The Chatterbox Challenge

http://www.chatterboxchallenge.com/

“The Chatterbox Challenge (CBC) is an annual contest which starts in mid March that allow any chatbot developer to participate and evaluate the intelligence of the chatbot through turing tests and much more. It is a really fun, simple and inclusive way for all children to practise their speech and language skills, it will be also interesting and amazing for anyone who wants to chat with the best chatbots”

I like it because it shows students what the state of the art is for chat bots and AI.

Excellent set of programming projects for Python

http://www.cse.msu.edu/~cse231/PracticeOfComputingUsingPython/index.php

This is a good list of projects. It includes solutions. It’s for college students but some of them are definitely simple enough for younger students.

Computer Science for Kids book

http://www.lessaworld.com/kids/

“Computer Science For Kids was designed to introduce the basics concepts of computer sciences to kids who are starting to learn about computers at school or at home”

There’s a free low res PDF version. You can buy a hard bound copy for $17, which seems like a lot for a 34 page book!

Pynguin for beginning programmers

http://code.google.com/p/pynguin/

Pynguin is a unified editor, interactive console, and graphics display area written using Python and the PyQt toolkit.

Pynguin is meant to be an easy environment for introducing programming concepts to beginning programmers.

Good simple exercises for students

http://www.openbookproject.net/pybiblio/practice/wilson/

Here are some nice simple examples that also show the kinds of things you can do with programming. This site uses Python.

Note that the solutions are not given!

Good notes for introducing programming

http://www.bembry.org/technology/python/notes/lesson_02.php

I like some of the bullets on this page for introducing programming to new programmers.

bembry.org Python course

http://www.bembry.org/technology/python/index.php

Some good Python lessons and resources.

Snake Wrangling for Kids eBook

http://www.briggs.net.nz/log/writing/snake-wrangling-for-kids

This is a very good book for beginning students.

“Snake Wrangling for Kids” is a printable electronic book, for children 8 years and older, who would like to learn computer programming. It covers the very basics of programming, and uses the Python 3 programming language to teach the concepts

Lego Mindstorms Hockey robot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJdzHquWc98

“The HiTechnic HockeyBot uses the HiTechnic IR Seeker V2, an IR Ball, and either a 1.0 or 2.0 LEGO Mindstorms set. The IR Seeker is used to get the direction to the IR Ball which is then used to drive the robot towards the ball. When the Ultrasonic sensor detect the ball, it runs the extra motor to hit the ball.”

Game Programming Tools

http://tonyforster.blogspot.com/2007/02/game-programming-tools.html

Kind of an old list but this blog post does list a lot of resources for game programming!