about.txt

About
===========
   
Goal
----

The PyStar program is workshop designed to teach 
women (including trans women) and their friends 
who are looking to learn how to program in a friendly non-alpha-geek
environment. The goal is to increase the number
of women programming, especially in Python which is
a very approachable language to get started with.

Pedagogy
---------------

The approach for this workshop is to have groups learning together
with at least one guide or instructor who can lead where needed, 
and help out as requested while participants work through the 
tutorials. There are several "badges" a learner can earn by learning to
do various programming tasks. The badges have various levels of difficulty 
and the goal is to have modules that meet the learner where they are at. 

Future
---------

As these workshops begin to happen it is hoped that attendees will
come back as teaching assistants and eventually teach future workshops with the end goal
of having former participants become the organizers for
future workshops. There may be a disproportionate number of
male teachers at initial workshops which is why we're encouraging participants
to come back and take the lead as soon as they feel ready.

Planning
-----------

If you're interested in organizing a workshop, working on the modules, 
or other discussions about teaching Python & programming to women, please 
join our Google group http://groups.google.com/group/pystar

Contribute
-------------

You may have noticed our "Fork me on GitHub" banner - please do it! We would love for you 
to contribute badges/modules/typos corrections - anything to help make this as engaging 
and useful as a distributed workshop planning site can be.