Hello from Lafayette, California, near San Francisco. I’ve just started using the amazing Sonic Pi with my private computer programming students, and those in junior high in a private school here in Lafayette. Many of my students are musicians, and they’re blown away by the cool sounds they can make. At the junior high a few weeks ago, when I introduced Sonic Pi, the kids in all three grades (6–8) were the most engaged I’ve ever seen them.
One problem with my learning along with them was that I taught them play and sleep before I knew about play_pattern_timed, so many ended up with some very long programs. (Hmm, that gives me an idea about a webapp that takes such long sequences and changes them to use play_pattern_timed. Or maybe an IDE (I use IntelliJ IDEA) feature that offers to improve the code.)
Thanks for posting this. New resources for Sonic Pi are always welcome. I noticed on your site the link https://jaredoleary.com/sonic-pi which was a new one for me. Got some nice simple debugging exercises which are useful. I’ll add it to the useful resources post in this site,
Hi Dave, It’s nice to see more CS teachers using Sonic Pi. I’m currently also giving workshops with Sonic Pi with the goal of showing students how fun programming can be. I’ll share the resources once they are translated to English (they are now only in Dutch…). I’ll also look closely at your resources, thanks for sharing!
Kind regards from Utrecht/Netherlands,
Christian Köppe
This is an awesome find for me, Dave! I, too, am a professional programmer. I am also a former urban middle school teacher, going way back. Recent events got me to thinking about developing a gateway educational activity that might draw more students from underserved areas into programming careers, so your junior high mention had me jumping up and down. Can’t wait to check out your links! Do you happen to know of other great groups/sites/whatever where educators are sharing resources? ps. I am a Lisp/Clojure guy, but Ruby is right in there. MatzLisp, right? Thx so much for sharing this.
Found this thread searching and this idea is fascinating! I’m going to come up with similar lessons for my students. I’ve already done midi lessons recently.
Can’t wait to check out your links! Do you happen to know of other great groups/sites/whatever where educators are sharing resources? ps. I am a Lisp/Clojure guy, but Ruby is right in there. MatzLisp, right? Thx so much for sharing this.