The snakes are here and they need to stretch out so they can let us across. Where do we do that? In our solution, we have a number of lines. So, let's go ahead and give these snakes a length. Now, we always start from zero. So, let's go ahead and give snake zero a length. We're going to give snakes zero a length. And we're going to make that equals whatever we need. So 1 2 3 4 five six. Let's make that six. And let's just quickly test this. Great. We're short. So we're going to go seven. Rewind that. Seven. Then we're going to move on. So we're going to get snakes one. Snakes one is going to need a length of one. Snakes two is going to need a length. And again, it's so helpful that we've got these little previews. It's going to need a length of one, two, three. So, four. And then we're going to have the final one. Snakes three. Is going to need a length of five, I think. So, let's just double check that. A length of five. And the other two can stay where they are. Let's run this. Oh my goodness, my spelling. I apologies, I have completely misspelled it. It is tht. So, let's go ahead and just quickly switch these out. And there we go. We can now send our banana across. And this is Python lists. Now, the challenges go on and on and on. And you will see there are many, many more challenges. As before, as a teacher, you have access to some excellent lesson materials. So, let's go ahead and look at the lesson materials included in Banana Tales one and two. We're going to close this for now. We're going to go to the Code Monkey main menu and go to the teacher resources. In our teacher resources, we have our lesson plans and our solutions. Let's start with the solutions because that will be the most helpful for non-speist teachers teaching with Code Monkey. We're going to open this. Scroll all the way down and as you can see here we have Python part one. Let's have a look at some solutions for part two with advanced topics. This opens up all the lessons. Now you can see 88 all the way up to challenge 150 with bubble sorts. So this is a very advanced Python course that you can quickly use with your students in class. Let's have a look at 147 which deals with bubble sorts. And you can already see we have those really cute graphics. Same type of graphics. And on the left hand side we've got some solutions and the level setup. Now the solution here as you can see we have our bubble sorts and we need to make sure that everything works correctly. So you can see as it goes through it, it is going to rearrange those using a bubble sort so that it can quickly create the steps needed in order for the monkey to get its banana. This seems quite intimidating. Don't worry, you are building up to this level very slowly throughout the various challenges. In addition to that, you've got access to some amazing resources right here, the lesson plans. So, let's go ahead and look at the lesson plans for the banana tails. Going to scroll down because the banana tails are at the bottom. And here, let's have a look at the bubble sword lesson. So, here we're going to open up banana tails part two, 10 lessons. And let's open up our PDF with all the lessons. There we are. And in this overview, you can see it does deal with bubble swords right here. And it explains all you need to know about a bubble sort. It even has some challenges here. For example, ask your students to compare different challenges. What is the reasoning behind it? Here we have our lessons. Bubbles 2. Again, we've got the standards, an objective, and then a introduction activity in class. If this is still proving too challenging or you don't have enough information here as a teacher, you can always go back go back to the resources and here you can explore even more coding concepts. We have videos that we can look at as well as some additional information. So let's have a look at these. We're going to look at our coding concepts. In our coding concepts, we've got those big big concepts that we wanted to learn about. Let's jump into Banana Tales part two where those bubble sword concepts are dealt with and let's go straight to bubble sort at the bottom here. You can see we've got a full breakdown of exactly how this works. We've got our diagrams. We've got our information. In other words, with a little bit of prep, you can really use this even as a nonspecialist computer science teacher. some advanced concepts all using what Code Monkey provides you with on their website. So, Banana Tales one and Banana Tales 2 for the advanced Python concepts. I hope you found this helpful. If you did, make sure that you scroll down to the bottom and find links to all those other videos we've done on Code Monkey because Code Monkey is a full package. You have access to everything right from Code Monkey Jr. up to Python, which is what we've looked at today. Next time we'll dive into the next course and you'll find out a lot more about coding your own chatbots. In the meantime, thank you for watching and I will see you in the next