[Gambas-user] We should offer online Gambas courses!

[richard terry]

On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 07:22:48 am jbskaggs wrote:
> I would like to set up a online gambas school where the more experienced
> users and coders here could offer an online workshop on Gambas for users.
>
> Make it an affordable cost (Like a $0 to $25 a course, depending on
> complexity, length, and time required. A course on making Forms should be
> free, but a all inclusive course on writing a mmorpg in gambas should have
> a fee attached)  and offer a workshop for different fundamentals:
>
> I know for me a lot of Gambas is intuitive but much of it isn't.
>
> Im thinking it could be setup on a moodle or someother workshop / class
> software.  With online lessons and quizzes for free but to get the actual
> coding graded it would require a live teacher to grade and comment thereby
> why a nominal fee would be justified.  I could even host the moodle site
> and help admin it but my programming knowledge is so low I wouldn't make a
> good teacher.  But I could help someone setup a course and host it and that
> person could charge a reasonable fee to teach the course. (Though in the
> spirit of linux the less money the better.)
>
> For example I would be willing to pay right now to be tutored in how to
> reference, manipulate, and check objects and controls via code (dynamically
> via nested loops and such).  I read the documents- I look at the examples
> and still I get the wrong impressions and waste hours and hours on many
> different controls or functions.
>
> I helped setup an online bible college and the way it ran was every course
> had a different instructor (or most did) and those instructors set their
> own prerequisites and graded assignments on their own schedule (within
> reason).
>
> But the very basic courses were almost entirely automated - no need to have
> heavy instructor interaction.  But as the courses became more in depth then
> instructors became paramount.  Because students needed to ask questions and
> yes other students could answer and even grade (though their gradings were
> subject to instructor override.)
>
> I look at the number of basic questions on Nabbles and just think that a
> systematic instruction courses would make gambas bloom even more.
>
> Maybe something like:
>
> 1- Setting up your Gambas
>      a. download and installation
>      b. Defining preferences and intro to Gambas
>
> 2- Mastering the IDE interface:
>      a. creating projects, forms, simple control, saving, compiling, and
> packaging
>
> 3- Gambas Programming fundamentals: A big unit broken into smaller courses
>      a. Forms
>      b. Controls
>      c. Assignments, Operators, Strings, Numbers, and Booleans
>      d. Comparisons, Loops, and nestings
>      e. Good programming, coding practices, and the Gambas Programming
> language
>
> 4. Components: Another big unit
>      a. gb
>      b. gb.compress
>      c. gb.chart etc...
>
> 5. FX
>     a. BMP, JPG, PNG, GIF, etc what they are.  Editing and making them.
>     b. Animations and movies
>     c. creating, editing, and sounds and music
>
> 6. Application specific courses:
>    a. How to write a text editor
>    b. How to write a scrolling shooter game etc and so on
>
> and so forth.
>
> And of course offer a Certificates for completing the courses.
>
> I know moodle and setting up the site would be easy- and if someone wanted
> to teach a course I could setup the course, forums, and quizzes etc.  I
> could make some beginner courses on my own- but I would need help with more
> advanced subjects.
>
> Any thoughts? Objections? Volunteers?
>
> JB Skaggs

Personally I think we should do what I've pushed for before - include 
extensively commented sample code along with gambas. We could all contribute 
on our own level - have a look at the wxPython demo as such an sample 
code-base of how to use the language.

Richard