Application for Steemit Learning Challenge/ Season 21

I was glad to discover SEC, and now SLC. A few years ago, I wanted to participate in these courses, but restrictions such as reputation level, etc., didn't allow me to do so. And it's great that now anyone can join these courses, both as a student and as a teacher.

I am Sergey from Ukraine, on Steemit @sergeyk. After school, I studied where they taught computers, and I graduated as a teacher of mathematics and computer science. For quite a long time, I worked as a software engineer, and for some time, as a math teacher in a school. For the past few years, I've been helping students with their studies. I really enjoy teaching now, and it’s great when you do something you love. Many students come to me who find learning difficult, and I help them.

Recently, I’ve noticed that many people who want to learn programming have never encountered it before. I see the enormous challenges they face and how difficult the first steps are for them. That's why this course will focus more on breadth rather than depth. Through it, students will gain stronger foundational knowledge, providing a solid base to move forward. Often, when learning, only theory and a few simple tasks are provided for understanding it.

Over time, I've developed a set of tasks through which I explain the basics of programming. I’ve long planned to structure them into a blog, and Steemit Learning Challenge is the perfect opportunity for that.

The goal of the course is to help students who have never encountered programming to grasp basic concepts such as loops and arrays and learn to apply this knowledge in practice to solve real-world problems.

This course is aimed at beginners who have little or no experience in programming but want to master the basic concepts for further development.

In my course, I want to thoroughly cover fundamental programming concepts like loops and arrays without delving into complex terms or data structures. Any program is first and foremost logic, even if we're dealing with simple numbers instead of complex objects.

I'm personally attracted to complex tasks, but to reach them, one must practice a lot. This will mostly be a programming practicum—less theory and more tasks. The aim is to reinforce fundamental tasks through practice. The tasks might seem simple at first glance but will require an unconventional approach or creative solutions. I always insist on finding the best solution, even for simple problems.

I will show common mistakes in solving tasks—solutions that often come to mind for most beginners who approach problems from a human logic perspective rather than a computer logic one.

I present tasks in a way that the first one seems very simple and straightforward. Then, by adding a small tweak or challenge, we get something new. Then, we add another element. Step by step, we progress from a simple task to a complex one. From the student's perspective, it’s a series of tasks, but this sequence gradually leads to their development. I apply the spiral learning method here—students first learn simple material and tasks, and then gradually return to them at more complex levels.

Some examples of weekly lessons (these are a continuation of my previous six lessons since all the material couldn’t fit into six sessions):

Week 1 A deeper look into data types. Why does 100x3=44 and 100x4=-112? Tasks that don’t yet require arrays. Finding divisors of a number, determining whether it is prime or composite. Amicable numbers, perfect numbers. Kaprekar’s operation. Practical lessons on loops.

Week 2 Arrays. Tasks that lead to the invention of arrays. The advantages of using arrays. Declaration, initialization, accessing array elements. Static and dynamic arrays. Practical lessons on arrays.

Week 3 Practicum, tasks on arrays. The simplest task with an array is to determine if a certain element is in the array. Finding a specific number in the array. Finding the largest and smallest elements. More complex tasks—finding with multiple conditions. Finding the two largest, finding the largest even number.

Week 4 In the lecture, I will cover writing code for two logic games. Games with clear rules help understand how to use loops, arrays, and conditional operators. The focus will be on the logic of the game, not on the implementation of a beautiful graphical interface.

This is a rough list of four topics out of a six-session course.

I am considering giving each student an individual task. However, this might be difficult for me, so I may make part of the homework an individual task for each student.

Contact Information:
Telegram : @newtoner
Discord : zergiy

I’m interested in creating evergreen content, and lately, I’ve been thinking more about curation. I aim to quickly reach the orca rank, though reaching whale status is still far off. Of the 23,416 Steem Power I have, 2/3 is my investment bought on the exchange, and about 1/3 was earned on the platform. I haven’t powered down, and I don’t plan to. Club100—though the system mistakenly says Club75.

Thank you for reading, and I look forward to the start! Wishing success to everyone in your endeavors!